April 18
You know the stakes are high when people say that they are looking forward to
your journal before you even leave for the trip.
The universal response when you tell someone you are going to New Orleans is
"mmmm." Veterans will feel compelled to review your eating
itinerary, while those who have only been once or twice will just reminisce
about beignets or something.
Izzy is introduced to Spanish moss driving out of the airport and is smitten with
its languid glamour. I hear that there are biting bugs in it, however.
Izzy says that she just wants to have "a fun time and eat good
food." I am skeptical of the latter (and will be proven correct) but
she’s a pretty great travelling companion nonetheless. You know Izzy is blissfully happy when she
calls you MUMZOU. As in "Oh MUMZOU, I love this place."
Our first resting place, The Stockade Bed and Breakfast in Baton Rouge is
ultra-comfortable, and Izzy is entranced by the many frogs and birds and two
alligator sculptures about the grounds.
For our intro to local cuisine we chose Roberto's River Road Restaurant, hard
by the levee. Fried alligator starts
Peter down the road of tasty eats, while Bill has the eponymous catfish Billy, and
may be starting a bread pudding odyssey with a solid square in a weirdly shiny
but appropriately boozy pool of rum sauce.
April 19
As you doubtless know, Louisiana was French (and Spanish) before it was
American. That French influence lingers on even in modern housing
developments, notably the massive McMansions around Baton Rouge, many of which
are of a faux French chateau style. Fauxteau, we dub it. (Plural: fauxteaux.)
Of course, it is precisely this mix of cultures that makes Louisiana so
interesting. You'll pass a fauxteau, then some trailers, then a beautiful
old Creole house (more on that in a bit), all while hearing "I'm American,
I'm Cajun, and I'm Proud" on the local country station.
Our Fearless Leader (Bill, heretoafter known as the FL) is intrigued by the
Google Map directions which note that you get on the ferry from Sunshine to
Plaquemines at the intersection of Route 175 and the Mississippi River.
Now, the Mississippi is indeed big and muddy, and full of flotsam and jetsam,
and it does not have particularly picturesque banks, being just levees and
raggedy trees and growth. But you know, it is pretty exciting for us
Easterners to cross it, especially on such charming means as a ferry. My
startled reaction to the very loud horn on the M/V New Roads makes the guy in the next truck (it's all trucks here,
folks) burst out laughing.
The Mississippi remains an essential commercial artery for the United States,
but it was even more so 100 and more years ago.
To that end, a lock was built at the town of Plaquemines, at the end of
the 19th c. to connect the head of the Bayou Plaquemines with the mighty
Miss. It is no longer in use (turns out its presence weakened the banks
of everything causing more flooding, so it was dammed up) and now the bayou
just sort of stops. But it has a pretty lock building and we learn about
river commerce and while we speculate about monster catfish that might be
living in the still waters that remain in the lock, all we see are turtles.
Plaquemines is pretty bustling compared to Donaldsonville, but the latter is
the ancestral home of the Lemann family, into which Nancy Laskin's sister
Barbara married, and the patriarch of which we will visit with on Monday.
We admire the slightly decrepit but beautiful B. Lemann building (B being the
grandfather to Bill’s Uncle Thomas), and Bill suggests we stop at the River
Road African-American Museum because it is a good thing and it is small.
It is indeed interesting, full of artifacts and information about slavery and
the free black population, and then the black community of the area. King
Oliver was from there, as were many very early jazz musicians so they lay a
strong claim to being the birthplace of jazz. The museum was started as a
corrective to the local plantation tours that did not really mention the
African-American experience, and well serves that purpose. We would have liked to have learned more but
the docent wouldn't stop talking and did not seem to hear our questions and we
felt a bit like the only visitors this week so once she started repeating
herself we said a bright "well, thank you SO MUCH!" and made a run
for it.
In this part of Louisiana, the river is lined with giant petrochemical plants,
one after the other like great steel spider plants, marching down both banks
toward the sea. You drive under their intake and export pipes that go
through the levee and out to presumably waiting tankers and barges. You
can’t actually see the river from the road, but the massive levees, the top of
which people run and bike on, are a signal of its massive presence. There was an enormous pile of a violent
yellow substance at one of these plants, and many football fields of something
else deeply black at another. When you cross on the Sunshine Bridge you
see that ginormous tankers are docked close to take on whatever vile substances
are being produced. I know, I know, better living through chemistry, and
there is no doubt that they bring jobs and prosperity to the area (see the
fauxteaux). But it gives one pause about the environmental future of this
place.
No factories in Vacherie proper (that's VACH-er-ee not Vach-er-EE) though, just
some heavily visited plantations. Including the world-famous Oak Alley,
which has a parking lot full of tour busses and signs all over the road as you
pass the well-known vista: "NO STOPPING ON THE SHOULDER."
Which does not faze the FL who promptly pulls the car onto a PEDESTRIAN PATH over
our vociferous objections, and hops out to snap the iconic image. I guess
he really loves that new camera.
Fortunately we are not apprehended by the local sheriff for scoffing at the
law.
Equally fortunately, Spuddy's Cajun Cuisine was closed (Easter Saturday) so we
had to make our fallback plan for lunch which was B & C Seafood Store and
Restaurant nearby. We spied a tour bus - double decker! - pulling in as
we did and so all dashed in, desperate to get ahead of that crowd. The FL
and I plowed through three pounds of boiled crawfish, while Peter once again
indulged his inner Bear Grylls and had a gator burger. He has not decided
if it tastes like chicken, but does point out that Bear Grylls would actually
just eat it raw. Izzy does not eat
alligator (grilled cheese, not like Kopp’s) but is entranced by all the
decorative taxidermied alligators everywhere.
Now the whole point of coming down the River Road today was to visit a
plantation called Evergreen. It is not heavily advertised, and doesn't
appear in a lot of the guidebooks. But it is one of only two River Road
plantations that are on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
That is because the property, privately owned, contains a large collection of
materials relating to slavery, including the largest extant slave row in the
United States, 22 cabins, sitting along the back end of an alley made up of 82
200-year-old oak trees. Here at Evergreen, unlike most other plantation
tours (the nearby Laura being a notable exception), the story of slavery is
part of the story. This is not a place where family tales of Cuffy or
Napoleon or Clementine the cook have come down to us. The current owner's
aunt purchased the derelict property in 1940, and set about restoring it, this
family having no connection to the previous owners. While there are
descendants of the original family in the area, the story is really about the
property itself, how the original Creole house gained its Greek Revival shell,
and what it meant to be a Creole family, and sugar planters, as the Americans
came. And, what Africa brought us in terms of people and culture.
I could go on for hours about this place, it was fascinating and our guide was
tee-o-riffic. We were schooled on Creole culture, the difference between
the colonial period and the American, the economic shift from subsistence
farming to cash crops like sugar, the influence that the Haitian Revolution of
the very early 19th C. had on the area in terms of just about everything, the
extreme intermarriage of the Creole families, why the French Market isn’t
French, and I think I even heard Philip Curtin's plantation complex theory work
its way in there. We know now why the porch roof is blue, and that sugar cane ripens
in the fall, and that most of these plantation properties contained vast swamp
acreage at the back (why? Maybe for logging – cypress is another big crop
hereabouts). We see a list of assets from the 1830s, when the then-owner
needed to explain to his creditors why his cash flow was so bad, including many
many properties (in total the family owned five miles of riverfront, a vast
holding), the household furnishings, and the name, provenance, skill, and age
of the 50 or slaves who lived there.
It is a cliché to say that a slave row such as the one at Evergreen stands in
mute testimony to the great American paradox of slavery and racial
inequality. But it does and when you see it for real it is as compelling
and troubling as can be. No other historical site in America has a row
like this, of giant oaks alongside beat-up, two-room cypress cabins, with the
sun coming in through the cracks and the tumbledown fireplace for heat and
cooking and the birds chirping outside and all quiet except for the guide and
visitors. At the end of the slave row, there is a collection of modern
farm equipment because Evergreen remains, as it always has been, a working
property, still growing cane. Our guide tells us that people lived in the
cabins until the property was sold in the 1940s. Sharecropping replaced
slavery, but didn't offer much. I
won’t quote Janis Joplin here, but you get the idea.
We all ruminate on this as we make our way back to New Orleans to drop the
rental car at the airport but then have another of those crazy Louisiana
cultural quilt moments when our Pakistani taxi asks us if Boston is near
Hyannis? Apparently as a young boy in Pakistan, he shook JFK's hand as
part of a welcoming party, and has never forgotten it. "A great
man" he says of the slain President. Welcome to New Orleans!
I drag the protesting Isabel and not-so-protesting Peter and FL to dinner at
NOLA which is part of Emeril Lagasse's local empire. Everyone at this restaurant is SO
FRIENDLY. And it does not feel put on! We have a great meal of an
exquisite seafood gumbo, some shrimp and grits, and for Peter, lots and lots of
pork and an apparently bottomless Shirley Temple. We finally had to cut
him off, else he look like all those other fools on the night-time streets of
this party town. I should note two things, however: first, Peter
has set himself a crème brulee challenge, similar to his father's bread pudding
odyssey. He will eat it anywhere, anytime. And second, that he is a most delightful
dining companion these days.
April 20
So long nice suburban B&B, he-lloooo Roosevelt Hotel, a swellegant pile
that is now a Waldorf-Astoria (read Hilton) property. It has terrifically
ornate lobby (through which Isabel skips like Eloise), and we have an enormous
suite and there is a sleek rooftop pool with people offering you drinks and
towels. Stick with me if you want to stay high on the hog, and with Peter
if you want to eat it. I think he may have had pork at every meal
yesterday, and there is no end in sight.
You hear a lot of sirens in New Orleans, and you see a lot of drunk
people. I think I do not ever want to come here for Mardi Gras. It
is a bit disturbing to see fresh vomit on the sidewalk in the middle of a
Sunday afternoon (Easter Sunday!). And the pungent odor of pee pops up at
least once a block.
And what is up with all the foot reflexology joints all over the place?
Filled with bored looking Asian men looking at their cell phones while waiting
for clients. Are they legit? Are they fronts for nefarious
activity? If the former, I would take advantage, but I am too scared to
find out in case it is the latter.
So, it is Easter, and much to Isabel's relief, the Easter Bunny finds us here
at the Roosevelt. He’d be a fool not to stop here, given the digs. But it is noted that he is pretty sloppy in
his execution, using towels for baskets, and leaving empty jelly belly bags in
the FL's briefcase. Perhaps he too succumbed to the siren call of Bourbon
Street on his way here.
Easter is a big deal in Rome, but more fun here where it is another excuse for
a well-dressed party in the middle of the day. You see a lot of women
tottering around on high heels (I am not kidding, how do they do it? I am
defiantly dowdy in Birkenstocks, even if they are "platinum" colored)
and colorful dresses (short, that is the length this year), and hats, hats,
hats. Some fabulous, some funny, all bright and terribly
photogenic. If you hang out in Jackson Square around noontime, the Easter
service at St. Louis Cathedral lets out, and first comes the Bishop and his
priest-y honor guard, then his very well-dressed parishioners, whom he greets
before the top ladies parade into the park with giant baskets filled with
goodies and toys. These items they distribute, like Lady Bountifuls, to
charming, well-dressed, small children along their route. Despite her
shorts and t-shirt and baseball hat, a nonplussed Isabel is handed a bag of chocolates,
and does not know what to say. (Thank you and Happy Easter). It is
quite a scene and apparently an annual local news story, as various networks
are there filming.
Everywhere you go there are people with goofy hats with eggs and nests on them,
bunny ears, pastels, and beverages. I spy one beautifully dressed and
chapeau'd dame d'un certain age, on sky-high heels, clutching a glass of
champagne and muttering in to her cell phone "oh, she's three sheets to
the wind already." Such a funny mix of the sacred and the profane,
but you know, you can get away with a lot if you are polite and wearing a good
hat.
I'll get back to the Easter revelry in a minute, but we started our day in an
appropriately somber way at the creepy-even-in-the-blazing-sun St. Louis No. 1 cemetery,
the oldest cemetery in New Orleans. Its very decrepit-ness makes it a
photographer's dream, and while apparently one used to just not go there
without a guide, now it is cheerfully crime-free, at least during the
day. Isabel points out a little offering at a tomb of an unopened bottle
of Bud Light and a pill bottle, and well, there is that pee smell
occasionally. But debauchery aside, it really is fascinating and you can
get a sense of the international stew that is New Orleans. Many of the
inscriptions are in French, but the names are also Italian and German and
Portuguese, and you can see folks who came from Saint-Domingue (now known as
Haiti) after the revolution there. I am intrigued by the tomb of a young
man who is noted to the be the "fils legitime" of his parents, who
have different names, and I wonder if this is the result of a placage, the
white-man, black-mistress relationships that were apparently a thing among the
elite of New Orleans in the early 19th c.
Everyone knows that the most famous resident of St. Louis No. 1 is voodoo queen
Marie Laveau. Her family tomb, right next to that of Dutch Morial, first
black mayor of the city (and second most famous, because who is more
interesting – a mayor or a voodoo queen?), is covered in offerings - cosmetics,
because she was a beautician, lit votive candles, little cups of water (keeps
the evil spirits away, remember?), and XXXs which represent the Trinity.
There is another more decrepit tomb with no name that many think is the actual
tomb, and the guy with the "New Orleans Drinking Team" t-shirt who
wanders over and starts talking to us says that based on his five months of
research it IS the actual tomb. It too is covered in offerings. The
FL and Isabel photograph both.
Next stop, natch, the Voodoo Museum. Which is a dusty collection of
photos and art and gris-gris and altars and skulls and just voodoo stuff all
crammed into a couple of small rooms. The man at the desk, whom we later
learn is Dr. John T, Druid and Voodoo Master, gives us a kind of bored
introduction to voodoo (based in animism and incorporating elements of
Christianity, they were all devout Roman Catholics and here in New Orleans the
two religions co-exist peacefully), all the while cradling a small snake that
he claims is a white python which will grow up to do something like eat all the
other poisonous snakes in the world. As we are examining the exhibits,
Dr. John T walks to the back to take his break. "Do you have
pets?" he says, kind of menacingly, to Isabel, clutching his snake.
"Oh we have fish!" I say gaily, prepared to protect my progeny
from Druids and snakes alike. Then he offers said snake for petting,
which we all do, because it is actually a rather attractive snake. He
goes through the "staff only" door and I hear him say brightly
"hello girls!" to a bunch of meowing cats.
But let's get back to Easter. In New Orleans, anything is an excuse for a
party, and also for a parade. There are three scheduled for today, and we
catch the Chris Owens French Quarter Easter Parade. Chris Owens is a
local, gracefully aging burlesque queen, who apparently likes Easter or the
French Quarter or something so much, she decided to have a parade for it.
Here's how parades work in New Orleans: there is always music, and some
funny cars, and floats which are mostly decorated flatbed trucks pulled by
tractors and full of people throwing or handing out stuff, mostly beads. (Mardi
Gras parades are actually much more elaborate, more on them in a couple of days.) You stand there and shout and cheer and whoop
and if you are lucky you will be rewarded with these tchotchkes. But
there is a hierarchy to who gets the stuff: small adorable children,
pretty girls, and loud crazy screaming people, in that order. The rest of
us, only if we grab it out of the air. Peter is pretty much in the dead
zone of parade throws, but he likes it that way. It takes Isabel a bit to
figure all of this out, but by the end she is draped in a massive pile of beads
and clutching a fake rose and stuffed dog whom she promptly names Laveau.
One woman hands me some Smarties, noting sympathetically that the mamas never
get anything, do they? Actually I do respectably well in the bead
department, and Bill photographs the whole scene madly. We are
particularly fond of the Krewe of Rolling Elvi, which is, as its name suggests,
people dressed like Elvis Presley, riding motorized scooters. Some are
also sporting Elvis-duck heads, which we don't really understand but cheer
madly like everyone else.
By this point, we are exhausted so Peter and Izzy and I head back to the hotel for
a restorative swim while our FL checks out the Cabildo Museum.
Dinner tonight was the famed Galatoire's, which is kind of the Locke-Ober (RIP)
or Tadich Grill of New Orleans. Jackets required for men after 5, so
Peter sports a new one and looks, may I say, quite spiffy. There's a rack
of loaners, if you need one. The downstairs room is the place to be, all
mirrors and old sconces, and fleur-de-lys wallpaper, but no reservations for
that room so you takes your chances. On Easter Sunday, they are pretty
good because the regulars mostly came for lunch after church. You are
asked if you have a preferred waiter - many regulars do - but we don't so we
just enjoy the experience. Isabel is delighted by the magical soufleé’d
potatoes which they somehow get to make little air-filled pillows. There
are oysters Rockefeller and some turtle soup and fried eggplant served with
powdered sugar (weirdly good, says Peter) and Bernaise sauce. The FL and
I eat mountains of crabmeat (Yvonne for him, Sardou for me, and I concede
victory in the dressed crabmeat stakes to Bill on this one, even if Sardou was
awesome), and Isabel is finally happy with a cheese omelette (breakfast for
dinner!).
It's a scene at Galatoire's, you know, table hopping among regulars, great
choruses of Happy Birthday if it happens to be yours (today it was
Dwayne's). We watch two bow-tied gents eat lamb chops and hold court as
every waiter in the room stops for a lengthy chat with them. They've
probably been eating those same lamb chops every Sunday since 1972, says
Bill. A tipsy lady sporting bunny ears hands Isabel a small blue stuffed
bunny on her way out (Bunny is later named Galatoire, natch). Everybody
is in a good mood, which is kind of the point, but how could you not be after
all that hollandaise sauce?
Of course, the very best thing,
the thing that will bring Peter back to New Orleans, is the bottomless Shirley
Temple. They just magically appear at his elbow as the first glass
empties. I LOVE this place, he announces with a grin.
April 21
Peter has hit the bottomless pit stage of teenage boy development. That
kid eats for a family of four, and appears to suffer no ill effects. My
own breakfast, for example, has become more and more abstemious as our trip has
progressed. Probably just fruit today. But Peter is
apparently determined to eat everything on the Roosevelt Hotel's breakfast menu
so hoovers in brioche French toast with praline pecans and syrup. We are particularly impressed by the little
individual glass bottles of warm genuine maple syrup.
We are off early this morning for the much-anticipated (by the FL) swamp
tour. You drive about half an hour south of the city and climb on to an
airboat which alternately zooms and drifts you around Bayou des Familles for a
couple of hours, showing you alligators, nutria, birds, plants, wrecks, and
whatever else is out there that day. I cannot do justice to the magnificently
swampy accent of our guide, Captain Brandon, so I’ll stick to plainspeak here.
Of course, you see some alligators of various sizes - including, at a distance,
a likely 12-footer, which is quite rare. You can estimate the size by
measuring from the eyes to the snout, which are sometimes the only bits above
the water. Capt. Brandon tells us that a gator that long is probably 60
or 70 years old. The big ones hang out in deep water, and don't let
themselves be seen very often - how do you think they got that old?
There is much photographing of the gators. At one point, Capt. Brandon
steps forward brandishing a little fellow, who is maybe three or four years
old. There is some excitement in the row behind us, as they think he's
been plucked from the bayou itself. Capt. Brandon is pretty cool, but
he’s not that fast. In fact, this is no.
42, and has been brought along in a little box to take out and show the
tourists. Izzy, who had been feeling a little grumpy, perked up at the
chance to show her bravery and immediately takes a turn holding that critter,
much to her delight.
These folks don't hunt, excuse me, fish alligator, because there aren't many
tags (permits) available, and the money for the smaller, more easily caught
ones isn't as good as it is for the big old guys, who are (see above) harder to
catch. They make more money "showing the gators" than fishing
them, except in their hunting preserve a couple of hours west, where they sell
the tags to prize hunters for the right to fish there. And by selling the
tags to the reality shows that like to show alligators being caught.
What they do hunt is nutria. Now, the nutria is a giant South American
rat, basically, cuter than a rat, but a rodent nonetheless. As adults,
they get about two feet long, and they breed like rats, dropping four or so
litters over the winter months. Why do we care about them? Well, in
the 1920s, some enterprising farmer brought some in, to raise for their fur –
they have very lush coats. They escaped, and quickly populated the
swamps. But they eat the swamp grass, destabilizing that important
resource in this watery world, and they are now considered invasive which means
– that's right, there is a bounty on their furry little heads. $5 a tail,
and Capt. Brandon says he can get up to 200 on a good day, just him and his
shotgun. That's good money, esp. because the nutria season (when they are
out and about) coincides with the time that the alligators hibernate, i.e.
winter, which is also when there aren't many people looking for swamp tours, so
it helps to pay the crippling flood insurance. I spy a big 'un, and
then the whole group sees a couple together swimming around. "That's
a ten-dalla shot right thah" says Capt. B. (See, this is a hard one
to do phonetically.)
Flood insurance. Yes, this is the swamp and it changes constantly, the
water rising and falling with the tides (we're about 15 miles from the ocean)
and the rivers, and the winds and weather. The "land" is mostly
just clumps of grasses that grow together - until the nutria chew up the root
system or a person tramps across them or a storm knocks them about - and then
they tear apart and shift and dissolve and re-form. This used to be a cypress
swamp until someone clear-cut it for the wood a hundred years ago or so.
A few stunted cypress remain, doggedly hanging on. When a big storm
comes, these waterways used to be able to absorb the flood so the towns down
here, built to withstand a little water, didn’t get too damaged. But
since Katrina, a giant flood gate was built nearby, part of a huge chain of
levees and gates and stuff designed to protect New Orleans and environs from
catastrophic flood. That's great for the city, but not if you live
outside of that ring. Apparently storms that previously caused little or
no flooding now regularly flood the area. Insurers – no dummies – tried
to double flood insurance instantly, and had to be held in check by legislation
that said they could not raise flood insurance rates more than 23% a
year. Not much help for Capt. Brandon, whose flood insurance now costs
more than his mortgage. Not to mention the impact all that new flooding
has on the ecosystem, including more water, rising temperatures, and increased salinity,
as the coastline disappears. They say that if you come back in five
years, the place will have disappeared.
This is also pirate country (Jean Lafitte, slave runner, but also co-hero of
the Battle of New Orleans 1814, along with Old Hickory), although we don't hear
about that from Capt. B. What you do see are lots of old decaying barges
tied up on the sides, and wrecks. One
rustily poignant hulk is the remnants of the Boomtown Belle, the first casino
boat in New Orleans that ended her useful life in a fire, and the hull of which
has been tied up down here for years waiting for the owner to send the salvage
crew down.
In yet another collision of time, space and environment, we are occasionally
buzzed overhead by fighters from a nearby Navy base, screaming over in close
formation. The airboat
gives good competition in the noise dept., however. Ear protection is
offered, and taken, and the staff "Jean Lafitte Airboat Swamp Tours"
t-shirts say CAN YA HEAR ME NOW on the back.
We saw some turtles that Capt. B had picked up in a tube net (they didn't bait
it with the right cheese, so he is not pleased with his small haul of
two). As he puts it back, one passenger asks why he's putting them
back? He'll come back tonight to get them, he says. Then what are
you going to do with them, our inquisitive compadre asks? You know what's
coming - dinner! She cringes, but Capt. B spends some time describing the
deliciousness of turtle meat. I do not think this is for show.
I feel like I'm forgetting a lot of the tour, but I did not forget to tell the
FL that he was right, that was a great addition to our adventures!
Once on terra firma (sort of) again, we take a nice little stroll on the
boardwalk through the picturesque cypress swamp of Jean Lafitte National
Historical Park, spying swamp critters like frogs and snakes and birds and I am
very pleased to report NO SPIDERS. Those
evilly beautiful banana spiders that so disturbed me on my last visit were not
in evidence this time, much to Peter's disappointment. The FL and Izzy are quite taken with cypress
knees, and take many of the same pictures of their stubby selves. Izzy also fills us in on the lives of swamp
fairies.
Today, Peter had his first encounter with a poboy. It will not be his
last, because it was really good, but it will be the last time that he orders
the whole loaf.
A desperate search for cold and sweet treats almost came to a tragic end – BOTH
Angelo Brocato (famous old ice cream place) AND Hansen's Sno-Bliz (famous old
sno ball place) are closed on Mondays. We finally find Imperial
Woodpecker sno balls on the deserted and depressing Spanish Plaza but mm, what
a treat. I have the romantically named and colored (violet) orchid cream
vanilla, Izzy goes for watermelon and mango, Peter gets a very big (of course)
passion fruit and pineapple, and our FL is abstemious with a refreshing
grapefruit-basil (which tastes a bit like a spa treatment). The FL takes
a picture of our brilliantly colored tongues when we are done.
It seems that every day here includes some time spent gazing at the mighty Miss
and the ships that ply her waters. They are always going upriver - they
must come down some other time of day - and are usually lightly laden, and
riding high. The cargo ships and tankers are simultaneously magnificent
and horrifying. The latter because they are such a dominant symbol of our
fossil fuel addiction and chemical romance.
But these ships are also majestic and marvelous as they sail imperiously
up the flood. It is kind of mesmerizing.
Dinner tonight at Coquette (red snapper crudo!) with the FL's delightful Uncle
Thomas B. and wife Sheila Lemann. We are
thrilled to see them, and appreciate their hospitality and the opportunity
to catch up. Izzy is shy (she does not quite know how to respond to a
question of whether she goes to school), but Peter and his great uncle take to
one another immediately due to a shared love of gadgets, math, and Greek mythology. Peter has been warned in advance that he
might interrogated, and so is ready for the challenge. Here’s how that works: TBL removes a little case from his breast
pocket, and jots down a note on an index card.
He hands it, silently, to PLL, who considers, writes down his response,
and hands it back. An approving nod from the inquisitor
indicates that the correct response has been received. “He’s funny” whispers Izzy to her dad.
Not only that, on Sheila and
Uncle T’s urging Peter also tries – and likes – not just fried oysters but also
sweetbreads. It is a banner night and I am only sorry that it is all over
too soon.
April 22
Time has stopped at the Roosevelt Hotel. The marvelous pendulum clock in
the lobby – which features a naked lady holding the pendulum – paused at 8:55
yesterday. What has not stopped is the endless soundtrack of big band
jazz that plays everywhere. It's great, but makes you feel like you are
at an endless cocktail party. Oh, right, that is the point!
What do you want to stay there
for, asks Uncle Thomas. Do you like that place, in a politely accusatory
tone? Well, yes, we do. It is
pretty swell although it offers another layer of insight into the social complexity that is
becoming a signature of our visit. There
is a great contrast between the luxe interior and well-heeled guests at the
Roosevelt, and well, most everyone else outside, where any walk involves
weaving between friendly homeless people, street preachers, skaterboyz, and
drunks. Sometimes the outside comes in,
as when we encounter a scruffy looking gent while waiting for the elevator this
morning. The housekeeper is looking a
little alarmed and once we all step into the small elevator we realize why, as
our fellow traveler has had what we would call a bathroom accident and is
rather, um, fragrant. He tottered out of
the elevator and out of the hotel, damp pants and all, followed by more
concerned staff. That’s life in the big
city!
Today it is overcast and humid but that is no deterrent to the intrepid
Laskins, who streetcar it up to City Park.
Have I mentioned the iconic New Orleans streetcars yet? We love their hard wooden benches, and low
open windows, and take them whenever we can.
For $3 you can ride all day!
There are only about three lines, but you can get to a lot of places on
them, in a clatteringly charming, if sometimes achingly slow, manner. Here’s a tip:
don’t take a New Orleans streetcar if you are in a hurry to get
somewhere.
City Park is kind of on the
edge of town, but it is oh so lovely. Anyone who knows Izzy knows that
that girl just loves a good sculpture garden, and the The Sydney and Walda
Besthoff Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Art does not disappoint. "I love it here Mumzou!" she
exclaims as she races to and fro, snapping pictures everywhere. It is
very densely packed with art, mostly quite modern, including some of our
sculpture faves – the letter man, a Claes Oldenburg safety pin, one of Louise
Borgeois' stupid spiders – and some new friends like Do-Ho Suh's “Karma,”
carefully explained to us by a delightful docent who wants to talk Harvard once
he hears where we are from (his daughters graduated in the 90s).
Not enough time for the Botanical Gardens or the Popp Fountain, alas, but our
favorite element of City Park is not in the sculpture garden, although it is a
work of art. The Singing Oak by Jim Hart is a big old live oak (that
somehow survived being in eight feet of brackish water after Katrina), hung
with wind chimes tuned to a pentatonic scale. The lowest tones
reverberate the longest, you almost feel them more than hear, while the higher
notes come and go more rapidly. It is aurally mesmerizing and except for
the laughing seagulls and bickering children nearby, quite relaxing.
Today is the day we lose our Fearless Leader to the demands of PG Calc, and
while we are sad, we make his departure a little sweeter by stopping at Angelo
Brocato, a famed local ice cream shop that is over 100 years old. Angelo
was a 19th c. Sicilian immigrant, and his shop today is apparently
much as it was when he opened it, although a few modern baked goods like
oatmeal cookies and brownies have crept in. We all indulge in some
Americanized gelato, except for Izzy who goes all in with a slice of frozen
cassata - pistachio, lemon, tutti frutti flavored ice cream, candied fruit,
whipped cream, and cake, all in a triangular slice. She is slightly
flummoxed by the doily under the slice, but powers through. We make sure
our FL gets some cookies for the plane (us too, even though we are not going on
a plane today).
Our sorrows at the FL’s departure are quickly drowned by the one-two punch of
classic New Orleans tourist destinations: Mother's and Mardi Gras
World. The former is home to the Famous Ferdi Special poboy - ham, roast
beef, debris and gravy (the bits of beef that are stuck in the bottom of the
roasting pan, pronounced DAY-bree not day-BREE), cabbage, mayo, two kinds of
mustard and pickles. Needless to say Peter inhaled it, and then announced
that he did not feel too full. (Remember, this is after ice cream.)
Izzy has a delicate-for-Mother's ham biscuit and I finally have an oyster poboy
which is just about perfect.
Mardi Gras World really is all that - it is home to Blaine Kern Artists who
make most of the props (the big sculptures on the front) for the 50+ parades
that happen here during Carnival season. It is kind of creepy – giant
jester heads are everywhere, and they loom menacingly out of the dimness at you.
But also kind of trippy – there are huge, technicolor flowers piled up and
stuck on everything, and big cartoon characters and famous people. And,
it is kind of corporate and factory-like – time to try on a costume! Time
to eat king cake! Another tour coming through in half an hour! Exit
through the gift shop!
Still, you shouldn't miss it because it is pretty amazing and you will learn a
lot about Mardi Gras. A good informative video tells us a bit about the
history of Fat Tuesday, and has lots of footage of recent parades so we can see
what they are like. (Chris Owen's French Quarter Easter Parade was a
decidedly more casual affair.) For one thing, they don't go through the
French Quarter anymore – the floats are too big. Each krewe puts on a
parade during the two weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, which means that there
can up to five parades a day. How does anyone get any work done in this
town? And a krewe is really just a social organization – some more
exclusive than others – devoted to throwing a big party and a bigger parade,
based on members' dues. The city has many laws and regulations
surrounding the event, and the dealio is that you play by their rules, or they
won't provide sanitation, security, and the all-important parade permit.
It is a kind of sad note that a) it took until 1991 for the city to say that
krewes had to stop discriminating on membership and b) that three of the oldest
krewes stopped parading at that time rather than follow that rule. 1991,
yes.
A float will cost your krewe maybe $50,000, and you need at least 14 for a
parade. And you need costumes, and a king’s ransom of throws, and it
turns out that you don't keep the props on the float – the artists take them
right back and start repurposing where possible for next year. That siren
you saw this year may become an angel next. That Saints helmet, well, it
probably stays a Saints helmet, but you get the idea. It is all made
out of styrofoam! They stack several sheets together, then carve the prop
out of that. You get to walk through the artists workshops and see them
carving, and papier-maché-ing (that happens after the sculpting and
constructing is done), and painting. Then the props are put on these
massive flatbeds that are covered with brilliantly colored paper and designs
and flowers, flowers, flowers, and there is your float. About 50 artists
and engineers will make 500 floats.
Not every krewe uses Blaine Kern, but many do. And Blaine Kern Artists
have several studios now, and make props for Disney (here and in Europe) and
lots of other amusement parks and parades. But this is the heart of it
all. Bill and I had both been there when in its former location in
Algiers, across the river, apparently they moved in 2008 to get more space and
because they could get more tourists in their new location. They even
have a shuttle bus that will pick up and bring you there, and back to your
hotel.
Blaine Kern has been running this business for years, and is known around the
world as Mr. Mardi Gras. He even started a super-krewe (basically just a
really big krewe) in the 1960s, Bacchus. What the guide doesn't tell you,
but isn't hard to find out, is that a couple of years ago there was a great
feud between Blaine and son Barry, and Blaine signed over control of the
company to Barry then regretted it, but it sounds like Blaine might have been
making questionable decisions in all kinds of areas. The heads of the
super-krewes rounded up Barry and said sort it out, because we are afraid that
your family feud will hurt our Mardi Gras. You can read the sordid – or
juicy, depending on your take – details here:
http://www.nola.com/mardigras/index.ssf/2012/04/kern_says_he_signed_over_contr.html
The guide ends her spiel after the movie and the king cake (we don't get the
plastic baby, so we don't have to throw the next party) with a strong
admonition that Mardi Gras is NOT Bourbon Street. It may be a little
weird, and bit saucy, but it is fun for all and the krewes and the city want it
that way, so you need not worry that your kids will be exposed to the sordid
reality that is Bourbon Street. Everyone buys into this because Mardi
Gras is a one billion dollar business for New Orleans, and messing with that is
just a bad idea. Still, I feel somewhat reassured by this, and may
re-think my previous injunction against coming here during Mardi Gras.
All of this activity requires some post-touring pool time, where Isabel
indulges her inner Esther Williams and creates a routine of handstands and
somersaults and arabesques and fancy swimming.
Dinner tonight at the Chowhound-recommended and atmospherically historic Sylvain,
the highlight of which was the Southern antipasto platter. This tasty
compilation included such delights as pickled green strawberries and pork
rillettes and oddly, some delicious cheese from Vermont. Then I have an
enormous order of something called grilled pork shoulder which is really great
and on a mountain of spicy collards and creamy grits and is really great except
that I cannot come close to finishing it. Thanks to terrific hamburgers, my
children are good sports about the dim loud restaurant even if it does not have
bottomless beverages like Galatoire's.
At some point, you'd better have a Sazerac at the Sazerac Bar here in the
Roosevelt. Bill says I must tap into my inner Tennessee Williams and
write in the bar so I gamely bring my iPad down after tucking the kiddies in
front of the TV. The Sazerac Bar is a
sleek old Art Deco room, with WPA-era murals by Paul Ninas and a long bar and a
little tray in front of me with all kinds of bitters, including some unlabeled
versions in medicine dropper bottles. There is an etched glass design of
a Yvonne-style gal, and a beautiful old silver iced water dispenser and some
giant silver racing trophies. It is pretty goddamn atmospheric.
The little mister bottle with green liquid is apparently the Herbsaint (modern
day local absinthe), and after icing the glass, the bartender (no keeps here)
sprays the inside of the glass to impart just a breath of flavor. I know
there is rye, and simple syrup and a healthy dash of Peychaud's bitters, and a
twist of lemon. The drink got its name, as it turns out, from the Sazerac
brand cognac with which it was first made in the mid-19th c. It is
quite fine, and I like it better than NOLA's although Bill says Galatoire's was
quite good too. It is a thing to sample them here.
April 23
I don't think I've quite done
justice to breakfast at the Roosevelt but we eat early and I write late so I
tend to forget. It is possible that the
shrimp and grits here are the best in the city. And the biscuits are the
size of Bill's hand. I had to cut Peter off at one today.
Our palatial suite has become a pile of dirty laundry and beads, beads,
everywhere. Isabel wears a coordinating strand every day.
Today we three visit the National World War II Museum, formerly known as the
National D-Day Museum. Why is that here in New Orleans, you might
ask? What was this city's contribution to that war effort? Well
I'll tell ya, they won the damn war here! The Higgins boats, also known
as the landing craft vehicle, personnel (LCVP), were built here – you know, the
ones that delivered marines and infantrymen to beaches around the world, their
bows dropping and depositing their load of men into the surf like so many crab
eggs. Ike said that Andrew Higgins may have won the war for us and who
are we to argue?
The Higgins boat has spawned a new industry with this museum, and it is pretty
swell so we spent all day there. The core exhibits, about D-Day and what
they call D-Day in the Pacific (basically every amphibious assault in that
theater, which is a lot) are just slightly old (lots of wall text and pictures)
but packed full of fascinating information like that a half-pound of leftover
cooking fat could be recycled to make 3 lbs. of gunpowder and that sort of
thing. Plenty of context is on display – America before the war, how it
got into the war, buildup, etc. There are hundreds of excellent
photographs, with nicely contextualized info on the photographers, and lots of
good oral history clips. Izzy is
particularly fond of listening to these fascinating snippets. All the
services are represented, although it fair to say that the Coast Guard and the
Merchant Marine are not big players. And while a strong effort is made to
include women and people of color, the segregation of the armed forces is a bit
thin. You can see where some of this was laid over the original exhibits
as they expanded from D-Day to the entire War. And of course there are
the now-standard sound effects – period music, shouting, splashing, explosions,
and the best, in the room about the gliders, crickets and other night sounds
occasionally punctuated by the crack of a rifle. Just like The Longest Day!
Needless to say there is a decent collection of recruitment and propaganda
posters, and a special table where you can see the kit that an American and a
German infantryman would have carried. The volunteer showing us the gear
tells us that about 50% of what we are touching is period, the rest reproduction.
You start your visit (after checking out the actual Higgins boat in the main
hall, and chatting with the nice vet who says "I want to put you at ease,
you may take pictures anywhere, just no flash in the exhibit. But I want
to put you at ease so you enjoy your visit") by climbing on board a
Pullman car and listening to and watching some tales of recruitment and leaving
home, while your seat rumbles beneath you. Once enlisted, you are
on your way.
Of course, if you are an actual WWII vet, you are warmly welcomed here, and
applauded, and have your hand shook by about every other man in the museum.
Some of the vets are local volunteers, there to talk with the visitors, and it
is kind bittersweet. They are very old, and sit at their table patiently waiting
for someone to talk with them, while hordes of middle-schoolers and tourists stream
by, perhaps shy and not quite knowing what to say. Or they are treated a
bit like animals in the zoo. "Kids, this is an actual veteran!
Did you fight, sir? He was actually in the war!" The men are
very gracious about it, and will talk to anyone they can hear.
We latch on to one conversation at the table, and the "younger"
guy on the end says to Izzy, "Ask him," indicating the guy next to
him, showing off his Purple Heart, "how old he was when he enlisted, but
say it loud because he can't hear anything." So I ask, because Izzy
is shy, and he says "thank you!" When I bellow the question, he
tells us he was 17, which is of course below age. The requisite chatter
about how old Peter is, wow, and then the "younger" one says
"that shows you what kind of people we are!" The third fellow
at the table was 82nd Airborne, and had dropped into France on D-Day. I
asked him to show us where he landed, and when he pointed to the far left – he's
done this a few times, there was divot on the map at that spot – I got the hint
and asked if that was where he supposed to land. "No, we were
supposed to be at this bridge here!" He still sounds pissed about
it. How many of you were there? Five. And how many made it to
the bridge? "All five!" Damn straight. It is hard
to know how to maintain the conversation because they really are old and can't
hear very well and it is loud in there. I wish we'd stayed to talk more,
I can think now of lots of questions I'd have liked to have asked, and it seems
like it would have been polite. Despite the oohs and ahhs when someone
figures out who they are, so many people passed by.
It is nice that these men are here, however, and kind of amazing in a way because
one thing they do very, very well at this Museum is get you to think about the
human toll of these operations. There are a lot of graphic photographs of
dead soldiers, in the sand, in fields, in the jungle. Many Americans, some
German, and many Japanese. Izzy glides past some, and I steer her away
from others, because she is looking pensive and it is a bit rough. While
the recorded oral histories are generally positive, all you have to do is look
at the unshaven faces and distantly-staring eyes in the photographs,
particularly in the Pacific theater exhibit, to get a sense of the emotional
devastation that combat wrought on these young, young men. I point out
some of the men in a photo of a plane full of jumpers on their way to France,
noting that a couple look about his age. He agrees.
I'm picking up a funny generational vibe. I hear people older than me
talk about their parents' experiences, and wonder if I am that old. But
while I'm always suspicious of excessive patriotism, I also find myself looking
disapprovingly at rambunctious middle-schoolers who hoot and holler in the
exhibits with no respect for what they are learning about. My own
middle-schooler behaves brilliantly, of course.
It becomes clear that we are not going to get through all of this in one
morning so we change our strategy and decide to come back after lunch.
But first we have tickets for "Beyond All Boundaries," a 4D
experience of the war narrated by that war hero Tom Hanks. Mostly we want
to know what the fourth D is, but it seems like a thing to do. Here's how
it works. You and a couple hundred other folks are shepherded into a
sort-of holding area, where first we applaud the vets present today (heartily,
and they take it gracefully if soberly), then we are told that we'll see a
pre-presentation before the actual experience. After numbers and country
names, which you pretty quickly figure out are estimated death tolls – US first
and smallest, Soviet Union last and mind-boggling – Tom Hanks comes on and
tells us about America before the war, storm clouds gathering in Europe,
Japanese aggression in Asia, rise of the Nazis. I shouldn’t make fun of
Tom, he’s about as American an Everyman as a world-famous actor can get. And, he saved Private Ryan. Context set (again, we have had a fair amount
of repetition today), into the theater we go.
Did I mention that it is an
IMAX thee-ay-ter? So it is that kind of show. The idea here is to give you a sense of the
war, both combat theaters and the home front, in a dazzling sensory experience
that will move you and make you think seriously about it all. So, for
example, when we are in the Ardennes, snow falls from the ceiling. Our
seats rattle and rumble when first one engine, then another of our B-17 is
hit. Lifelike citizens walk across the stage and are transformed into
soldiers. Rough voices shout in German and a bright searchlight shines in
our faces from a concentration camp guard tower as the section on camp
liberation starts. Smoke fills the room when Tokyo is firebombed.
There are photographs, and bits read from memoirs and oral histories, and film
clips, on many screens that rise and lower and generally dazzle. One
affecting piece is about the telegrams that would notify families of the death
of their loved one. They drift down the screen, first a few, then more
and more in 3D, as voices read snippets "regrets to inform you,"
"it is with deepest condolences," "your son" and so
on. Somehow they project some of these voices from speakers in the seats
so it really surroundsound. The atomic bomb is represented by a brilliant
flash, then darkness and a whoosh and wind and silence. The soldiers come
marching back across the stage at the end, some step forward and become
civilians again, turning and saluting those who don't return. Then they
all march off to stirring music and a flag backdrop. Only a very hardened
cynic would not be a little moved by it, even if it is completely manipulative
and made – truly – of smoke and mirrors.
BACK IN LINE SOLDIER, WE'RE NOT DONE YET.
Lunch is desperately needed after that. It turns out that we are near Pêche,
where we'd planned to dine this evening, so we change up our plans and have a
very nice, fish-y lunch, where Peter motors through a plate of shrimp and
smoked tuna dip and a hush puppy and some brabant potatoes. Will that kid
ever stop eating?
In the Freedom Pavilion, sponsored by Boeing, you can see an actual B-17, and a
Mustang, and a Corsair, and a few other planes hanging from the ceiling, and
then climb up and up to see them from above. Peter is taken with the What
Would You Do exhibit, where you are presented with an "ethical"
dilemma and you respond with what you would do, and then you learn what
actually happened. They are pretty gentle dilemmas for us in the 21st c.
(racist drill sergeant tells you there is no room for a black man in this
army. Do you not enlist at all, or try again a few months later?
Well, if you are Vernon Baker, belated recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor,
you try again) but it is a good way to try and get folks to thing
contextually. This wing is newer, and so covers the entire war in a more
integrated manner. And the oral history collection here is quite
comprehensive, although just American. Interestingly, in the D-Day part,
they have a number of clips from German soldiers, and I think even a few
Japanese in the Pacific theater.
I am kind of regretting now that we did not sign up for "Final
Mission: The USS Tang Experience" which would have been like
"Beyond All Boundaries" except in a submarine. And, it doesn’t turn out so well. We see a big group of Navy JROTC from Texas
going in. Watch and learn, kids.
We saved the Pacific theater for last. Here, the light-up maps are a
generation earlier in their technology, so not awesome, and of course the scale
of the war in the Pacific is harder to grasp. Still, there are more
excellent photographs here, and we are particularly intrigued by an exhibit on
the use of race in both American and Japanese propaganda. It is cramped
in here, and the amount of text and sameness of the photos numbs. Island after island, then the bombs.
Finally, we visit a temporary exhibit on the Japanese-American experience
during the war. It is thoughtful and informative, and discusses the
camps, and Japanese service in the war, and it is completely devoid of any
other museum goers while we are there. You have to understand that the
rest of this place is teeming. But here, quiet reigns. It is a
shame, because this is important, and I think the Museum is doing it a
disservice by tucking it away on the second floor with very poor directions on
how to find it. I was too tired by the end of the day to lodge a
complaint, but I have since written to them suggesting that they improve the
signage.
The day seems to have overwhelmed Peter too, as he has hit the wall,
eating-wise! Couldn't even finish his burger at the Grille (FQ
outpost of famed Camellia Grille) and left me to deal with all of the
chili-cheese fries. He claims it was the big lunch. I claim it was
the big ice cream two hours earlier.
April 24
We wander through the muggy French Quarter in search of:
- pralines
- Hové perfume for Isabel since that is a place where a mademoiselle might just
purchase her first fragrance (rose geranium is the choice)
- beignets
- a muffaletta from the Central
Grocery for the plane ride home.
We also discover:
- the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, which actually spins.
- lots and lots of good street music. I dispense $1 dollar bills left and
right.
- the George Rodrigue gallery, which delights Izzy as she is a great fan of the
Loup-Garou or Blue Dog.
A hike back to the Roosevelt, changing into long pants because it is cold at
home, and we are on our way home.
Here are some observations on
the Roosevelt Hotel.
-That Sazerac Bar is really out of sight.
-The hotel is hosting some golf tournament called the Zurich Classic which
means that said bar is filled with men wearing caps with sunglasses on top of
them at 9 o'clock at night and daily schedules showing things like the Golf
Channel live broadcast and the PGA Wives activities.
-I learn later that the tournament usually buys out the entire hotel, but this
year maybe only has 400 rooms (out of 504). That is a lot of rooms.
-You can't get a local paper
here, only the WSJ and USAToday. While this enhances the vacation
sensibility – what cares we, right? – it also makes you feel a bit removed from
the city.
-That
may be the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in.
Here are some observations on
New Orleans.
-There are about a million
hotels here. How on earth do they fill all those rooms?
-There are a lot drunk people
here, although fewer on Tuesday night than on Saturday.
-Bourbon Street really is a den of iniquity.
-Jesusmaryandjoseph we have
eaten well.
-I guess a fire would be
catastrophic in the French Quarter even today, when most structures are brick,
but the firemen we pass one evening do not seem concerned. They seem perfectly content to sit in folding
chairs outside of their fire houses, smoking their cee-gars and laughing in the
April twilight.
-People run, walk, ride bicycles, and even horses (OK, mounted police) on the
streetcar tracks. The streetcars are so slow that no one seems to get
hurt.
-The light poles downtown have four little panels at about chest height, that
say the following:
French domination 1718-1769
Spanish domination 1769-1803
Confederate domination, 1861-1865
American domination, 1803-1860, 1865-present.
I guess they forgot those THREE YEARS of Union occupation starting in
1862.
-The statues of Confederate
heroes like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee are in kind of out-of-the-way or
less-affluent areas. That's what comes of a lost cause. Sorry for
your luck, boys.
-There are beads, beads
everywhere. They hang from lampposts,
electrical wires, street signs, fire hydrants, my daughter. They are slightly bedraggled, but hint at
parties had and parades to come.
-People here are as friendly as in Ireland, maybe more so.
-Muffalettas hold up remarkably
well.
-Always, someone from away asks, how did this or that place fare during
Katrina?
Now we are back in comfortably familiar if slightly boring old Cambridge, where
drunk people only roam the streets after the Freshman Formal and there are no
beads anywhere. And where all the
radical lefties hang out, according to Uncle Thomas.
At our local fish store, they
have started getting live crawfish in on Saturdays. Maybe we’ll get a few
pounds, but it won’t be quite the same without a stuffed alligator hanging over
our heads. Indeed,
we know now what it means to miss New Orleans.
