Powdered Sugar and Rum: July in New Orleans
This city won't ever die
Just as long as our heart be strong
“This
City” - Steve Earle
Link to song:
On a long hot July weekend, my husband and I made our way
along the Gulf Coast, through separate and shared memory lanes on our way to
New Orleans. Remnants of my “Air Force
brat” husband’s childhood Biloxi memories mingled with post-Katrina
development.
My own first visit to New Orleans was in the mid 90s. Like this visit, it was July. July in New Orleans is hot, oppressively hot.
The humidity makes the air feel thick and heavy.
On that first visit, my expectations of New Orleans were
shaped by stories of Mardi Gras and imagined scenes from novels. My best girlfriend and I drove the into the
city on a long 4th of July weekend.
I was taking a quick trip away from graduate school summer classes and
she was looking to be distracted from a recently ended relationship.
That weekend we would wander the streets and soak up the
sights and sounds of the city. We heard
live music at the House of Blues, had our fortunes told in a French Quarter tea
room, and tasted beignets at Café Du Monde. One day we stood in line for
tickets to see Maya Angelou speak at the Essence Festival. Tupac Shakur’s body was barely cold and Maya
Angelou had plenty to say about his departure from the world. OJ Simpson was only a few years removed from
his acquittal. He was not in the room but Johnny Cochran was there – every head
turned to watch him take his seat to hear Maya Angelou.
It was a Sugar Bowl showdown that next drew me west along the
I10 Highway. I had two sets of tickets and wore two shirts. One ticket was
secured through the New Orleans Saints organization and they didn’t care what
shirt I wore. The other ticket was from a Seminole Golden Chief and for that
reason the shirt on the top layer was garnet and gold. Beneath that shirt was an orange and blue
layer. I was with graduate school
friends from Florida State but my first loyalties to my undergraduate alma
mater were being sorely tested. Halfway through the game, buoyed by the Gator
lead in a game that would end with a UF win over FSU and a 52-20 score, I took
off the top shirt and stashed it in my bag.
One friend looked at me and half seriously said, “It is a good thing you
have the car keys. You’d be walking home if you were not the driver tonight.”
A few years later a new boyfriend surprised me with tickets
to see Jimmy Buffett play in New Orleans.
At Margaritaville before the show, I watched Buffett surprise kitchen
staff with a walk through. The next year, I would see Buffett play a set on the
campaign stump at a small commercial airport back in Tallahassee. To this day, I always want to listen to Jimmy
Buffett when I drive to New Orleans.
In the next decade, I would return to New Orleans three more
times. Two visits were pre-Katrina. One
was a few years after the storm. These
visits were for work. On these trips, I
would duck out of the conference proceedings and take long walks through the
city. One evening, I stumbled on a crew
filming an episode of “Treme”. Another
day, I watched Anthony Bourdain enjoy a band’s set at Quarter Fest.
On that first visit after Hurricane Katrina, I saw a city
still in the process of rebuilding. There was places in the city that reminded
me of the devastation I had seen in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew. I did
not go down to the Lower Ninth Ward on that visit.
This summer I had the chance to return to New Orleans with
my husband. We had never been to New
Orleans together. He had only been to
the city once in college. His visit was also for a Sugar Bowl, a few years
after the game I attended. He and his friends had only spent the day in the
city.
Our long weekend included a Garth Brooks concert and a lot
of culinary tourism – we ate and drink around the city. Despite the near 100 degree heat and swampy
humidity, we did a lot of walking. My
husband enjoyed his first beignets at Café Du Monde. We marveled together at the historical wonders
of the World War Two museum.
On our second day in town, we drove over to the Lower Ninth
Ward and spent some somber moments thinking about the homes and lives lost in
the storm’s aftermath. We had spent the
first few years of our marriage as Red Cross disaster response volunteers
closer to home but there, in the shadow of a fortified post-Katrina levee on a
hot July day, it was hard for us to fathom the horror that residents faced
during those dark times. The spray paint
on abandoned houses and bare foundations where homes once stood – next to new
modular development topped with solar panels – was a stark reminder that this
was a community that would likely never return to its pre-storm life.
A few hours later we would stand in a warehouse that had
been inundated with over ten feet of water during Katrina. There, in the dark recesses of the Old New
Orleans Rum Factory, we listened to stories of survival and recovery.
On our way home we stopped in Kiln, Mississippi. We had
secured a morning appointment for a tour of the Lazy Magnolia Brewery. This
brewery also had a Katrina recovery story. On the day of our visit, the
business was robust and fully recovered from the flood waters.
The Gulf Coast tour of 2015 has concluded and the taste of
beignets is only a sweet powdered sugar memory on a cloudy late summer North
Florida afternoon. If I am very quiet and listen very carefully, I can almost hear
Jimmy Buffett singing about New Orleans’ lunches that last forever.
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