Step-Inn Club

Status: Closed

Parish: St. Landry

Location: Lawtell

Deborah Grimmett: “My grandparents, Effie and Zeno Joubert, Sr., owned the Step-Inn Club in Lawtell. I believe that it actually opened during the prohibition- featuring moonshine and gambling. My sister and I joke that growing up in that environment made us into characters. We tell stories to our unbelieving friends of us being the only white kids dancing at Richard’s Zydeco Club and sometimes, at the Step-Inn Club, that we’d see .45 caliber pistols fall out of ladies’ purses and get put back in just like it was a tube of lipstick. It was a different time.
I spent lots of time at the Step-Inn as a child- I even had a favorite waiter who looked after me there- Mr. Jim. When big name traveling bands played there, Mr. Jim and I would walk a chain across Highway 190 so that the overflow crowd could dance outside. When that happened, local traffic knew to take the dirt road behind the club to go around the commotion.
My grandmother ran the restaurant all week long, but on Saturday nights it was closed- but she always cooked for the band to make sure that the band got fed. When they took a break at 9 PM, she would serve them dinner. There was a card room that featured bourrée. At 6 PM, the card players would put their cards face down on the table, join their wives for Mass, and then return to finish the game. Mr. Jim made sure that no one entered the card room while they were away.
My grandparents lived behind the club and spent most of their time working there, so they had a beauty salon (Janet’s Beauty Shop- on left end of the club) and a barber shop (Rabbit’s Barber Shop- on right end off the club) built into the ends of the building. My Grandmother loved this convenience, and would get her hair done after lunch in preparation for the long weekend of work ahead. My Grandfather and Uncles did the same at the barber shop. There were doorways on the storefront as well as inside to the barbershop and salon.
The plate glass window area on the front of the building was the restaurant. There was door to the bar from the restaurant, and another arched doorway from the bar that led to the dancehall.”

Famed Saturday night spot: Next to the Green Lantern: On site now is the Lawtell Post Office.

Photo from the Johnnie Allan Collection at the Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Caption: J.B. Fuselier and his Merrymakers circa 1944 (L-R) Desbra Fontenot, J.B. Fuselier, Norris “T-Boy” Courville, and Preston Manuel

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Photo Credit: Photo from the Johnnie Allan Collection at the Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.