Riding on the City of New Orleans

Yeah, I know, the City of New Orleans referenced by Arlo Guthrie is a train, not the town, but don't go all technical on me.  I've been in New Orleans, after all, and it's not called the Big Easy because people sweat details.  (They do sweat quite a bit, of course, although not this week as it's a little chilly - by New Orleans standards, not by mine.)

As you are aware, my plan twelve hours before I left Montgomery was to head straight south to the coast for some sun.  But I couldn't sleep well, and one of the things I thought about while not sleeping was that it was silly not to drive another hour or two, albeit it out of the way (since my next plan is the east coast), to spend a couple of days in the Crescent City.

And like every single detour or stop I've made since beginning the Driveabout, I'm glad I made it.

On the way, I enjoyed the last of Diane's provisions at the Davis Bayou in Gulf Islands National Seashore, which is in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  It's beyond beautiful.

 

Although I managed to arrive in New Orleans at rush hour (turns out I have quite a knack for hitting urban areas at rush hour) I was able to find an adorable little guesthouse in the French Quarter that didn't cost an arm and a leg and parked in the garage six blocks away.  Parking was actually the hardest thing I've done in a while - it's one of those old garages with tight spaces and while the Vue isn't exactly a semi, it's not exactly skinny either.  It took me a couple of tries but I am proud to report that I made it both in and out of the space with no damage to car, garage, or pride.

 

Here's the guesthouse.  You'll have to use your imagination on the garage.

 

 

Tuesday night I went on a ghost tour of the Quarter, which turned into a minor pub crawl, and it was great fun.  Wednesday afternoon (yeah, you're following) I went to Cafe du Monde for breakfast.  They only have one food selection at Cafe du Monde.

 

 

Of course, if your only food item is a beignet - little square donuts topped with more powdered sugar than you think is possible - you can get away with this for 150 years, which is how long they've been open.

 

There are a lot of street musicians in New Orleans, like these guys:

 

 

And it seemed like I should have my fortune told, so I sat down at a table on Jackson Square operated by none other than Fatima, a.k.a. The Voodoo Bone Lady.  She has her own website.  (Generally my prognosis is good, although a troubling person from my past is supposed to reappear in the coming year and I'm not supposed to engage with them.  So if that's you, be forewarned.)

 

I've only been in New Orleans once before, about 25 years ago.  And although the St. Charles Streetcar is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line on earth, it was broken during that trip so I didn't get to ride.  On this visit I rectified that situation.  The streetcar goes near the Garden District which has beautiful homes that were apparently built by Yankees who moved to town pre-Civil War.  The Creoles who ran things wouldn't let them live in the nice neighborhoods in New Orleans so they built their own.

 

When I'd posted on Facebook that I was headed to New Orleans I got an e-mail from a friend who was there for a convention, and we had dinner Wednesday night.  Then we decamped to Cafe Lafitte in Exile for great fun at karaoke.  We killed doing the B-52's Love Shack.

 

As you might guess, breakfast is not the most eaten meal in New Orleans, which accounts for the trouble I had finding someplace to grab a quick bite on Thursday morning when I was getting ready to go.  (I wanted to find a place that was between my guesthouse and the parking garage and was unsuccessful in finding anywhere open.)  Luckily, someone had told me about Elizabeth's, which is a short drive from the French Quarter but since they serve praline bacon it would be worth walking over rocks to get there.  Plus they serve fried green tomatoes.  I heart Elizabeth's.

 

Conveniently, Elizabeth's is on the way to the Lower Ninth Ward, which I wanted to drive through before leaving New Orleans.  This is the area that was devastated by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  It is a very low-income neighborhood and many people didn't have insurance, so the rebuilding has been very, very slow.  There are still a lot of vacant lots and boarded up homes.  There's a new school with a library, but that's about it.

 

After that depressing side trip, I was off to Marksville.  This is a small (population 5,702) town in central Louisiana, about three hours northwest of New Orleans, and is notable because my father lived there until he was eight years old.  My goal was to find his old house, same as I had tried to find my mom's in Junction City, Kansas.

 

Compared to my father's directions, my mom's had been GPS coordinates.  Here's exactly what my father said:  "Find the old part of town.  Then find the old bank building, which was gray or brick.  Then go left, and then go right.  If you reach the school, you've gone too far."  These are not the kind of directions that inspire confidence, but I was determined at least to try.

 

Turns out there is another historic aspect to Marksville:  it's home to a prehistoric ceremonial center, built by the Hopewell people over two thousand years ago.  They have a museum which I stopped at hoping (no pun intended) that it might be staffed by old people (often these places are) who would remember my dad's family.  Since the Goldners left Marksville in 1947, these would have to be folks in their seventies or eighties, at least.  Earl, the very nice man running the museum in the absence of someone else who had gone to a meeting, was in his sixties so he didn't recognize the name, but he was able to figure out the first part of my father's cryptic instructions and directed me to the Union Bank building, conveniently located across from the courthouse.

 

Once I found the bank building (and it's still gray) I called my dad.  Of course, he didn't know exactly where I was relative to his memory of the place, so it took a while for me to figure out that I was probably in the right block.  There's only one house standing (the rest has become commercial buildings).  Dad said that people named Bordelon lived a couple of doors down.  That seemed an irrelevent detail to my search until I noticed, as luck would have it, a historic marker in front of the remaining house that marks this as the Bordelon house.

 

 

I guess my grandfather didn't think about putting a historic marker in front of their home, so it's now a parking lot.  Live and learn.

 

During the past few days I've driven over some fabulous bridges.  I love driving over water, and you do a lot of that along the Gulf Coast.  The soaring feeling is exhilarating.  Of course, if you're surrounded by semi's at the time, it's more than a little frightening but still a rush.

 

On the way to Marksville I unexpectedly encountered an amazing bridge called the Audobon Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi River.  It has the second longest cable-stayed span (whatever that means) in the Western Hemisphere, but what I liked about it was how unusual it looks.  Here's a picture, which doesn't really show you why I thought it was cool.

 

The orange-ish things you see are giant guy-wires, or at least that's what they look like to me.  They're the same color as the yellow paint they use for striping roads, which sounds goofy but looks incredible when you drive under them.  On a cloudy day, as Thursday was, it seems that they are rays of sun.

 

It used to be that Marksville had really nice infrastructure because it is the home of Edwin Edwards, former Congressman, long-time Governor, and Federal inmate.  But since he was still serving time when this bridge was built, I don't know that you could credit his involvement in its construction.  (Interesting aside:  Edwards' mom was a midwife who worked for my grandfather, the town doctor, in Marksville.)

 

And then, on to Orange Beach, Alabama, where I am staying in a beachfront motel.  After checking in about 8:30 I ran barefoot onto the dark, empty beach and let waves from the Gulf of Mexico hit me ankle deep.  I nearly exploded from joy.

 

Tonight I am feeling very, very lucky, and I appreciate your joining me on this journey.