Dear Lauri,
Are you kidding? Mr. Bingle and I go way back. I remember when he was just a gleam in his creator's eye. The jingle went like this: "Jingle, Jangle, Jingle, here comes Mr. Bingle with another message from Kris Kringle. Time to launch the Christmas season. Maison Blanche makes Christmas pleasin'. Gifts galore for you to see. Each a gem from MB."

Ever since 1948, Mr. Bingle has been a part of the Christmas tradition in New Orleans. The little guy was the creation of Emile Aline, a window decorator at the old Maison Blanche department store on Canal Street, and the man who made the doll come to life and gave him a voice was Edwin H. "Oscar" Isentrout, a local puppeteer.

When Christmas rolled around, Maison Blanche erected the giant papier-mache mannequin in front of the store, and Mr. Bingle would perform for the kids on the third-floor stage. He even had his own television show for a time.

Isentrout died in 1985, and he had to be buried in an unmarked grave. Recently, Sean Patrick Doles had written a work titled Saving Mr. Bingle. He is donating some of the profits to provide a gravestone for the puppeteer as well as a plaque to go on the wall of the Ritz-Carlton, the site of the old Maison Blanche.

Hey Blake,
What is the name of the statue on the Falstaff Brewery? It looks like a Viking.
Rgaudet

Dear Rgaudet,
A Viking it's not. It's not even Sir John Falstaff, the "fat knight," cheerful mentor and close friend to Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV. The large gentleman hoisting a stein is King Gambrinus, a 12th century Flemish nobleman who, according to legend, brewed the world's first barrel of beer. In reality, some form of beer is known to have existed thousand of years earlier. Nevertheless, King Gambrinus -- invariably portrayed with foaming goblet held high in mid- toast -- has long been established as a symbol of the universal and eternal regard for beer.

King Gambrinus is known as "the patron saint of beer" and for years has been used as the universal symbol of beer and brewing. Many brewers in the late 19th century used his image to promote their products, and life-size statues of the king adorned breweries everywhere.

In 1891, George Ehret, a New York City brewer, published a book titled Twenty-five Years of Brewing. In this book, he told of the origins of King Gambrinus. "While some attribute the invention of hopped malt-beer to Jan Primus (John I), a scion of the stock of Burgundy princes, who lived about the year 1251, other ascribe it to Jean Sans Peur (1371-1419), otherwise known as Ganbrivius. A corruption of either name may plausibly be shown to have resulted in the present name of the King of Beer -- Gambrinus, whom we are accustomed to see represented in the habit of a knight of the middle-ages, with the occasional addition of a crown. Popular imagination, it seems, attached such great importance to beer, that in according the honor of its invention, it could not be satisfied with anything less than a king."