The Vieux Carré

The threat of rain and high winds in the forecast pushed us to go downtown and take a French Quarter walk while the skies were merely gray and not yet dripping. Consequently parking was easy to find even at ten in the morning and no restaurants or coffee shops were open for trade as there were few tourists and apparently no locals in the streets. 

I find myself torn between my desire for order and cleanliness butting up against the picturesque. In a similar discussion about Key West a friend pointed out that the slightly down-at-heel nature of the town was west gave it it’s charm. 

The Old Square was designed around 1718 by Jean Baptiste de Bienville and the term, “Vieux Carré” in French (old square) has become in modern English “The French Quarter.” But like so much in New Orleans the French influence  is not really what you think it is. 

New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean Baptiste de Bienville after Louisiana, named for the French King Louis, was declared French territory by Robert de La Salle in 1682. They gained population when the British expelled French speakers from Acadia in 1755. These Acadians settled in Louisiana creating the term Cajun which we use to this day. The French and the Acadians were then occupied by Spain in 1769 when they invaded from their territory in the flowery region called La Florida in Spanish. 

New Orleans is really a Spanish city which was traded back to Napoleon just in time for him to sell it to the Americans who were looking to expand west. Napoleons rationale was that the Americans were going to occupy it anyway and by selling the Louisiana Purchase he made money to renew his European wars and also he put a block on ghe British from moving  south. 

In the middle of that middle of politicking New Orleans residents barely knew what was going on.  Immunizations were dreadful and treaties signed in Europe were notified to the population months later. This it was that in 1801 New Orleans started as Spanish after thirty years occupation, became French again and a month later learned it had been traded to the Americans. Little wonder median strips in New Orleans are called neutral ground to separate cultures and histories and languages. 

The conceit today is that Louisiana is an outpost of French-ness.  You decide. We saw a couple of French RVs in town and I wanted to ask them what they thought of this notion but they did not seem open to contact with strangers. I doubt they found any locals with a lick of French, more’s the pity. 

I walk the French Quarter and look for life but I found very little.  The odds were against me, it being after Thanksgiving, cold and rainy, mid week and mid morning. Stores were closed and sidewalks empty. 

I dare say on a bright sunny day with a fresh breeze the streets might look more cheerful but New Orleans is a city for sake if you are looking for a getaway condo  or a rental investment.  I checked Zillow and apartments up to a thousand square feet with one or two bedrooms ranged between $200,000 and $350,000 and there were quite a few for sale. Check for yourself, it only takes a couple of minutes if you care to. 

From a Key West perspective that seems reasonable though of course the devil is frequently in the details. On the other hand those prices may also reflect the relative wealth of the two cities.  I was quite surprised to see dwellings half the cost of potentially similar units in the Southernmost City. 

A city filled with gorgeous buildings  smeared with graffiti also speaks to the frustration of a place that attracts the hopeless. As an outsider I’m not sure if New Orleans is vibrant or gritty or both or neither. However for me the tourist, it’s just too gritty. 

I cannot imagine riding a bicycle here with potholes deep enough to swallow a wheel.  I completely lack the street smarts to survive in a city filled with serious crime.  

I wandered alone with Rusty and enjoyed the architecture. Layne drifted through the dust catcher stores paralleling each other in a town filled with no people.  

A monument to what? Georgian architecture below and covered with graffiti to the eternal shame of the perpetrators.  You can’t have nice things here at least in public. 

On the other hand keeping your head in air can be bad for your health too. The sidewalks are as bad as the streets, all pitfalls. 

By the time the predicted storm reached New Orleans we were on I-10 driving east.  The rain came down in buckets and when we parked for the night in a rest area just inside Florida the wind was rocking our home on its wheels. It as a good time to be stopped. 

I wonder how New Orleans will weather the next few years. I look forward to seeing what changes tone will bring. 

Crazy Town

New Orleans reminds me of women I have known but not married. They are the bat shit crazy women, possibly made nuts by you and your own antics, yet they teach you about yourself and most important highlight your limitations. They come into your life in a blaze of excitement, they make you crazy and then they leave trailing relief, fond memories and a wistful feeling of “if only…” in your head. 

I wish I had some pictures of the worst or even of the least offensive potholes in this city of madness. The thing is when you drive here this is not a city suited to casual steering or lack of attention to where you are going. This is a town designed to sap your morale and destroy your  attention mile after mile after mile. GANNET2 has aftermarket suspension and ball joints for extra strength which is good but we roll and bounce and lurch mercilessly as we cross the city. 

And then you get a personal crawfish pie for dinner from Orleans Brothers in the East City and all is forgiven. And that need not be all…unless you are married to Layne the not crazy one who knows what’s bad for me, and it turns out, pralines are decidedly not good. But they are on the menu sultry temptresses:

Everybody sells food in New Orleans and all of it is good. It may well cut your life or your mobility short with grease, and an abundance  of this stuff will wreck you; but that is another hallmark of this crazy lady that is New Orleans. That and the music, the traditional jazz, the sounds of tourist town to seduce visitors into thinking New Orleans is approachable and easy going. It’s not; at least not to me. I am an alien here and totally at sea, out of my element and as fearful as most Americans are in Mexico. Mexico is easy compared to this city known to the over familiar as the Big Easy. 

(Ruth and Naomi by Leonard Baskin in the Sculpture Garden at City Park). 

Like all the exciting people in your life the Crescent City has a reputation and is unpredictable. Unless you know what you are doing the city will punish you severely. People used to wonder that I walked the streets of Key West at night. I don’t do that here. I stick to tourist areas, don’t get drunk in public, or even in private really, and we tuck ourselves up in a secure parking area by dark. Last night was Walmart. Weird but true and Rusty loves walking the parking lot in the morning. Another free spot is casino parking with the benefit of security guards. 

We asked permission which was cheerfully given and we slept the sleep of the just. We spent Monday at the city park admiring sculptures. 

Karma by Do-Ho Suh and some loud passerby explaining the piece to his friends. I’m not sure he got it right but I know nothing anyway. At the Besthoff Sculpture Garden. 

https://noma.org/besthoff-sculpture-garden/

So what is the appeal? New Orleans has a coastline on a featureless circular lake, the drives around southern Louisiana are flat and swampy and mostly elevated highways and levees. The climate is sultry in summer and cold in winter, always damp and swampy. Like any tourist destination New Orleans, like Key West, likes to try to retain the aura of having a secret locals code to discover the Real Thing. There is no real thing in Key West but whether there is in New Orleans I couldn’t say. 

New Orleans does retain its aura of corruption and barely functional bureaucracy.  But against all these negatives this is a city with charisma  and culture. It’s a black city by population, two to one with whites in the minority and Latinos barely registering at six percent of the population. 

New Orleans is vibrant and interesting and difficult and ignored largely in national politics. It’s a city that needs a new public works program, that needs to be cared for. 

And then I ask myself why? Key West has shucked off the bohemian dis function that was thrust upon it and now the city is the home of not very interesting clean tidy wealthy people in a majority tolerating those that serve a purpose or have entrenched themselves too deep to shift. I suspect the same may be happening to New Orleans judging by the complaints of gentrification from the displaced. 

We had gumbo with a friend who moved to north Florida to be close to her daughter and also to be able to afford home ownership. She misses her community on Spain Street and to hear her talk it was heaven on earth, friendly neighbors and a true sense of community. I ate her gumbo with relish. 

I doubt I’m the first to say it but that’s New Orleans in a bowl, brown  like English boarding school food, full of diverse bits and pieces and totally unappetizing. And then you taste it and rational explanations go out the window. Pam loaded us with gumbo to go and already I’m looking forward to leftovers tonight. It’s that good. 

Just like New Orleans, so elusive yet so good you might as well try to catch it in a butterfly net. 

Stormy Weather

Days of damp overcast blew apart last night. Wind and rain lashed the house, the front door rattled as though someone was trying to break in, Rusty got up off our bed and came to the living room for reassurance as we watched TV. Sunday morning broke crisp and clear, with blue skies and the promise of sunshine. 

Thanksgiving is over and tomorrow was to have been the start of our drive west. The journey of no return, at least not for a while. Instead we are taking six more weeks to say goodbyes and circle the southeast before breaking loose from the gravitational pull of friends and family. 

Layne and I spent Saturday reorganizing our storage and pondering what supplies to take with us, and I am over it. We don’t know how long we will be gone and when asked I shrug. 18 months if we hate it or maybe three years if we enjoy it and we none of us break. 

It feels less like planning a journey and more like planning a voyage of exploration. Webb gave me an out of print copy of a novel about Magellan’s journey around the world, which Magellan himself did not survive but a few of his crew did, and they were the first Europeans to circumnavigate. We are hardly pioneers in anything we are planning to do but I felt some kinship. Late blooming circumnavigators perhaps, traveling with the kitchen sink. 

How many pairs of pants do you need for three years hard physical living? Should I pack a spare air filter as the van shares oil filters with Jeep engines serviced everywhere in the world but the air filter is particular? The longer we stay the longer grows the list of things to think about, a list that comes to life in the early hours of the morning when nightmares of disaster invade your serenity. 

We met friends for a fish boil lunch. We ate indoors, Laynes arthritis is in remission, she is vaccinated at last and we are stepping out a bit even as we make our goodbyes. 

Saying goodbye necessarily requires moochdocking a weirdly intimate sense of being neither here nor there. It feels ungrateful to sit on the porch and stare at your home, a tiny tin box half the size of your temporary bedroom, and long for the open road. Sometimes I hide aboard GANNET2 and make tea and sit at my desk, the driver’s seat swiveled to face backwards and think of roads covered so far. Yesterday I filled the water tank marveling at the ease of Therèse’s hose system compared to buying water in Mexico or pumping water in Michigan rest areas. 

Thanksgiving was a moment of oblivion. Pam came round with turkey in that holiday spirit too familiar and too evocative. In an inattentive moment I pondered where we might be next Thanksgiving. “Right here,” Therèse blurted. If we are, I said the journey will not have been to our taste. I think we may be in Peru if we aren’t home in Florida with our tail between our legs.  The idea is breathtaking, to be in the land of Paddington bear, and Incas and where Guinea pigs serve as turkeys on holidays. Layne and I looked at each other. 

Phil is trying to visit every country in the world before time runs out. He is a professional translator working in half a dozen languages with stories of places you’ve never heard of. You get that twinge, take a plane, immerse yourself, come home, stay familiar. But the call of the van is just simply too strong.  We want to take our home, our private space, a taste of where we live.

It makes no rational sense but emotionally the journey organized like a flight to the moon, in a life support system, or crossing oceans like Magellan or Webb Chiles, fulfills more than a need to see. In some way it challenges the ability to survive, to stay on the road, to take something of home with you, to say this is where I live wherever I am. My home. 

So you double check your supplies. You make memories. 

You envy your friend’s ability to deal with a sudden slight breakdown by calling triple A, having your trusted mechanic fit you into a holiday schedule and get you back on the road quickly and for little money and with a trusted repair. Hmm can we hope to be so lucky when it’s our turn somewhere mysterious and lost and unknown? 

I see intriguing things on the road and there is so much of it and so easy to see right here. 

Dog friendly beaches aren’t only in Mexico. 

The call of the wild. The open road. 

It’s time to get on with it. But first another round of protracted good byes. They don’t get easier. The big sacrifice of the explorer. Pay the price. 

Rusty in Biloxi. He and I spent a free night undisturbed on the waterfront. You don’t need to go far to live differently. 

For some reason I can’t explain I do need to go.

My wife is pulling so keen is she. My dog is willing because I am who he follows. The road brings us together. GANNET2 is as prepared as we could make her. 

Stormy weather..? I think we’re ready.