Mamou, La. - Fred's Lounge is a beer-before-breakfast honky-tonk where rice farmers and hunting widows wriggle like minnows to the two-step twanging of Cajun music. It's a "coonass" cultural center dedicated to the idea that a good time should be had by all at all times. It's the Cajun answer to the Grand Ole Opry. Or, it's just a bar.

This isn't any ordinary juke joint. It's only open on Saturdays, and then only in the morning. The drinking starts about 7 a.m., the doors open by 8 a.m. and the house band, Don Thibodeaux and Cajun Flame, broadcasts live across Cajun country on KVPI-AM radio an hour later. By 1 p.m., owner Tante Sue Tate Vasseur, the widow of the late Alfred "Fred" Tate, closes up and dispatches survivors home to early bed or off to the five other bars on Mamou's one-block Main Street until the next Saturday. "This is the last bastion of Cajunism in Louisiana," Leroy Romero shouted over the music on a recent November morning. Romero ("That's a Spanish name, but it's got a little Dijon in it") regards Fred's as less a watering hole than a spiritual mecca. "I come here to sing and keep my Cajun soul alive," he says.

Guitarist Ernest Thibodeaux helps Fred's Lounge celebrate it's 50th anniversary. Photos P.C. Piazza

Every Saturday draws a full house at Fred's, but on this morning the crowd spills into the streets of downtown Mamou where a stage has been erected for the arrival of Louisiana's governor, Mike Foster. This is the 50th anniversary of Fred's, and if governors in other states christen highways or kiss babies, no one blinks in Louisiana if they pay homage to a bar.

A camouflaged hunting cap pulled over his bald head, Foster mounted the stage with a Catholic priest in tow. Sockless in sandals, Father Timothy Richard blessed the assemblage in the name of the Holy Trinity, unperturbed by Don Thibodeaux and Cajun Flame, who played on inside without missing a beat.

Foster then declared Nov. 16 as "Fred's Day" across the Pelican state, dedicated a historic marker recognizing Fred's as "the birthplace of the French Renaissance" and clambered onto the saddle atop a giant wooden crawfish to pose for pictures. No fancy speeches for Foster, who said, "People don't like a whole bunch of bull."

"Only in Mamou!" Tante Sue ("Aunt Sue" in French) shouted mantra- like throughout the morning, and it is hard to envision this scene anywhere else. This little town of 4,000 people advertises itself as the "Cajun Music Capita l of the World," but really it is a quiet hamlet in the Cajun prairie grass country northwest of Lafayette. Rice farmer Blake Ardoin speaks for many in the area when he proudly proclaims, "Oh yes, I'm a coonass," which for a Cajun is like saying, "Kiss me, I'm Irish." For Cajuns, Fred's is a weekly reminder that Les Bons Temps Rouler is not just a slogan cooked up in an advertising boardroom to entice tourists but a way of life here.

Fred Tate bought the bar in 1946, infused it with bonhomie and then in 1962 started the radio show that helped revivify Cajun music in Louisiana (hence the "French Renaissance"). Suddenly, Saturday mornings at Fred's became the Cajun equivalent of "American Bandstand," despite the sign on the wall reading, "This is not a dance hall. If you get hurt dancing, we are not responsible." When Fred died in 1992, Sue, a legal secretary, closed the place except on Saturday mornings. The Tate family is selling the bar in December, but only after the new owners promised to change nothing, including Tante Sue, whose continued management is part of the deal.

The Cajun tourist boom has made Fred's so popular that radio host Martell Ardoin awards packets of local barbeque sauce to the traveler who has come the farthest. On the day of the 50th anniversary, a man from Australia outdistanced a Cuban and a New Zealander. Tourists can stay across the street at the Hotel Cazan, which boasts its own pleasant barroom and rooms reminiscent of a Siberian gulag.

"Can you think of another place in the United States or the world where it's 9 in the morning and you can have this much fun," yelled James Fontenet, 55, enjoying a cold, 10-ounce beer. "You think its midnight, but you walk outside and the sun is blaring!" "I'd rather come here once than go six times to the Underground," added Fontenot's drinking buddy, Roy Riche, recently returned from Atlanta.

Perhaps Sharon Tate Berzas, 44, one of Fred and Sue's three children, best captured the allure of Fred's. "If you like to party," she said, happily gulping a beer, "it doesn't matter what time of the day, honey - you like to party!"