By Cody Turner

The Sugar Shack has been in this city before I was even thought of. My mama always said it was a sugar factory for the Great American Sugar Company, the men loading pounds and pounds of it everyday after the war. That was until the Company took their earnings and hauled it out of here five years later, never to be heard of again. 

The legend goes that an old worker at the plant, the man they call “Slim”, bought the place for $500. My mama says that he got the money working for the Sicilians, running their restaurant while they were out hunting down people in the Garden District. Every time someone asks about the story, he’ll go silent. Whenever I go to Baton Rouge in the summer and tell them about “the dance place”, I always like to say, “St. George might be small, but we’ve got tales that would make you think we’re bigger than New York City.” 

I say all this, but I’ve never stepped foot in the old thing. That changes now.

It’s a Friday night in St. George. The new refinery is closed for the weekend, church isn’t for another day or so, and there’s no way of getting to Baton Rouge or New Orleans without meeting the Rickety Bridges of Doom (The government - and my papa - calls them the Coleman Bridge and the Alvarez Bridge. They named it after Representatives Coleman and Alvarez, who spent their entire lives in Washington after they got elected. I’ve only seen them once in my life, when they came to my school to celebrate it being integrated when I was in 6th grade. I’m now a sophomore in high school. I think that should be enough to tell you how much they don’t care about us.) The narrow streets buzz with people, aching for the freedom from their work. In the cloud of people, we pass through. I, a skinny, short 15-year-old, and my little sister, Laura, only 6, blend into the blob so effortlessly, we don’t even need money to get in the place. That’s good. Our parents left me $50 for the weekend, and my siblings run through food like a pack of wild hogs.

The image hits me like the tidal wave that did when my family headed out to Pensacola that one weekend when I was 6. Faces in every shade of brown, clad in every shade of the rainbow I could ever imagine, sway, sashay and shout to the music. One light shines down on them, like God opened up the clouds just for them. I look at my sister, clearly as astounded as me, a small smile creeping onto her full lips and chubby cheeks. The sweet sounds of Big Daddy Rucker, our tiny town’s pride, and his band Domino reverberate around the room. 

I become enveloped in Black joy. 

I wouldn’t trade it for the world.