In 1989, Diedre and I were running our short-lived retail business, "Collage: A Third Dimension in Photography." It was late afternoon on a Saturday near the end of our run at the store after another less-than-stellar week of sales, Exasperated, we looked at each other and decided that we needed some kind of an adventure to shake us out of our doldrums. Diedre had accumulated a fair amount of airline miles, enough for a trip for two to almost anywhere in the country. We looked at each other, thought for a moment, and then came up with the same destination at virtually the same time:
"NEW ORLEANS!"
We decided to not even go home, that we'd just leave from the shop and head for the airport. Whatever we'd need in The Big Easy we'd just buy when we got there. It would be two days totally away from the business, and it would be GREAT!
As with so many wonderfully spontaneous ideas, reality soon got in the way. Stuff needed to be done that we couldn't get out of. The cats had to be fed. We must save our money.
In the end, we didn't go.
But now, 25 years later, we're finally having that adventure and taking our much-delayed trip to New Orleans. And let me tell you, it was some week.
My New Orleans history amounts to four previous trips to the Crescent City:
-March, 1961: As a 10-year old, I went on an Easter break trip down south with my family. It was the first time that I had ever seen drinking fountains labeled "For Coloreds Only." My main memories there are of a wonderful dinner at the legendary "Antoine's," and a run-in with a similarly aged African-American boy who was, to my surprise, out on his own at night on Bourbon Street trying to make money as a shoeshine boy. I remember that he brazenly came up to me and announced, "I bet I can tell you where you got your shoes!"
It got a big laugh. I never forgot that.
-August, 1972: While in the Advanced Individual Training in the army, a buddy and I received weekend passes and decided to do New Orleans. The military got 75% off rooms at the downtown Marriott, so a $64/night room (albeit a bit spendy in those days) cost my buddy and me only $8 each. The only other things I recall from that weekend were bars and strip clubs ... uh, I mean, ... museums and libraries ... yeah, that's the ticket, museums and libraries.
-January, 1975: This was the second of my three ill-fated Minnesota Vikings Super Bowl trips (they lost all three games), but this was definitely the worst one. On Friday afternoon, seven of us left Minneapolis in two cars just an hour before that year's "storm of the century" hit the Midwest. The highlights (or low lights, if you will) were as follows:-a 4 a.m. car accident in Peevely, MO, where we lost one car and two guys (not injured, just pissed off enough to fly home)
-a flat tire in Mississippi
-a hotel room 50 miles from the stadium with one bed for five guys, one electric outlet, and no shower curtain
-a cold, rainy Sunday with the game played outdoors because the Super Dome was still being built
-being left with five $20 game tickets which we couldn't sell for any more than $1 apiece
-sitting on soaking wet wooden benches
-having a ketchup packet for my expensively cold hot-dog explode all over my white pants at kick-off
After all this, I turned to my buddy, Duppy, and said, "If they win, it will all be worth it!"
Final score: Steelers-16, Vikings-6
-April, 1982: This trip turned out much better than the Super Bowl fiasco. Joining my Carleton basketball buddies, Steve Obaid and Bob Strauss, for the NCAA Basketball Tourney's Final Four (this time, of course, in the dome), we scored amazing tickets for the championship game via Jack Thurnblad, our college coach, that sat us in the midst of the North Carolina student rooting section for the game in which Michael Jordan, as a freshman, hit the winning shot with just a few seconds left to defeat Patrick Ewing and the Georgetown Hoyas. I still remember the raucous 2 a.m. atmosphere on Bourbon Street when we ran into Michael Jordan. As young as he was, he still exuded incredible confidence when he said to us, "I had the shot... I HAD the shot!"
OK, OK, enough about me. Let's talk New Orleans.
The first thing we noticed was that if you're one of the few people still into cigarette smoking, New Orleans is the place for you to go. They apparently haven't gotten the memo yet. In the bars, we surmised that smoking was not only allowed, it was encouraged. It seemed that you had to smoke or they wouldn't serve you liquor. That's so different than the other weird-rules-place, Utah. There, you have to eat to drink liquor. (Note that only one of the two previous state statements is really true.)
Our usual Monday routine after a hard Sunday of driving is to hang around the campground and regroup. I did battle with the site's obstinate WiFi while Diedre relaxed by doing yoga at our RV's water-side parking spot.
Tuesday was when we really got into seeing New Orleans. And if you're going to see The Big Easy, you've got to start with The French Quarter. We did our own walking tour of the area.
The French Quarter is an incredible melange of smells. On the plus side, you've got your aromatic deep-fried beignets, jambalaya, and gumbo odors emanating out of every restaurant you walk by. On the minus side, interspersed with those nasal wonders are the acrid, tears-inducing smells of mold, urine, vomit, and B.O. Diedre made the ultimate olfactory statement when she announced that compared to what we were smelling in New Orleans, she'd prefer the Mackinaw Island, Michigan, mixed scent of chocolate and horse manure any time.
Interesting.
During our walk, we saw, but did not go into, the Museum of Pharmacy. I mean, come on. What's next, the Museum of Aluminum Siding?
"If you're going to splurge," he said, "do it right!"
So I did it right and had my WONDERFUL New Orleans beignet for the first time in 53 years.
We finished the day with a beer and a Hurricane at Lafitte's Blacksmith Bar, the country's oldest continuously run bar. It goes back to 1772 (I think that was the last time they cleaned the men's room). It's one of the oldest surviving buildings in the French Quarter.
From there, we took the RV park's shuttle back home so that Diedre could try some "aerial" yoga. I, trying to also keep up with my fitness routine, went for some "Direct TV" sit-ups and waited for Wednesday, April 23. You'll soon see why.
Historical note: On April 23, 1914, the first Federal League (new, yet short-lived rival to Major League Baseball) baseball game was played in Chicago at the brand-spanking new "Weeghman Park." Two years later with the Federal League out of business, the National League Chicago Cubs took over the site, changed the name to "Wrigley Field," and have been failing to win the World Series ever since. Today would be 100 years since the opening of Wrigley Field.
Please ... a moment of silence ...
So 100 years later, we celebrated the beloved baseball building, Diedre by having her nails done and then taking a cooking class, and me by visiting the World War II Museum. Makes sense, doesn't it?
The idea of Diedre taking a cooking class seems about the same as Lebron James going to a summer basketball camp. But that's what she wanted to do. And since I would be the recipient of all that good Cajun food (the class was teaching gumbo, chicken Creole, and pralines (probably the best we've ever eaten, although we found out that we've been mispronouncing it all our lives: it's "praw'-leens", not "pray'-leens"), who was I to argue with The New Orleans School of Cooking?
On arriving at the gigantic museum campus, you're first greeted by an immense slab of twisted iron; it turns out that it's a wall column fragment from the north tower of the World Trade Center. The emotions only grow from there.
One of the most interesting things I found out about the war was the American build-up of troops in England. My dad was there for D-Day, although he went across the channel as a member of Patton's 3rd Army a few weeks later in order to give some of the boys a rest. Anyway, there were 1.5 MILLION American troops in England by D-Day. But for all that we were doing for the Allied effort, there was a fair amount of resentment of the Americans by the average British soldier. After all, we were being paid four times what the British troops were making. Beyond that, our guys paid a lot of attention to the British women, much to the British men's chagrin. The resentful English commonly referred to the American soldiers as "overpaid, oversexed, and over here!"
Another fun fact: President Teddy Roosevelt's son, age 56, was a Brigadier General. Just like his dad, he was there for the action. He was on the first wave of assault forces to land on Utah beach. He fared better than those at Omaha Beach: there, 2,200 men, one of every 19 soldiers who landed at OB, died. So sad.
The campus also included a tremendous one-hour, "Four-D" movie (not "three" but FOUR!) produced by Tom Hanks on a giant screen. It was moving and excellent. (The fourth dimension is adding sensory - shaking of the seats during explosions and the stage raising and lowering things like canons and other physical items.)
On Thursday, we started off walking along the Mississippi looking for our old friends, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. When we came upon the Natchez Steamboat, we remembered that today, one day and 100 years after the opening of Wrigley Field, was the centennial birthday of Fritz Diederich, Diedre's father. Happy birthday, Fritz!
After the bonus of being allowed yet a second tasting of the wonderful beignets, I then made my way with Diedre over to the French Market. The Market dates to 1791, although it was even long before the city was established in 1718 that it existed as an Indian trading post. It was not as farmers' markety as we'd have liked, but we checked it out anyway. I bought a pair of sunglasses there, so if you'd like to enter the "Alexx Set-Down" pool by sending us a dollar, the winner will be the person who guesses closest to the date and time when I lose these sunglasses. And let me tell you, they weren't cheap ... they took up the better part of my $5-bill.
Cheering for the Zephyrs was a bit confusing. Their nickname is the "Z's," so when all the fans were yelling that, we thought they had fallen asleep and were snoring. The Zephyrs looked good as they came out of their slump and scored a lot in beating the Storm Chasers 12-8. It evened our home team record at 1-1.
On Friday, April 25, we were excited to hear how my play, "The Woes of Kilimanjaro ... Country Club" had done as a fund-raiser back in Scottsdale for the Mayo Clinic Transplant House. We're still waiting for word on that. We also waited around AB1 as we had some RV repair done by the nicest and most southern-accented guy you'll ever meet.
From there, we stopped at the Rib Room for a quick cocktail. While pretending to look for the ladies' room, DK stole a praline from the hostess's desk. She declared it also the best ever, apparently tying it with the New Orleans School of Cooking's praw'-leen efforts.
History note: Diedre and I had been married on July 6, 1991, in a Hawaiian themed wedding in my parents backyard in Minneapolis. And ever since that date, we've always worn our wedding finery wherever we were on our anniversary. Only now, my incredibly crafty bride has figured out that the mere mention of our anniversary seems to put people (read: restaurants) in a most giving mood. So in "Part I of the Anniversary That Would Not Die," Diedre came upon a scheme that was technically honest: she informed the hostess that it was our "23rd anniversary .... trip." No matter that our actual anniversary "day" was still two+ months away. It was, indeed, our anniversary "trip," so Antoine's gave us free champagne and pomme frites (glorified French fries). I'm sure there will be many more of these "anniversary trip" scams to follow this summer.
The restaurant has an incredible amount of history adorning the walls, no surprise since they were already open for 21 years when the Civil War broke out. They even had a framed newspaper front page on the wall from the day Lincoln was assassinated; they had already been open 25 years at that time. Other dated photos of people who had dined there included Admiral Byrd before he went to the South Pole, Groucho Harpo, and Chico Marx, Ty Cobb, Hopalong Cassidy, Jerry Lewis, General Patton in 1942, JFK and LBJ in the early 60's, and the Pope in 1987. There were also adjoining photos of Barney Fife and George W. Bush; when I pointed that out to Diedre, her problem was telling who was who.
Saturday, April 26, was our last day in New Orleans, so we decided to, much like the Union army had done 150 years ago, divide and conquer. I dropped Diedre off in the French Quarter at the "Langlois Culinary Crossroads Cooking Class" where she added to her already immense Cajun repertoire by learning the in's and out's of artichoke soup, jambalaya, and praline bites (which are actually more cookie than candy).
In the meantime, instead of following Sherman on a march to the sea, I made my way across town to the Civil War Museum, the oldest operating museum in Louisiana. It had opened on January 8, 1891, probably just a few weeks before basketball was invented. They had an incredible amount of relics from the war: tons of guns, swarms of uniforms, and a lot of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis's stuff. Old JD was a much more accomplished man than I had ever realized: he was a graduate of West Point, fought in the Indian wars, and was named Secretary of War for the U.S. before the Civil war ("irony" bell rings). He was the only president the Confederacy ever recognized.
Their flag, on the other hand, was not so unique. I found out that the flag which we've all come to know as the "Confederate States of America" flag was, in reality, just one of 10 flags the South used during the war. The flag we recognize was actually the "Confederate Battle Flag for the Army of Tennessee" and was just used from 1864-65. It was only AFTER the war that this design was adopted as the official flag of the United Confederate Veterans, so that's why most people refer to it as "the Confederate flag." It was never, however, the official flag of the Confederacy. So, you learn something every day.Diedre and I then met up in the city's beautiful and historic "Garden District" where we took the prescribed walking tour. Among the wonderfully large and old southern homes we walked by were ones owned by Sandra Bullock, John Goodman, and Archie Manning. We stopped by the Commander's Palace, a huge and lovely aqua-colored house which was the starting point and catalyst for the careers of great chefs such as Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse, and surprisingly, Chef Boyardee.
And just as last year's trip was best remembered by all the references and sites having to do with John Wayne, so too has this one been with Jefferson Davis. Sure enough on our walking tour, we stopped in front of the house in which the old faux president passed away in 1889.
To celebrate our last night in town, I dragged Diedre back to the World War II Museum where they were performing "The Andrews Brothers Show," a recreation of a USO show at the recreation of a Stage Door Canteen that was all the rage for servicemen in most Allied countries during WW2. The singers were great and the atmosphere was so realistic to the time. And if you're counting, tonight's show makes the score: Theatre (Diedre) - 6, Baseball (Alexx) - 2.On to Florida.
