My best friend, Willie was from New Orleans (Nu’awlins). He was my best friend in this world. I met Willie in the Navy and he remained my best friend for 27 years until he died of cancer in 1989.
He talked about New Orleans all the time. He painted a picture in my mind of a magical city where the people laughed at the cares of the world and would stop any and all activities just to go watch a parade, so many parades. At my first Mardi Gras, a man came walking through the crowd in cowboy chaps and nothing else. And the women…well, I won’t even go there.
When I got out of the Navy I went to New Orleans, and I stayed, many years. When I left there I brought a wife and daughter with me. New Orleans is addictive. One never really leaves New Orleans. Sometimes still, in my mind, I walk down Esplanade Avenue to the Ruby Red’s at the top of the Quarter and have the best hamburger on the planet. (*note on my last trip to New Orleans, I discovered that the Ruby Red’s is no longer there).
I miss standing out in front of Preservation Hall and listening to the Jazz bands play for free. I miss walking along the Shore of Ponchartrain Lake. I miss seeing the street cars on Magazine and Canal Street. I don’t miss Mardi Gras. I got into a fight every time I went downtown to Mardi Gras.
I was in old Tulane stadium that day in 1970 when Tom Dempsey kicked a 63 yard field goal. The Saints won the game (one of only two they won that year). I hugged a black man I had never met and never saw again, and he hugged me back.
In New Orleans I have seen grown men fight each other over a worthless plastic gold coin tossed from a Mardi Gras float. I saw two kids about ten years old, scramble for one of these coins. One kid was faster than the other one and scooped up the coin. The other kid started yelling about it and his father told the kid who’d snatched the coin to give it up.
The kid refused and the older man called him a racial slur and took the coin away from him. I told the man that the kid had gotten the coin fair and square and to give it back to him. He called me a ni***r-lover and said f**k you. He was at least 20-years older than I was, about 45 and I was 25.
I hit him between his eyes and he went down hard in the street. I took the coin out of his hand and gave it back to the other kid and told him to haul ass, which he did. The man’s wife started yelling for the police so I grabbed my wife’s hand and we hauled ass, as well. Discretion is the better part of valor, I’ve heard tell.
At a place called “La Casa de Los Marinos” (The House of the Sailors), on Decatur street in the Quarter, the crowd was so thick that one had to flow with it wherever it might lead. One Saturday night I was moving out of the place, my wife just ahead of me. A line of people in front of us, face to face, was moving in. I noticed a look of shock on my wife’s face and I looked closer and saw that a man in the line coming into the place had put his hands on her butt. The two lines moved slowly on and the man came face to face with me. I upper-cut him hard in the groin. The pain apparently was so intense that he could not yell. He appeared to pass out but could not fall down, the surge of people being so great. Again the two lines moved on. Neither the man, nor anyone in the place, ever saw who or what had hit him. I think drunkenness might have played a part in the general oblivion to the event.
I stopped going to Mardi Gras because I just don’t like huge crowds and crowd size was often estimated at a million people in downtown New Orleans on Fat Tuesday.
I fought a kangaroo in New Orleans (at an auditorium) on a dare from a friend. They were offering money (I don’t remember how much). The rule was you had to approach the thing and hit him (you couldn’t just dance around). I was just drunk enough to think I could beat him. I was wrong. I moved in, bobbing and weaving, and when I got close enough, I threw my best right punch right at his face; and the lights went out. The little bastard knocked me out faster than a cat can lick its ass.
Every time I go back to New Orleans, I drive up Rampart Street past that auditorium, that is now the Louie Armstrong Center, and I think about that kangaroo. I bet I could take him now.
I pretty much finished my crazy years in the Big Easy.
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss her each night and day
I know I'm not wrong because the feeling's
Getting stronger the longer I stay away
Miss the moss-covered vines, tall sugar pines
Where mockingbirds used to sing
I'd love to see that old lazy Mississippi
Running in the spring
Moonlight on the bayous
Creole tunes fill the air
I dream about magnolias in June
And I'm wishin’ I was there
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that's where you left your heart
And there's one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans
Billie Holiday 1947
He talked about New Orleans all the time. He painted a picture in my mind of a magical city where the people laughed at the cares of the world and would stop any and all activities just to go watch a parade, so many parades. At my first Mardi Gras, a man came walking through the crowd in cowboy chaps and nothing else. And the women…well, I won’t even go there.
When I got out of the Navy I went to New Orleans, and I stayed, many years. When I left there I brought a wife and daughter with me. New Orleans is addictive. One never really leaves New Orleans. Sometimes still, in my mind, I walk down Esplanade Avenue to the Ruby Red’s at the top of the Quarter and have the best hamburger on the planet. (*note on my last trip to New Orleans, I discovered that the Ruby Red’s is no longer there).
I miss standing out in front of Preservation Hall and listening to the Jazz bands play for free. I miss walking along the Shore of Ponchartrain Lake. I miss seeing the street cars on Magazine and Canal Street. I don’t miss Mardi Gras. I got into a fight every time I went downtown to Mardi Gras.
I was in old Tulane stadium that day in 1970 when Tom Dempsey kicked a 63 yard field goal. The Saints won the game (one of only two they won that year). I hugged a black man I had never met and never saw again, and he hugged me back.
In New Orleans I have seen grown men fight each other over a worthless plastic gold coin tossed from a Mardi Gras float. I saw two kids about ten years old, scramble for one of these coins. One kid was faster than the other one and scooped up the coin. The other kid started yelling about it and his father told the kid who’d snatched the coin to give it up.
The kid refused and the older man called him a racial slur and took the coin away from him. I told the man that the kid had gotten the coin fair and square and to give it back to him. He called me a ni***r-lover and said f**k you. He was at least 20-years older than I was, about 45 and I was 25.
I hit him between his eyes and he went down hard in the street. I took the coin out of his hand and gave it back to the other kid and told him to haul ass, which he did. The man’s wife started yelling for the police so I grabbed my wife’s hand and we hauled ass, as well. Discretion is the better part of valor, I’ve heard tell.
At a place called “La Casa de Los Marinos” (The House of the Sailors), on Decatur street in the Quarter, the crowd was so thick that one had to flow with it wherever it might lead. One Saturday night I was moving out of the place, my wife just ahead of me. A line of people in front of us, face to face, was moving in. I noticed a look of shock on my wife’s face and I looked closer and saw that a man in the line coming into the place had put his hands on her butt. The two lines moved slowly on and the man came face to face with me. I upper-cut him hard in the groin. The pain apparently was so intense that he could not yell. He appeared to pass out but could not fall down, the surge of people being so great. Again the two lines moved on. Neither the man, nor anyone in the place, ever saw who or what had hit him. I think drunkenness might have played a part in the general oblivion to the event.
I stopped going to Mardi Gras because I just don’t like huge crowds and crowd size was often estimated at a million people in downtown New Orleans on Fat Tuesday.
I fought a kangaroo in New Orleans (at an auditorium) on a dare from a friend. They were offering money (I don’t remember how much). The rule was you had to approach the thing and hit him (you couldn’t just dance around). I was just drunk enough to think I could beat him. I was wrong. I moved in, bobbing and weaving, and when I got close enough, I threw my best right punch right at his face; and the lights went out. The little bastard knocked me out faster than a cat can lick its ass.
Every time I go back to New Orleans, I drive up Rampart Street past that auditorium, that is now the Louie Armstrong Center, and I think about that kangaroo. I bet I could take him now.
I pretty much finished my crazy years in the Big Easy.
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss her each night and day
I know I'm not wrong because the feeling's
Getting stronger the longer I stay away
Miss the moss-covered vines, tall sugar pines
Where mockingbirds used to sing
I'd love to see that old lazy Mississippi
Running in the spring
Moonlight on the bayous
Creole tunes fill the air
I dream about magnolias in June
And I'm wishin’ I was there
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that's where you left your heart
And there's one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans
Billie Holiday 1947
