MoonLight Inn

Status: Closed

Parish: St. Landry

Location: Opelousas

W Landry: Jessie and Cliff Manuel were owners, as were Vorise & Sybil Bergeron (from 1958-1962): Rickey Bergeron: every Friday and Saturday night there was a band and a card game,,,,my Uncle Vernon Bergeron palyed in the band and my Dad Kerney Bergeron ran the card game,,,,as a child I spent those nights in the living and kitchen quarters of the old Moon Light,,,,,such memories. Nelda Bibb: Many an Opelousas/SLP young woman met her future husband at the Moonlight Inn. The soldiers from Fort Polk used to come down here to the Moonlight Inn & The Rose Garden for their week-ends off to dance to Colinda. AT the Rose Garden, las mamans would chaperon the girls & the guys would have to ask las mamans to dance with their daughters. Those mamans would flip in their graves is they saww how their grand daughters & grandsons dance today. Back when The Moonlight Inn was established it was THE place to go for fine dining & dancing. Those were the days when women got all dressed up, men wore suits & ties & nice shoes, & the kiddos stayed home where they belonged lol. By the mid 40s is ws beginning to decline and only had a piano bar & juke box. The soldiers from Ft. Polk started coming to Opelousas for the weekend and that saved the Blue Moon for awhile. My little cousin & his younger sister, Earlene Bibb Duos, on thier way to the Daily World office to pick up his Sunday papers to deliver on his route . They were struck by a drunken college student who I heard was upset because his girl had left him. He left the parking lot at the MI like a bat out of hell. Jr. was killed & Earlene suffered a bad skull fractire & other injuries. Earlene had compllete recovery & now has a business out of her home. located in the 1200 block of W. Landry St. next door to Cormier Motors.