New Orleans--Third Time's the Charm

I could live here, I’m thinking to myself. I could at least stay longer.

It’s a morning in November 2008. I’m in New Orleans, walking down Royal Street in the French Quarter, and many of the shops and eateries on the street are still closed or just opening up. The streets themselves and the sidewalks are wet from an early morning shower. But the sun is out now, and the day’s heat has been turned on and with it a mild dose of humidity. I’ve been here less than 48 hours. It’s my third time in New Orleans, which explains the charm the city has worked on me. Third time’s the charm.

I’m at the start of a month-long trip I’m taking through the southern and southwestern states, traveling by Greyhound bus. A few years before I’d heard of these 30-day Greyhound passes that would allow a person to travel all over the country and go to as many places as she wants, as long as she did it all within a month. It became a kind of funny dream of mine, funny because everyone I told thought I was crazy for wanting to do such a thing. They thought it was a horrible idea. I thought it was a pretty good one. Worth giving a go anyway. And that’s how I wound up here, enjoying a calm morning walk down streets better known for their wild nights, in a city that was nearly wiped off the map by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and that many people (wrongly) believe is still under water, even as it’s kissing today’s morning shower’s puddles dry and goodbye.

I’m walking and thinking ahead to this afternoon, when I’m supposed to be heading farther west in Louisiana to Lafayette, the heart of Cajun country. I’m excited for Lafayette, but I’m wishing I could stay another night in New Orleans. Or a thousand nights. It’s a naïve thought about a place I’ve spent such a short time in, I know. But it’s just that I’ve never had such an easy time making friends before anywhere else I’ve been.

I was never in a place where people are so willing to tell total strangers their life stories, their life dreams even, at the drop of a hat as they do in New Orleans. I arrived here on a Monday evening. Now it’s Wednesday morning. In this brief interval of time, I’ve talked to a successful wine merchant who came to New Orleans from Italy 50 years ago and who speaks fondly of America but harshly about taxes, about the government, and about Dick Cheney and the greed of big businesses, all in an accent thicker than a good gumbo; a 30-something heavily pierced, hard-core goth, voodoo shop employee, and aspiring film producer who calls himself Reverend Boone and who’s still licking his emotional wounds from a misfit childhood; a young, big-bellied Bourbon Street bouncer from Nowheresville, Louisiana who dreams of having his own nightclub someday (and who gets me into the one he works at by picking up me off the street, flinging me over his shoulder, and carrying me into his boss’s club and setting me down at the bar--that’ll do the trick for bringing in customers!); a young doctor's wife originally from a one-stoplight town in Virginia out and about on ghost tours and shopping sprees in the French Market and making the most of her time in the big city while her husband sits through speeches at an American Heart Association convention; a group of working-class families from the rural southeast employed by a company contracted by FEMA to haul away the Katrina trailers; an Israeli-Jordanian cabbie consumed by girlfriend problems (it probably doesn’t help his case that he looks a little too much like the vampire in the old, silent-version of Nosferatu); and a Boston-based cardiologist originally from India, who came to the U.S. with a somewhat cynical view of American democracy and equality but who has just rediscovered his faith in his adopted country since the election of Barack Obama only a week ago.

I met all these people, and others, all in one day, all within the French Quarter. I encountered them in shops, in restaurants and bars, on tours, at corners while waiting for the light to change. I didn’t have to drag these stories out of them, didn’t have to get them drunk or promise my story in exchange for theirs--they just poured them out to me, like a full day’s worth of rainwater gushing out of a gutter, as if I had been a long-lost friend or a trusted priest or a close cousin. Back in Chicago you can barely get a “hello” out of passers-by on any day of the week. What’s with this town? Is it the voodoo?

I can’t answer about the voodoo. Instead I head to more familiar spiritual ground, to the famous and glorious St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. With its immaculate bright white exterior and thick spires, St. Louis Cathedral looks almost like a fairy-tale castle than a house of worship, especially when viewed from the other end of the square. When I step inside, a children’s mass is just beginning. The front pews are filled with very young black schoolchildren in spanking white shirts flanked by older white nuns in full black habits. I sit a few rows back and stay for the mass, though it wasn’t my intention when I first stepped inside.

It’s been a habit for years of mine while traveling to seek out a Catholic cathedral or old church to visit soon after arriving in a foreign city or country. Once I find one, I may stop in just for a few minutes’ look at the statues and architecture inside, or I may stay a little longer and light a candle and say a prayer. This is my grounding mechanism, my way of balancing the unfamiliar and the familiar while away from home. In some places I’ve been to, it’s easy--like Ireland, Mexico, France, Bolivia, places where only a few minutes’ walk will lead you to an old church or even a roadside shine or grotto. In the U.S., especially the Deep South--not so much.

New Orleans is different though. In contrast to other Southern cities and states, New Orleans and south Louisiana are heavily Catholic in both population and local culture and traditions. And the archdiocese of New Orleans is the 2^nd oldest diocese in the U.S. (after Baltimore, Maryland). Catholicism was introduced to the area by the French, who founded New Orleans in 1718, and was reinforced by ensuing waves of settlers and immigrants from Spain, Ireland, Italy, Germany, and Latin America. Add to this voodoo--a melange of the spiritual beliefs and practices brought over from west Africa and the Caribbean, that in itself over time absorbed and transformed numerous elements of Catholicism--and you have the makings of what is arguably the most distinctive and fascinating local culture in the U.S. Visitors to New Orleans all know the same truth: there is no other place in America remotely like New Orleans. Not even close. Consider this. Can you think of anything in this country that so proudly and defiantly revolts against WASP-American conventions than this city’s celebration of Mardi Gras?

A cousin of mine lived in New Orleans for many years, though she was born and raised on a farm near Dubuque, Iowa. Dubuque itself is a predominantly Catholic town, and my cousin has a sister who became a nun and a brother who became a priest. But even with this background she was regularly surprised at how much Catholicism pervades life in New Orleans. She once noted that the local newspapers would every year publish a list of what the local celebrities and society folk were planning on giving up for Lent. My cousin passed away quite some time ago. She loved telling stories about her adopted city.

Once some of my family and I went down to New Orleans to visit her on our way to Florida. It was in January. It was surprisingly cold, and the French Quarter was deserted and looked uncharacteristically gray. That was my 2^nd time to the city. The first was when I was teenager, with my parents, over the 4^th of July--I would advise against that on all counts.

I remember heat and humidity that first visit more than anything. I remember the streets being mobbed with tourists for the 4^th, and many stores advertising laughing gas (!) in their windows. I remember visiting Nottoway plantation some distance from New Orleans, and I remember there a ballroom with mirrors propped up on the floor so the belles in days gone by could check the neatness of their hems and petticoats. I remember a woman in the Quarter dressed in a Southern belle costume with white gloves, standing on the sidewalk and waving. I remember a young boy in a tux with tails and red bowtie tap dancing on the street for change, while his older sister stood by unsmiling with her arms crossed. I remember a street in the Quarter blocked off while a scene from the movie JFK was being filmed. I saw Oliver Stone in the crowd, wearing a fluorescent green shirt, and I passed Laurie Metcalf’s trailer on a side street. I remember being embarrassed passing some of the clubs on Bourbon Street, with pictures on their doors of undressed female and male dancers, and wondering if my parents saw that I saw. I remember hearing strange words for the first time: gumbo, beignet, chicory, muffaletta, jambalaya, praline. I remember at night feeling nervous about the voodoo. I remember music everywhere. I remember sweating. A lot.

I didn’t know what to make of it all. Still don’t really. But the city continues to fascinate the hell out of me. This November morning, before leaving for Lafayette, there’s still time for me to catch a bite at Croissant d’Or on Ursulines Street. If I can’t stay another night (I’ve already made plans in Lafayette), then one more last meal in this food-glorified town is all I ask. In less than 48 hours I’ve had rabbit jambalaya at Coop’s Place on Decatur (highly recommended), gumbo at Napoleon House, the obligatory beignets at the Café du Monde, pralines wherever I could get ‘em, half the pastry case at Croissant d’Or, and red beans ‘n’ rice at…I don’t remember where to be honest--it was a few hours after being kidnapped by that bouncer on Bourbon Street. And I barely even skimmed the surface of this city’s culinary delights. This is a town where life just seems to be that less important stuff that happens between meals.

Oh, New Orleans with your voodoo food and your voodoo friendliness, how can I leave you? How can I not vow to return? You will end up being my favorite place I visit on my cross-country Greyhound adventure (along with an equally odd tiny town called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico). Keep rebuilding, New Orleans, and keep being New Orleans. ‘Cuz I’m coming back for more.