| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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It is the oldest section of New Orleans (hence the name 'Le Vieux Carre') and is mostly brick buildings with ornate ironwork balconies or galleries. (A gallery has supports to the ground; a balcony does not.) At one time all the buildings were wood, but two disastrous fires changed that. The first destroyed 80% of the buildings. Then they were rebuild and a few years later the second fire destroyed 50%. We saw the oldest wooden building in the Quarter, Madame John's Legacy, so named because it was supposedly the 'severance pay' given to the mistress of a certain Creole gentleman when he finally married. Apparently this sort of arrangement was quite common and the financial terms of such agreements often negotiated at 'quadroon balls,' where the Creole men would go to meet the 'available' quadroon women. (I realize the term 'quadroon' has gone out of fashion but it would be extremely difficult to describe any of this without it.) Whether the story of the house was fact or fiction wasn't clear, since our guide seemed to be talking in part about the novel CREOLE DAYS set in New Orleans which was so unfavorably received in New Orleans that the author had to leave town.
At the end of the tour, the guide finished up in the courtyard of his house. Though not at all obvious from the street, all the homes have interior courtyards in the Spanish style. When building here, ventilation was a major concern. Now all buildings have air conditioning, though the units are not visible from the street, but project into the courtyard instead. This is undoubtedly another regulation to maintain the appearance of the Quarter as it was. Of course, it's harder to limit the businesses and so there's a disproportionate number of T-shirt stores and souvenir shops. There are also a lot of antique shops.
After the tour was over, we walked back along Bourbon Street (named after the Duke, not the drink), now pretty much the T-shirt center of the world. We rested for a couple of hours in the hotel, then took a cab to Tipitina's.
Tipitina's was featured in THE BIG EASY. In that film it was a glitzy nightspot with fine wine and fancy food. In reality, it's a run-down bar that serves beer in bottles or plastic cups, has an exposed ceiling, dishes up its food on paper plates, and needs a coat of paint--but it has wonderful music. We were there for the regular Sunday night fais-do-do, which runs from 5 to 9 and includes red beans and rice during the break. Bruce Daigrepont was playing and the music was continuous except for a half-hour break in the middle. As Dave said, we got a lot of music for our $4 cover charge.
Mark and I tried a couple of dances but Mark claimed that there were too many experts on the floor and he needed to practice more. At one point we saw a couple dancing in which the man stood still while the woman did all the steps and Mark said he could do that. Dale and Jo did more dances than we did, many of them on the second floor balcony, which was less crowded and a better place for beginners to practice than the main dance floor which was full and overflowed between the tables and practically out the door. Everyone was very enthusiastic and even those of us who didn't dance had a good time.
We left about 9 and hailed a cab--they know when Tipitina's lets out and show up then. Then back to the hotel and sleep.
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Mark, Kate, and I had breakfast at Mother's. It was very crowded since there were two conventions in nearby hotels at the time--a missionary convention in the Sheraton and the CWA convention in the Marriott. I had grits and debris. Debris is the stuff left in the slicer when you slice roast beef for sandwiches; it's sort of like having pot roast for breakfast.
After breakfast the four of us took the St. Charles streetcar to the zoo. The streetcar is very old and made of wood with wooden seats. (Actually , there are many different cars, but you catch the drift.) We want through the Garden District, where the rich Americans built their homes after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Canal Street forms the dividing line between the French Quarter and the 'American Quarter.' There is no canal--the man who claimed he was going to build one ran off with the money instead. Canal Street is as wide as it is (the widest main street in the United States) with the neutral zone down the middle, because it really did serve as a boundary between two warring factions. But I digress.
The zoo is at the back of Audubon Park, which is across the street from Tulane and Loyola Universities. We took the shuttle bus from the streetcar stop to the zoo entrance.
The New Orleans zoo is rated third in the country, though until recently it was much lower. The sorts of cages you saw in CAT PEOPLE seem to be gone, replaced by moated areas with trees and such, though they're still fairly small. The elephant enclosure in particular is far too small--this seems to be true of elephant enclosures everywhere. the North American and African grazing animals seem to get the most space, but the hippos could barely turn around in the pool they were given. The Louisiana Swamp exhibit was something different than you find in most zoos.
Part way through it started to rain so we took shelter under an awning for about a half hour. When it eased up we finished the zoo, getting down about 3 PM. The cruise back to the city didn't leave until 5 PM, so this gave us time to see the exhibit at the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane. This exhibit consists of forty display cases along the fourth floor hall of the geology building which contain Central American artifacts. When we arrived there was no one else there, not even any staff, so we had the opportunity to see something without competing with tons of other people.
In addition to the Middle America exhibit, there were also some fossilized skeletons on the second and third floors and water fountains with cold, rather than lukewarm, water.
At 4:40 we went back to the zoo to pick up the cruise. While walking through the zoo, we met Jo and Dale, who had also gone to the zoo and were taking the cruise back. The boat, the Cotton Blossom, left at 5 PM and paddled its way downstream to the Canal Street dock, arriving about 5:45. Most of what we saw, again, was industrial and commercial rather than anything resembling Huck Finn. We did, however, see the river upstream of Canal Street where before we saw the downstream part.
For dinner, the six of us went to Olde New Awlins cooking. I had blackened redfish and Mark had fried redfish. We also shared an appetizer of alligator sausage. The sausage tasted like Italian sausage (it did contain some pork because alligator by itself is too lean). For dessert people got lemon crepes or peanut butter cream pie. Our waiter was very outgoing and enthusiastic and we had a good time as well as a good dinner.
After dinner we went on to Preservation Hall. Neither Mark nor I is a major jazz fan, but it did seem like the thing to do in new Orleans. Imagine a hall like that in Lincoln Center. Got it? Now imagine the janitor's closet for that hall. That's what Preservation Hall is like, except not as fancy. Preservation Hall is about 20' by 30' with a couple of rows of benches, a couple of rows of cushions, and the rest standing room. The walls haven't been repaired since jazz was first invented (forget papered or painted at all). There is no air conditioning and the one fan doesn't put much of a dent in the New Orleans heat.
Kate and I managed to get seats on the cushions. The band that night was not the Preservation Hall Jazz Band but rather a Preservation Hall Jazz Band, there being five or six groups who play there. For $2 you can stay from 8 to 12:30 or until the heat drives you out. Mark and Dave left after the first set (each set lasts about thirty minutes and has about six pieces). Kate and I stayed through three sets; Dale and Jo stayed even longer. The second and third sets had some better solos than the first, which seemed sort of bland by comparison, or at least seemed as if the band were still getting up to speed. One might almost think they were saving their energy for the more serious fans who stayed, while the tourists who just wanted to say they had been there left after one set. The clarinetist (I think his name was Randy White) had a great solo of 'Alabama Jubilee' in the second set and was the best of the band in my opinion, though it seemed that the trumpeter (Wendell Brunious, I think--I didn't write down the names at the time) was the 'lead' player.
Throughout the first two sets, a five-year-old in back of us kept talking and asking to leave. His parents were obviously bigger jazz fans than he, having come from France and not wanting to miss this, but finally they gave up and left. Not only did this make it quieter, but Kate and I managed to grab their seats, which made us a lot more comfortable.
One behavior of Brunious' that I found distracting was that he seemed to get distracted easily. He would talk to people while other people were soloing and would even interrupt himself to tell people not to use flashbulbs. While it's true that people should not have been using flashbulbs, interrupting the music to tell them that seems peculiar.
We left about 10:30. I suspect that the aura of Preservation Hall is greater than the actuality of the music played there, but I will leave that to the jazz experts to decide.
We stopped in an incredibly crowded A&P--crowded not with people, but with shelves. Square footage is at a premium in the Quarter, and so the shelves are very close together. Then back to the hotel to rejoin Mark and Dave, who were not carried off by trolls on their way back.
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Up early for our swamp tour. We couldn't get breakfast at Wendy's because the line was too long, so I got an over-priced coffee in the hotel lobby instead. The bus was supposed to pick us up between 8 and 8:15 AM but didn't show up until almost 8:30, by which time people were convinced that the driver had gone by the hotel at 30 miles per hour, glanced out the window, not seen any people with big signs saying, 'We want the swamp tour,' said, 'Oops, no one here,' and kept going. However, this turned out not to be the case.
After the four of us were settled in the van, the driver had to pick up a dozen more people at various hotels in the French Quarter. Because of all the one-way streets and almost what seemed like poor planning on the driver's part in the order that he did the pickups, we got a pretty thorough tour of the Quarter. Finally everyone was collected and we left the city to head southwest.
As we drove, our guide/driver told us again of the history of New Orleans. One item I forgot to mention earlier was that the two big fires were during the Spanish rule which is why the homes all have the Spanish-style courtyard--they date from that time. In the Garden District west of Canal Street, the post-1803 Americans built their homes with the lawns and gardens in front of the houses rather than inside, hence the name.
When the levees were built up, it became possible to settle this area. However, it also increased the current, particularly as bayous were closed off from the river, and this is leading to major erosion of the coastline. A complicated system of spillways and drainage ditches complicates the problem.
As we drove through Marrero and Westwego we saw a lot of Vietnamese stores and businesses. |
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