World War Two

June 6th, 2000 was the day the D-Day Museum opened in New Orleans. They chose the Crescent City as the location for the museum to commemorate the creation of the Higgins boat in the city. The LCVP -Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel was a startling new vessel created to land invaders directly onto a beach.

Andrew Higgins, a New Orleans boat builder had the idea to build wooden flat bottomed boats to carry soldiers or tanks into battle anywhere there was a beach. The ability to land soldiers outside organized harbors changed the way World War Two was fought, most notably the invasion of France in 1944. Not to mention the island hopping struggled in the Pacific.

The museum, since expanded and renamed the all encompassing World War Two Museum, is a series of vast palaces all connected and impossibly huge to see in one or two visits. We ended up walking the European and Pacific battles and only then realized the home front exhibits might have been more interesting. Next time…or the time after that. 

The collections are astonishingly complex and detailed. 

They throw you into the middle of the lives lived in time of war. They don’t hold back and you see dioramas with blood death and despair as well as humor and pride and relief (I lived! some participants admit with surprise). It is overwhelming. 

They have perfectly preserved sewing kits, guns, razors, uniforms, films, memoirs and miles of stories intimately told. 

The marine Ira Hayes photographed helping raise the second flag on Iwo Jima couldn’t stand the publicity and took to drink. He lived but never the same. 

In its own way you come out of here changed. Second hand experience it may be, it has to be, but the intimacy of the exhibits… they put you there. 

New Orleans

Many years ago, before Hurricane Katrina raked the Keys and wrecked New Orleans, Layne and I wondered if we might enjoy earning a pension in the Crescent City. One of my stipulations was then that anywhere we lived must have secure off street parking as vandalism and stupid driving leave their marks on cars parked in the streets. Our antenna was torn off a car we parked in New Orleans years ago and our Ford Fusion was an irritating reminder of the frustration of daily life in the city. When we decided to rent an apartment for three days GANNET2 got somewhere safe to park.

I am not a timorous traveler by nature but New Orleans does not inspire confidence, a city too edgy to be serene, too trashed to feel like anyone cares about this historic city yet there are many people who, even if they don’t live here feel passionately attached much as repeat visitors feel about Key West. In that sense there is a badge of honor to be earned if you can thrive in this mass of contradictions. 

For me New Orleans is as it is for most people: music and food. Acme Oyster House on Iberville greeted us with roasted oysters off the grill, crab bisque and for me a plate of tiny meat empanadas. 

We found a department store converted to a garage (!) three blocks away and the ceiling was twelve feet high so Rusty had his cool spot to wait for us in the baking afternoon humidity. I walked him first and left him to chill with the rooftop air conditioning set and ready should he heat the van up. 

It’s all tourism, color and noise in this part of the city. I met a group of young people in an informal parade who welcomed Rusty and told me they were watching to raise awareness of veteran suicides, a somber note on a sidewalk crowded with sybarites seeking pleasure. Contradictions abound. 

Small scooters require no license plates to identify them in Louisiana but in New Orleans two locks seem like a minimum reminding me why I like off street parking. 

Heat and hard work on a Saturday afternoon. 

Sidewalk life requires the ability to step over and around drunks sleeping and the absence of public toilets on a ninety degree day give the air the unmistakable miasma of an unflushed open air loo. But the food was delicious. 

I have no idea how I feel about it all. The law and order jerk in me wonders why you have to have wreckage to raise up art in bohemia but it seems cleanliness equates to boredom and sterility produces no expression worthy of the name so I have to learn to live with the contradictions within me, at least for three days. 

We reside on Poland Avenue for now, $200 a night with Kathy from Arizona and formerly Big Pine Key who will be on a jet plane Tuesdsy when we take off for Texas. 

It’s called “the Bywater” a neighborhood journalists  would describe as gritty, not tourist centric like the neighboring Marigny district but a slowly decaying, or reviving depending on your point of view, collection of streets abd graffiti. 

Rusty wanted a walk in the cool of the pre-dawn darkness so we wandered crossing paths with a couple of joggers and a cyclist early on a Sunday. 

We have tourist duties later filed by beignets in the park and some World War Two activity this afternoon. 

Not van life temporarily but not exactly moochdocking either as we head toward the open road again, slowly but surely. 

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Webb Chiles, the first American to sail alone around Cape Horn, the man who sailed most of the way around the world in an open boat has been immortalized in a film released last week. It’s worth finding a quiet moment to yourself to contemplate this all too brief mediation. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYTwmVzCJh4

Sunset Cruise

I met a family from Kentucky on the Fort Pickens ferry doing double duty as Pensacola’s sunset cruise boat ($25 a person, full bar and snacks on board for the 90 minute trip).

They were oohing and aahing as a pod of dolphin cruised by and excused themselves for their excess enthusiasm. I smiled and told them no problem in Spanish which opened the floodgates. 

They were from the port city of La Union in El Salvador, a town I have sailed to so we got to chatting. They were taken aback at the thought of driving to El Salvador when I explained our forthcoming trip. They of course identified my Italian accent so everything was normal. 

Thick black clouds were forming over the city but I didn’t see any lightning which made me happy as Rusty was aboard GANNET2 snoozing in the air conditioning. Even had he been permitted I’d have left him ashore as he isn’t much of a sailor. I’m surprised Webb likes him anyway. 

The ninety minute cruise takes you to Fort Pickens at the mouth of the bay and gets you back at the dock by 7:30 pm in the dark.

Hanging out chatting on the foredeck. 

The Salvadoran kid slept through it all and the wind picked up when we turned back toward downtown Pensacola. The bay waters stayed smooth all the way. It would have made for lovely sailing. 

Closing up the books on another successful cruise.