New Orleans

I'm watching a show set in New Orleans. I remember before I travelled to New Orleans and saw it for myself. I think I had this romantic image of New Orleans in my mind. I expected a Super-Southern place where the jazz music played all the time and the food was unique and the people were lost in some antebellum torpor. I realize the image I had was somewhat Disneyesque.

And these Hollywood depictions are even further off. Why do the characters always speak in some pseudo-French Cajun accent? Why are they always leaving work for a party at a moment's notice? Sure, I had expectations which weren't born out by the reality I found when I finally travelled to New Orleans. But this is ridiculous.

But the reality of New Orleans was actually better. It was gritty and hot and unexpected. The people spoke with five or six different accents, the more prevalent of which was kind of a "bronx-ese" peppered with ya'lls, mams and other southernisms.

New Orleanians don't appreciate how unique they are or how special their culture is, even as compared to other places in the South. It is such a gumbo mix of different influences that there really isn't any place quite like it. It's place as the gateway or exit point of half of the continent has brought so many different pieces to the puzzle.

Georgia, where I live, had some of the same influences as New Orleans. There were Spanish and French and the British. The short-lived political experiment of the 1860's, the following Reconstruction and the ultimate return to whites-only rule that was crueler and meaner than what came before, if that was possible. I suppose it is arguable that Savannah and New Orleans are very similar in that regard.

But Georgia has a stronger kinship to its British birth and the French influence, so pervasive in Louisiana, was minimal in Georgia. The Battle of Bloody Marsh ended any continuing Spanish influence in Georgia. Other than a lot of Irish immigrants for whom we can thank for the wild St. Patrick's Day celebration in Savannah, most of the commerce in Savannah went out, in the form of cotton, rather than bringing a lot of different influences into Georgia.

But Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, is more like a third world country, rather than any other part of the United States. Its tropical, tied to the Caribbean as much as to the rest of the country. They even had their own Papa Doc Duvalier in the form of Huey Long.

I realize that most people from New Orleans don't accept any definition of their homeplace that comes from outsiders like myself. But a lot of the best depictions of New Orleans came from people who came to New Orleans and sojourned for a time and then left. Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Name Desire" comes closer than any piece of art to depicting the real New Orleans. And he grew up several hundred miles north up the Mississippi in St. Louis.

You just better not criticize it in their presence. Personally, I love it. I enjoy going there everytime. She is a fancy lady, down at the heels. Blanche Dubois and Stella Kawolski, all tied together. A feast for the senses and a great place in which to sojourn. I can't wait to go back someday. Maybe we'll make it back for Mardi Gras some year. Fun, fun, fun.