................................................... Why 'Three Bean?' You know, I'm often asked about the significance of the name 'Three Bean.' In the interest of full disclosure, here then is the unvarnished and completely reliable 'Three Bean' story.
Then, unexpectedly, she left me. I've never been surprised by the
unexpected, but I was disappointed that she had found new love Long story, short: I'd had enough of New Orleans, so I renewed my
credentials in the Merchant Marine and hopped the first tanker out
of Port Arthur. Three weeks and four storms later, the ship put in
at Oran, Day One was okay. I bagged an ibex and would have dragged him back
to camp for the evening victuals but my AK was set on rock-n-roll
and there wasn't a lot left except hooves and antlers. On Day Two,
Marcel and I were chased into the high country by Angolan regulars.
We shot up all our ammo getting out of that jam, only to discover
ourselves alone on a hilltop in the dense Now, while Marcel was a strong man, he was often belittled by doubt, and he usually responded to these crises of self-confidence by doing the two things he knew best: eating and running. And so, on the morning of Day Three, I awoke to find Marcel gone, along with all of our rations. There was a note, however, in which Marcel had this to say: "Please excuse the mess, but I don't think I want to be in the Merchant Marine after all. I'm going back to Port Arthur." I'm sure you're wondering what all of this has to do with the name
'Three Bean,' and I'm about to tell you. So, there I was, on a hilltop
in Angola with no ammunition, no food, half a canteen of water, and
very few prospects. But I did happen to have a rosary in my pocket.
And not just any rosary, mind you. This was a During the nearly three weeks it took me to get back to the UNITA
front lines, I ate one bean at each mealtime. Three beans a day.
I got energy from the caffeine, vitamins from the pulp and fiber
from the shell. And while I don't recommend it for dieters, I also
managed to drop fifteen pounds. When I dragged my sorry self into
camp nineteen days after Marcel left me, I had three beans left on
my rosary. Those are the beans you see below, the same three beans
I've named this business after. Naturally, I left the life of a soldier of fortune shortly after this experience. New Orleans was no option for me, and I'd already seen the Great North Woods, so I settled on the East Coast, in New England, where I've lived a quiet life ever since. I still pray the rosary, of course, but the one I use now has plastic beads. I don't know if I could eat it, but I've discovered that wondering - not wandering - is what life is all about. Thanks for reading the real, absolutely true, completely reliable story of the name, 'Three Bean.' And now you know. ................................................... |
The year was 1974. The place: New Orleans, Louisiana. I had a basement
apartment on Montague Street. It was wet all the time and I could
never get the stove lit. I was working in a topless place and one
evening she stopped in for a beer. She said there was something about
the side of my face that intrigued her. Maybe it was the lighting.
Anyway, we took up after that and for a while it was magical. There
were long walks through the Garden District, quiet evenings at The
Pirate's Head, that big fistfight over an orphaned beignet at Cafe
DuMond. Well, maybe it wasn't all magical, but we seemed to be having
a good time. 
with
none other than John Smith. Yeah, that John Smith. They got a split
level out in Metarie, a two-bedroom job overlooking a canal. She
went to work as the bookkeeper for his carpentry business. Heck,
if I'd known she had a knack with the numbers, I would have asked
her to negotiate my bar tab at the Court of Two Sisters. 
Algeria. We were getting set to swap 300,000 barrels of
oil for a million gallons of Beluga caviar when my friend, Marcel,
suggested we jump ship and find our fortune. Well, before you could
say "plague," Marcel and I had flown to Angola to join
up with Jonas Savimbi and the UNITA boys. They had finished booting
the Portuguese back to the Iberian Peninsula and had turned their
attention to the Cubans and Czechs. It was a real Cold War proxy
scrap and they were offering a pretty penny to gringos like us. Marcel
and I suited up, learned to shoot straight for the first time in
our lives and headed out on patrol in the mountainous outback of
southwestern Africa. 
Angolan night. We sat there
for hours watching the light show as Cuban reinforcements pushed
UNITA into the next province. 
novelty rosary made
with coffee beans. That's right. Sixty beautiful, dark brown, 100%
Columbian coffee beans. Fifty-five little ones and five big ones.
Those beans were all I had for food, and although I had never contemplated
eating my favorite Marian devotion, I was just grateful Marcel hadn't
thought of it first! 
