-Dolly Parton, "My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy"
It's true. I was just a little past eighteen when I came to New Orleans. Seeking escape from another family holiday, a friend of long ago and I set out to the Crescent City the day before Christmas Eve in 1992. We rented a car, loaded the cassette player with a mix-tape that contained every song in my collection that even mentioned New Orleans and hit the road. We arrived in this much fabled city around dawn. After a charming breakfast of fried pork-chops and red beans, we set out to find accommodations. We ended up at some run down hotel on Tulane Avenue with a drained pool and were led to a room two-doors down from one that had been completely blackened and burned out by a fire. It didn't really matter, we were young and exhausted from a journey that should have taken 9 or 10 hours but had stretched to 14 due to a stop in Tallahassee, (my friend was a former student at FSU), and a rather embarrassing but memorable visit to a rest area outside of Mobile, Alabama where a pair of my teal green underwear were left urine soaked and slung over a toilet seat. Before your minds begin to wander to some watersports fueled fantasy, let me say that it was completely innocent and devoid of eroticism. Abandoning the underwear was the only practical thing that I could do.
We entered the hotel room that care forgot with it's double beds and greasy handprints on the wall and went to sleep for a few hours before entering the decadent world of New Orleans. Our first stop was Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District. Recently, I revisited that old City of the Dead and found it in such shocking disrepair. It had sunk into something far beyond the stately gothic elegance that I first encountered on my inaugural trip to the city that I now call home. A lot of the beautiful black ironwork that surrounded the tombs was gone, perhaps looted and sold for scrap. Grassy areas away from the paved banquettes of the cemetery that I recalled had become soft mud pits after a recent rain. The cemetery still retains some of it's gloomy charm, but beauty lives in memory, I suppose. Across the street, we stumbled upon what looked to be a shop set up in the first floor of a house. I don't recall the name of it, but we entered and were greeted by an astonishing assortment of occupied birdcages, as well as the proprietor clad in a green silk dressing gown. He seemed so surprised to see us, almost as if we just walked into a private residence. "Oh my!", he said. "Let me put on some coffee!" My companion and I looked at each other with curiosity and soon were served some very strong coffee and packaged cookies that were so hard, real effort had to be employed to consume them. He chatted with us and told us of some places to visit while in town. We bid our unusual host a fond farewell and departed the shop. We were never quite sure of what was for sale in there.
Upon entering the French Quarter for the "first" time, I was struck with a sense of extreme nostalgia and melancholy. I had been here before. I astonished my travelling companion with my basic knowledge of the Quarter. "Put that map away! I know where Dumaine is!" Eventually we found a shop, not much more than a closet tucked away in the side of a building where an old black lady would swear over a peice of felt, some old bones and herbs, douse it with oil, tie it up and pass it to you into your right hand. I had ordered a gris-gris from her for my friend Sean, for his happiness. I think I paid ten dollars for it. I presented it to him upon arriving home and told him to place it under his bed. All he ever said about it was how nice it smelled while he banged boys who weren't me on top of his sheets. Shortly afterward, he relapsed into alcoholism and checked himself into some form of treatment. I never saw him again. I don't think the gris-gris had anything to do with that, however. At least I hope it didn't.
After enjoying some of the raucous nightlife that the French Quarter has to offer, we took our leave of this grand city on Christmas Night. Watching it disappear behind the rented car, I promised to return for visits and perhaps someday become part of it. I moved to New Orleans a little over a year and a half ago. Of course, familiarity has blurred the lines of the past and the present. I often experience a strong sense of deja vu when I hear the click-clack of a mules feet on the streets or smell the richly perfumed air carried on a delicate breeze. Reason tells me that these are such common sensory experiences encountered daily, that I may not be remembering a previous existence in a time long, long ago in New Orleans, just acknowledging the rare beauty of details that are so special and so specific to the place I call home. Sweet, sweet home.
Oh how I love your stories.
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