Meet Fast Eddie: Tulane vs. Tulsa

I guess you could say we've been "friends for a while." You could also say we've "known each other." Either way, I have seen him around for decades. He has never given me his real name. I've always known him just as Fast Eddie.

Somehow or other, he finds me. I could be at a bar, a coffee shop, a small restaurant, you name it. When I least expect it, he'll pull up a chair, a bar stool, whatever, and start talking. I usually don't get in a word edgewise. There's probably a "Fast Eddie" in your life. This one's been in mine a very long time.

This time, I am enjoying a roast beef po-boy, dressed, with a glass of water. I can't drink soft drinks anymore. It's the first thing Eddie notices as he pulls a chair from a nearby table without asking and plops down.

"Joubert, you've given up on the sweets?" Eddie starts in his thick Ninth Ward accent. "Man, I've seen you put away some Mountain Dews and Dr. Peppers in my day. I didn't think you'd ever stop with those."

"I had to, Eddie," I replied. "Health reasons, you know."

"Yeah, I'm not too worried about that. I'm as svelte as the next guy," he says as he pats his paunch around the belt line. "I'm in shape. Round's a shape, ya know?"

I nod my head, hoping to just finish my po-boy, but Eddie pushes on.

"I know it's been a while since I've seen you," Eddie tells me as he punctuates his pronouns with an unlit cigar pointed in whichever direction he desires. "I've been doing a lot of traveling lately." His voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, "It's not always because I want to,"

Then, as he always seems to do, he changes subjects rapidly.

"Look, I know you are interested in this Tulane-Tulsa game," Eddie says as he picks up the pace of our one-way conversation. "This Tulsa team ain't bad. I mean they beat Okie State last week, and got the Cowboys coach fired."

I nod as I take another bite.

"But Tulane is ticked," Eddie says as he taps the table where I'm sitting. "That was not the Tulane team anyone was expecting to see against the Rebs. I've been watching them." I am assuming he means the Green Wave. He backs up my assumption.

"I'm not gonna say it'll be a blowout," Eddie wraps up, "but I can see the Greenies covering the spread, easy."

And with that, he pushes the chair he had been sitting in back with the table that it belongs, waves his cigar-holding hand at me, and exits more quickly than a man that size should be able to.

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