Old Newspaper Articles: The Cave, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Martin L. Varisco, Jr., May 2003 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Published in the Gumbo Magazine: Sunday, November 27, 1988 By: Joan Davis, Lifestyle Editor Ponchatoula- Harry James' trumpet, the clinking of shot glasses and the click of stylish shoes on terrazzo flooring still echo in the darkness of the cellar dance halls. The steady sump-sump of the pumps beneath the floor has been still for years, and three inches of black water obscures the date, October 1, 1938, inscribed in its center. The date marks opening night of the Cave Tangi, the first night club and restaurant of its kind in Louisiana and Mississippi. And like Tucker and his famous automobile and Howard Hughes and the Spruce Goose, Dallas Wood, the owner, took some teasing about his dream. An inventor, an entrepreneur, a bon vivant, an eccentric-Wood was all of these, but according to a wide circle of friends, family and acquaintances, he was 'a man 50 years ahead of his time." Myrtle McCormick Hejtmancik, Wood's third wife, said her husband had tried Tulane for a year to study medicine, but after building a successful night club in Franklinton, he bought land in Ponchatoula in August 1937 to build a combination night club and restaurant. The nearest night club or nice family-type restaurant was in New Orleans. Charlie Giannobile was just a boy but remembers Wood coming to see his dad about "digging a big hole" for a restaurant. The Giannobile family owned a mule business. "In those days there wasn't equipment like there is today," he said. "Our work was mostly building roads with teams of mules." The project took more than a year because of heavy rains that year and in the spring of 1938, Giannobile said. Three teams of mules and Irwin McCahill with his Ford tractor made a combined salary of $8 per day for the job. "You have to remember that 10 cents per hour was the going wage," he said. The boy had his doubts about how Wood would keep the hole dry when the restaurant was built, but Giannobile said the pumps built in a hole under the dance floor served the purpose well. "I thought the guy was crazy," he said. Stanley Cowan, who led an orchestra of 13 pieces in the'50s, said Wood had the Midas touch. Everything he touched turned to money. The restaurant became well-known for its fried chicken, made from "milk-fed" poultry raised in huge chicken houses on the site. And below ground level there was dancing to big name bands almost every night, and bingo and other gaming in back rooms. Slot machines, however, were right out front. It was all-legal then. Hejtmancik said the building is 225 feet across the front and the same underneath, with 250 feet across the back of chicken buildings converted to bingo and gaming rooms. Two canopied entrances graced the front, and the building, before the renovation in the '50s, was all of cypress. The fountain and barbecue pit were additions, as was the burgundy, leather-padded horseshoe shaped bar in the restaurant. Black-and-white tile floors stretched through the restaurant to side rooms and into the huge tile and stainless steel kitchen, she recalled A fire trap door could close off the kitchen in case of fire. Downstairs, terrazzo flooring glistened and a prism light suspended from the ceiling rotated and threw "starlight" on the walls. The Cave's heyday was in the late '30s and the '40s, the Depression era, post-Prohibition- the Swing Era, and Cowan said Wood hired some of the best of their time. Gene Krupa, Harry James, Glenn Miller, the Rhythm Kings with Claiborne Williams Sr. and Jr., Fats Domino, Ray Anthony and Phil Harris, were just a few "big names" that packed the Cave during the week. On week nights, the big names were affordable. "These bands were touring the country then," Cowan said, "and Wood could book them for Tuesday or for a couple days for $1,000 a night. Then he'd book some popular local band on the weekend." The night club/restaurant became so popular that reservations had to be made a week in advance to get in, he said. And though there was parking in front, and later across the street, cars often lined up U.S. 51 South "halfway to Ponchatoula in one direction and to Hammond in the other." Cowan said during the post-war years, 1946 through 1950, attending Southeastern Louisiana University on the GI Bill, he studied for his chemistry exams at the bottom of the steps at the Cave Tangi, always listening with one ear as he studied. Cowan formed his band in April 1950, and for five years at the Cave it played all the crowd's favorites-"In The Mood," "Rose Room," "Stardust," and the "Tennessee Waltz." Cowan said Wood never told the band what to play and never prodded them to sell more drinks to the crowd. A large staff of waitresses and bartenders took care of serving the crowds. Orris Caldwell, her husband "Red," and their friend Norma Goudeau served as many as 500 people "below" and "above" and maybe another 500 in the bingo and gaming rooms. Orris said the Rotary and Jaycee clubs held their regular meetings and banquets there. A dumbwaiter took food down from the restaurant to the dance hall where patrons could sit at their tables and eat there as well. Later, Wood added a barbecue pit out front, an ice cream parlor and drive-in theater across the street with expanded parking. "Dallas was a shrewd businessman and a real entertainer," Red Caldwell said. He had connections in "high places," having been Huey Long's body guard, Hejtmancik said. He would precede Long's entourage with loudspeakers, gathering the crowd with his bally-hoo to hear Long. Following Long's assassination, Wood bought Long's desk from the Progress newspaper office in Hammond, formerly located above Stafford's furniture store. Both Long and Richard Leche, who was also later a governor, ran the paper. The desk remained in Wood's bedroom until his death and is on display in the B.B. "Sixty " Rayburn Room at SLU. Wood was surrounded by family in his enterprise at The Cave. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wilton Wood and the Wood's daughter, Clara, and her husband Travis Hollis, all lived in suites within the building, Red Caldwell said. Mrs. Hollis taught school in Ponchatoula and worked each until midnight in the restaurant. The family, especially Travis, ran the place during Wood's absences. And Wood was gone from the Cave often. He suffered from severe rheumatoid arthritis and traveled almost weekly to Hot Springs, Ark., to benefit from the healthful water, Hejtmancik recalled. Despite his pain, he enjoyed an active life. Fox hunting was his favorite sport, but he also owned a yacht and hosted "big shots and politicians" on the boat. In his later years, both his legs were amputated because of arteritis, a complication of his arthritis. The surgery didn't slow him down much, his former wife added. He had his yellow Cadillac altered so that the levers were on the steering column. Red Caldwell said Wood was a diplomat who "never met a stranger." He served in the Coast Guard in his younger days and was stationed in New Orleans for a few months. Officers there took advantage of Wood's restaurant savvy. He spent his days there teaching the kitchen crew how to fry chicken. "He should have been the Colonel Sanders of chicken," Hejtmancik said. The Cave Tangi was perhaps best known for its fried chicken, she said. There were no chicken franchises back then. The fried chicken dinner was a half chicken with French fries or potato salad and was only $1.25. She remembers Wood's project of hooking up a chicken plucker to help the kitchen help meet the big demand for in-house and take-out orders. "The plucker was connected backwards somehow and the feathers, instead of going into the machine, went everywhere," she said. The surgery and enforced bed rest gave Wood more time to think. Red Caldwell said one of his many "inventions" was a firm but soft foam rubber. He called a man from North Carolina to help him design it. The first sample went into his wheelchair, but Wood had plans to manufacture bed mattresses and probably make a fortune. But the designer took the idea back to North Carolina and without Wood's knowledge patented the idea himself." Other ideas likewise went sour and Wood "lost several fortunes" in various enterprises, Caldwell said, adding with a wink that divorce settlements were expensive. The drive-in theater "never made a dime" because the screen faced the highway. Patrons in the restaurant or parked on the highway could watch the movies for free. The barbecue pit didn't do as well as the fried chicken. The Shetland pony rides were a disaster. A "youth fountain" in front of the Cave was a favorite knick-knack of Wood's, at a cost of $35,000. The 187 fox hounds cot $1,500 a month to feed. And there were the trips to the baths, boating, hunting. "If you were in China and Dallas decided he wanted to talk to you, he would," Caldwell said, "for an hour." Cowan said eventually the spending and changing times caused a decline in the restaurant, as did Wood's declining health. Competition from night clubs in Hammond and a younger crowd, "big destroyers, small spenders and troublemakers," took business away. Goudeau said she would throw ice water on the "young hoodlums" who traveled from club to club. Caldwell said the competition would pay "John and his buddies" to cause a ruckus, and when it happened enough, the crowds stopped coming. "It was really dirty pool," he said, "and common practice." But Caldwell said the staff was devoted to Wood and stayed, even after Clara Hollis took over management of the Cave. A local band, "The Rocks," was popular in the '60s as were John Fred and the Playboys and Irma Thomas, and there was a revival of sorts. Thomas, whose mother was a cook there, practiced as a young girl on the microphone downstairs, singing her blues to the deserted hall after closing time. The Cave closed in 1982 and briefly housed an antique furniture business. Hejtmancik is trustee of the property, which includes a small house adjoining the restaurant, where Woods heir and only child, Debbie Ledoux, resides. She has three children, Wood's and Hejtmancik's grandchildren. Hejtmancik has hopes that one day the Cave will make a comeback. She recalled one evening after the 1959 Miss Ponchatoula Pageant when Mary Ann Mobley, Miss America, sang for the crowds, backed up by Cowan's band. It seems like just yesterday. "It was all so exciting," she said.