Connell: New Orleans never disappoints
Connell: New Orleans never disappoints
July 12, 2009
theTimesHerald.com
NEW ORLEANS -- Perhaps the best thing I can say about New Orleans is that it's pretty much the way I pictured it.
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That's not meant as a backhanded compliment, either. I had certain expectations of the city, gleaned in equal measure from the media -- music, cuisine, crime, Katrina -- and from authors such as O. Henry, Anne Rice, John Grisham and the brilliant if ill-starred John Kennedy Toole.
New Orleans did not disappoint. Tawdry. Sultry. Raucous. Laid-back. Antebellum. Pick your adjective, because they all work.
WHAT I CANNOT explain is precisely how I happened to find myself in the Big Easy on the Fourth of July.
The trip began with the vaguest of purpose. My wife and I picked up our middle son, Patrick, and pointed the car south. We intended to spend the holiday with our youngest boy, Matthew, who is with the 101st Airborne and had a four-day pass.
My thought was that we might spend the weekend in the mountains or at the shore. The theme parks at Orlando had a certain wistful appeal, too. Every Disney junkie needs an occasional "It's a Small World" fix.
Speaking of which, the fix was in. Before I could cast my ballot, I discovered New Orleans already had three votes.
"None of us has ever been there," the lieutenant pointed out.
WE BEGAN calling hotels only to discover that nearly everything in the city was booked.
Eventually, we reserved a two-room suite at St. Vincent's Guest House on Magazine Street in the Garden District.
It's a quaint neighborhood, full of curious and charming old houses in varying states of disrepair. Narrow streets follow a grid drawn by a wobbly hand.
The Garden District's signature feature is its trees -- live oaks with sweeping, gravity-defying branches and sidewalks shaded by showy crape myrtles (or crepe if you prefer the French spelling).
The neighborhood may be quaint, but St. Vincent's is quainter still. Eccentric even.
In the 19th century, yellow fever, smallpox, typhus and cholera epidemics swept through New Orleans with disturbing frequency. Among other things, this created a surplus of orphans.
St. Vincent's opened in 1861 as an orphanage for babies. Its patron was the remarkable Margaret Haughery, an illiterate Irish immigrant who lost her husband and firstborn child to yellow fever.
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She went into business with a milk cart and ultimately owned a dairy and bakery. She became quite rich, but even so, her wealth never exceeded her generosity.
After an epidemic in 1853, Haughery was asked to help establish an orphanage solely for infants.
"Build (it)," she replied, "and God will pay for it."
WE HOPPED onto the St. Charles streetcar and made our way to the French Quarter, where we discovered why the hotels were full.
It seems our visit coincided with the 15th annual Essence Festival, a celebration of African-American music and culture. It's also a showcase for good-looking blacks, if that's not a redundancy.
Nearly 300,000 visitors, nearly all of them dressed gorgeously, jammed the sidewalks and hoped for a glimpse of celebrities such as Beyonce, Bill Cosby, Ne-Yo and Maxwell.
Personally, I try not to stand out in a crowd, but yup, I was the guy with the Bermuda shorts and knobby knees.
I also may have been the lone teetotaler on Bourbon Street, that shrine to dipsomania. My wife and boys sampled hand grenades and hurricanes. They laughed a lot and invited me to take pictures.
WE DID all of the touristy things -- ambled through Audubon Park, savored the murals of St. Louis Cathedral and sampled crawfish and gator at Mulate's.
One of the kids wanted to know the difference between Creole and Cajun. I made up an answer and made it sound erudite just to get even for all of that laughing.
Gotcha.
On Saturday evening, we boarded the Natchez Queen, a paddlewheel steamer, and ascended to the hurricane deck for a nobody-can-top-this view of the Fourth of July fireworks.
New Orleans shoots off its fireworks from "dueling barges" anchored in the Mississippi River. The twin displays are timed to mirror each other.
It's a gimmick, but a neat one, something Port Huron and Sarnia might wish to imitate. They could advertise it as an international incident or possibly a border war.
(3 of 3)
By the way, my family insisted I mention that while New Orleans puts on a dandy show, Port Huron's fireworks at Vantage Point are even better.
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Consider it mentioned.
WHAT WE mostly did in New Orleans was sweat. Once you stepped outside, there was no escaping the heat.
Even the fellows in the $500 shirts were adding layers of perspiration the way trees add rings. The midday highs ranged somewhere between 99 and a zillion.
It cooled down to 90 or so after dark. Even the locals agreed it was too damn hot.
New Orleans is similar to Las Vegas in the sense that if you really want to see the town, you're going to do a lot of walking. I know folks so lazy they drive to their mailboxes who happily turn into cross-country trekkers when they're exploring the Vegas Strip or French Quarter.
We trotted for miles and never considered joining a Katrina tour, where you board an air-conditioned bus for a trip through the Lower Ninth Ward and other flood-ravaged neighborhoods.
Apparently, it's become quite a draw. It occurred to me that a savvy entrepreneur might offer similar tours of Detroit, where burned-out and bulldozed neighborhoods are reverting to urban prairies.
NEW ORLEANS and Detroit share a similar population trend line.
Last year, New Orleans had an estimated population of 311,853, or not quite half of its count in the 1960 census. During the same period, Detroit has seen its population halved from about 1.8 million to maybe 900,000.
New Orleans has a better excuse, of course. Katrina's flood waters submerged nearly 80% of the city and led to an exodus of more than 200,000 residents.
I've made several trips to the South in the past couple of years, and I've found little appreciation and even less sympathy for how bad things have gotten in Michigan.
By contrast, lots of people are rooting for New Orleans to bounce back. Their misery is our misery, so to speak.
On Monday morning, we packed our bags and carried them to the hotel parking lot. Our car and three others had been ransacked. We spent the next hour scooping out shards of glass from a shattered window while passersby stopped to commiserate and share the most wonderful anecdotes of N'awlins crime.
Yup, their misery is our misery, but even that was fun.
By the way, my family insisted I mention that while New Orleans puts on a dandy show, Port Huron's fireworks at Vantage Point are even better.
Advertisement
Consider it mentioned.
WHAT WE mostly did in New Orleans was sweat. Once you stepped outside, there was no escaping the heat.
Even the fellows in the $500 shirts were adding layers of perspiration the way trees add rings. The midday highs ranged somewhere between 99 and a zillion.
It cooled down to 90 or so after dark. Even the locals agreed it was too damn hot.
New Orleans is similar to Las Vegas in the sense that if you really want to see the town, you're going to do a lot of walking. I know folks so lazy they drive to their mailboxes who happily turn into cross-country trekkers when they're exploring the Vegas Strip or French Quarter.
We trotted for miles and never considered joining a Katrina tour, where you board an air-conditioned bus for a trip through the Lower Ninth Ward and other flood-ravaged neighborhoods.
Apparently, it's become quite a draw. It occurred to me that a savvy entrepreneur might offer similar tours of Detroit, where burned-out and bulldozed neighborhoods are reverting to urban prairies.
NEW ORLEANS and Detroit share a similar population trend line.
Last year, New Orleans had an estimated population of 311,853, or not quite half of its count in the 1960 census. During the same period, Detroit has seen its population halved from about 1.8 million to maybe 900,000.
New Orleans has a better excuse, of course. Katrina's flood waters submerged nearly 80% of the city and led to an exodus of more than 200,000 residents.
I've made several trips to the South in the past couple of years, and I've found little appreciation and even less sympathy for how bad things have gotten in Michigan.
By contrast, lots of people are rooting for New Orleans to bounce back. Their misery is our misery, so to speak.
On Monday morning, we packed our bags and carried them to the hotel parking lot. Our car and three others had been ransacked. We spent the next hour scooping out shards of glass from a shattered window while passersby stopped to commiserate and share the most wonderful anecdotes of N'awlins crime.
Yup, their misery is our misery, but even that was fun.
Votes:35
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