And I must tell you, I must have needed to be right here at this exact time, because God obviously decreed that "these shall be perfect days in the City That Care Forgot."
It started with the train trip.(Amtrak, left, as it passes along the eastern edge of downtown Lafayette, Louisiana)
Ah, the train. My paternal grandfather was an engineer on the old L&N (Louisville & Nashville) Railroad, working freight from 1915 to 1965.
He worked in various locales from New Orleans (where he grew up on BurGUNdy) to Mobile, Alabama (where he eventually moved to and lived for most of his life and where my father was born -in 1925- and grew up), and all places in between (in fact, grandpa and grandma were married in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, where he was working at the time with the L&N).
So I have traveled on trains, I am told, since my birth. But each train trip, like each snowflake, is different. ALL ABOARD !
After boarding the train in southwest Louisiana (Lafayette), I rumbled past the myriad sugarcane fields that dominate the view from the train.
The fields appear to "run alongside" the train because of the optical illusion that the long, straight furrows create for the human eye. Smoke arises from those cane fields while they are being "burned over" (after the cane is harvested, the stubble is set ablaze to help partially prepare the field for the next sugarcane crop's planting cycle - and you can smell/see it for miles).
A train passenger is almost always within sight of these fields all the way from Lafayette to New Orleans. Every now and then, you can even see a sugar cane mill huffing and puffing smoke as it creates sugar from the stalks of sugarcane - those mills are anomalies among mills - in the sense that they run entirely (get all of their energy requirements ) off of the energy produced by the waste product of that which it processes.
That waste product (called "bagasse"), mainly the leftover sugarcane plant after the sugar is squeezed from it, is burned to produce the steam which produces the electricity which in turn runs the entire milling operation.
But the sugarcane industry is said to be in trouble due to world sugar prices and the complicated set of regulations, tariffs, and politics surrounding it.
Soon the trip takes on its own rhythms, from the gentle rolling and pitching of the cars to the click-clacking of the iron wheels on the steel tracks. It makes you sleepy unless you can find diversions. Let's find some.
The Lounge Car is inviting. Huge picture windows offer an unparalleled view of the countryside rushing by (well, if you can call a 50 mph avg speed "rushing"), and the company is so varied that you are bound to see someone you can feel comfortable about approaching.
I did.
This particular someone was a nine-year-old boy, ("Chip") on his very first train trip. We spoke of his love of trains, and I thought of my own son (11-year-old Christopher), who took his first cross-country train trip at 18 months of age when we traveled from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. (in a sleeper, or "Pullman" car) to walk in the first annual Children's Walk on Washington in June of 1996.
What this 9-yr-old liked best was "being high up"and "having lots of room to move around." I agreed on both counts. West of the Mississippi, trains can be higher, I told him, due to the construction of higher tunnels and bridges in the western USA than exist in the east, where these types of structures were older and built lower.
I was a trove of train trivia. He didn't care. After a few more minutes talking to him, neither did I. He was far more interesting to listen to than to talk to. I took this realization as an object lesson in human relations.
This little boy's mom was a late twenties-something "Cher" lookalike (like my cousin Sandy - who could easily have been Cher's red-headed half-sister), and was much more interested in chatting up a serviceman on his way to duty in New Orleans than in keeping track of her son.
From the moment Chip and I started talking to each other, he was focused on one thing: crossing the Mississippi River on the train. And in New Orleans, this is a mighty feat indeed.
Leading up to that crossing are the longest approach structures for trains in the world, I am told: each is one-mile long, gradually sloping and curving (which is why it had to be so long) trestle that both sets the multi-ton train down on and then gently lifts it off of the Huey Long Mississippi River Bridge.
We topped that bridge at 3pm - and could see, in a sweeping panoramic view: downtown New Orleans, Lake Ponchartrain, the Bonne Carre Spillway, the Louis Armstrong International Airport, area suburbs, and both upriver and downriver as the Father of All Waters wiggled and wended both toward and away from us, carrying ocean ships and barge traffic to and from ports.
In another 35 minutes, we were stepping off of the train at Union Station. I fulfilled a boyhood dream by standing alongside the Conductor at the very rear of the train's last car with the door open and the breeze in my face as it backed into the station (meaning I was moving forward). Simple as this necessary maneuver is, this was thrilling to this little boy.
Me, I mean.
It was sunny , breezy, and 72 degrees. Perfect. I even had a friend to meet me there and whisk me away, like some VIP, to my local destination. One ensconced at brother Johnny's home, I took it easy in the Big Easy.
The rest of the next 65 hours (until right now, 9am Friday morning, Dec 30th) were heaven-sent. Each day I mostly walked walked walked. To Audubon Park. To the French Quarter. Within my brother's uptown neighborhood.
I spoke to shopkeepers, grocery store clerks, bicyclers, moms and dads and kids, policemen, national guardsmen, waitresses, movie ticket sellers and popcorn vendors (at the Prytania), and anyone else who seemed approachable, and almost everyone did.
Their mood, without exception, was upbeat. This in and of itself was a seachange from the typical big-city cynicism that pervades metro areas world-wide. But it's self-selecting: Those who have chosen to come back and live here are those with the most positive attitudes, about themselves and everything else. The feeling I came away with was: This city's gonna make it.
The weather stayed spring-like, with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s, and the highlight of these first 65 hours were the fleeting conversations I enjoyed with my baby brother John as he zipped through his days as senior paralegal at a law firm.
The longest concentrated period of time I saw him was just before he left for a trip out of town for New Year's, and we rambled through two hours of talking about subjects ranging from the dynamics of human attraction to our family history.
My second-favorite moment was at Felix's Uptown Oyster Bar - a satellite of the world-famous French Quarter establishment (not yet reopened, incidently, since the storm four months ago).
Uptown Felix's opened in October - two months after Katrina's wet kiss; it's a few blocks east of the Prytania Theatre. Inside, the featured oyster shucker - one of those cafe-au-lait creoles whose skill at cracking open the bivalves is surpassed only by his skill at making customers feel special, is hard at work but is so smooth and graceful he seems to be hardly working.
I approach him at the oyster bar and, seeing the place full, ask if i can get half a dozen and still make my movie down the street in 20 minutes. "Stay right where you are, I will put them right in front of you," he assures me. "I'm Paul."
Over the next 15 minutes, he continues to fill, at an even pace (never rushed, never stalled), every single one of the numerous orders for shucked oysters that others are barking at him.
Yet - get this - he asks what size I prefer (large) and then immediately chooses and then opens my first couple of "two-bite" oysters and sets them down in front of me while intoning: "Make yourself some sauce and grab some crackers. I'll keep one ahead of you."
During the next quarter hour, he regales me with stories of his family's experiences, both before and after the storm; informs me of his 60 years of working at Felix's (he started at 12); and speaks, in endearing terms, of his 14 grandchildren "by two wives and a girlfriend."
All the while he is keeping up with the constant requests to fill half-shell orders of sixes and twelves AND staying one ahead of me so I can eat and get out of there in time to keep my date with a big monkey down the street.
As my time with Paul drew to a close, I realized that I had just been part of an historic performance of classic proportions - that he has displayed every single night, six nights a week, for the past 60 years.
I tipped him twice the price of the meal and told him I would remember him and also mention him to others (which I now have). "I will remember you , too !" he said, smiling from under his Irish tam.
I then excused myself to the restroom, and when I went past him on my way out to catch King Kong at the Prytania a couple of blocks away, I noticed he was chatting up another walk-in customer - but as I passed he glanced my way and said - in his perfect rhythm of keeping his orders up and "one ahead" of his new customer, "enjoy your night, and come come back to see me."
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