Bob Dylan was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras the month before Bobby Fischer came to town in 1964. Too bad Fischer didn’t make it for Mardi Gras.
Bobby Fischer
“Funny, funny Jude. You play with little pieces all day long, and you know what? You’ll live to be an old, old man someday. And here I am.”
–Janis Joplin
Brady, Frank. End Game: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall–from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness. 2011. New York: Crown. (pp. 44-47)
As Bobby was becoming more involved in the world of chess, he attracted the attention of a wealthy and unusual man named E. Forry Laucks. A chess player himself, Laucks liked to surround himself with other players, many of them offbeat and highly talented. He was always generous to Regina [Fischer’s mother] with small amounts of money–$25 to $100–for tournament entry fees and other expenses. During the spring of 1956, Laucks gathered a group of chess players for a thirty-five-hundred mile motor trip through the southern United States and ultimately to Cuba, stopping off at towns and cities for a series of matches with local clubs.