In the days before Katrina struck I, like a lot of others was concerned, then as it hit I breathed a sigh of relief. Until the levies broke.
My first thoughts were for a good friend who lives in the area with her family, and we all fretted and worried and called her over and over until we received word late last night they were all safe and well. It was then my thoughts turned to the city of New Orleans.
Everyone who knows me knows I have a long and enduring love for the city that care forgot. New Orleans has held my fascination since I was a small child, as a teenager I read everything I could get my hands on when it came to New Orleans, and when I actually visited the city for the first time in my mid twenties I felt as if I come home.
I have been privileged to visit the area several times since, and with my Pooh I was lucky enough to be able to explore many nooks and crannies that I otherwise not have been able to. I love this place, with it’s air of old world elegance and decay. It’s free spirit and joy of life everywhere you look.
The mist in the mornings. The smell of the river and cooking, and the city so alive, when you walk the streets you can’t help but feel the weight of time, wonder about the many feet that have taken the same path you are.
The blacksmith’s tavern, purported to be a haunt of the Pirate Jean Lafitte. One of the oldest structures in the quarter, dark and smoky where one can sit and enjoy a mint julep and feel a bit mysterious and naughty.
On our last visit there, I dragged Pooh to St Louis No.1 where the great voodoo queen Marie
Levau is said to be buried, I chased both a pigeon and a rat the size of a Maine coon. (Did not catch either much to pooh’s relief.) Marie’s tomb was decorated with tokens left, wishes people have asked for. Who will leave those tokens now?
I bored him nattering about the Baroness Pontalba and her famous buildings and went on and on about Napoleon’s death mask. Poor pooh, all he wanted was a t-shirt and a sandwich but he indulged me.
The Court of Two Sisters, where they have the
most wonderful brunches, now flooded with water. As is the gun shop on Royal street I had to physically drag my hubby out of before he spent our life savings. The Lalaurie house where ghosts of murdered slaves are said to roam restlessly, Pirates Alley, where Pooh and I found a boot I am still convinced belonged to one of the Lafitte brothers. The street car that inspired Tennessee Williams. The superdome that sheltered so many from Mother Nature’s fury.
The Acme Oyster house, Jackson brewery, Congo square, French market, Café Du Monde, the Cabildo, Cathedral, and Presbytere. Storyville, where prostitution was alive and well at the turn of the century. So many places, so much history, now battered and drowned.
The places I mention are well known, but New Orleans is stuffed stories, memories and lives. So many lives, now lost, whose stories we will never know. Mothers and fathers. Sisters, brothers and children. How many will never be found? My heart weeps with the tragedy of those lost souls, and for those left to carry on.
And carry on they will, the people of NOLA are a hearty, brassy lot. They will pull themselves from this, rebuild, and repair. There will be many more drunken Mardi Gras, cheap beads, bare breasts and college students. New Orleans will survive, changed forever, but still standing.
