9:03 a.m. - 2022-12-26
The Quarter
It was the first (and only) vehicle I've driven new off the lot. A Dallas-Cowboys-blue-and-silver Chevy van. With captain's chairs and mini-blinds, a bench seat that converted to a bed and a hi-fi cassette player. So the three of us were rollin' to New Orleans in fine style...
~ ~ ~
My previous stop in The Big Easy had been on a road trip from NYC to Texas w/a high-school buddy, and one memory of that visit persists. We were staying at a Travelodge underneath a freeway overpass, and had awakened to find an ambulance parked next to a cop-car in the lot. They were fishing a body out of the pool. This underscored a grim aspect of our trip. We had unintentionally hit four of the top-five US murder capitols en route: DC, Atlanta, New Orleans and Houston (sorry Detroit you were a bit out-of-the-way). Also, what's more quintessentially American than a (corpse optional) motel-pool underneath a freeway overpass?(Oh yeah and there is another memory from that trip, I just don't happen to remember it. Cory did though, and he regaled me w/the details on our way out of town. We were too-many drinks into the night at a beat strip club in a less-traveled part of the French Quarter, and I'd fallen into conversation with one of the dancers. I didn't catch her name, but I do remember she performed in Indian costume. Dressed as a “Tchoupitoula princess” she'd told me, right before my memory-reel ran out of film. Shortly thereafter Cory came out of the gent's to find both of us missing. Apparently we'd adjourned to a stoop outside the bar. I presume this was because it was quieter there and, given my interest in anthropology, a better place to discuss the Tchoupitoula tribe and their role in Louisiana history. Although to hear Cory tell it, “You guys were about to make-out”. So he put his hand on my arm and mentioned that we had to hit the road early tomorrow. She tightened her grip on the other and insisted, “We're fine, I'll bring him back in the morning”. A brief tug-of-war ensued before stout and ever-stalwart Cory prevailed and dragged me [protesting, I'm told] back to the motel. He also mentioned that the less-flattering streetlights had confirmed what he'd suspected in the dark club: my would-be Pocahontas was a tranny. C'est la vie...)
~ ~ ~
That had been my brief taste of the town, and this was my companions' maiden visit, so sure…we did a bunch of touristy shit and it was great. I remember stumbling across Preservation Hall, which none of us had even heard of, it was just an open door with music and blue light spilling out onto St. Peter's Street. There was no cover charge back then (they passed a hat) and we sat together on a bench, spellbound before one of the tightest quartets I've ever heard. I also remember dining at a joint on Bourbon Street...a brass-and-mirrored room with a Dixieland band on stage, full of bright lights and gumbo-steam. We were seated by a window on the sidewalk when a tall, lanky passer-by caught Carolyn's eye. She pointed him out to Raya and they exchanged a quick look before both leapt from the table and ran out the door in pursuit of the poor fellow, leaving me alone w/three plates of étouffée. It was the actor Nicolas Cage (Valley Girl, Raising Arizona). David Lynch was filming “Wild At Heart” on location in New Orleans and, as I remember it, the dude was actually wearing that same jacket. (I realize this seems unlikely except...Nicolas Cage.)And I definitely remember me and Carolyn getting alcohol poisoning. A morning I'd rather forget, but I did somehow pull it together long enough to drive us from the motel back to the French Quarter (because...vacation?) and park right in front of The Clover Grill. Where we crawled into a booth and had two greasy, life-sustaining cheeseburgers before crawling back in the van, shutting all the mini-blinds, folding out the bed and laying down to recover while Raya, who's not a drinker and was in annoyingly fine spirits, set out to explore. We wouldn't emerge until late afternoon, as the neon warmed up and the streets were beginning to fill-again with tourists. Whereupon we found the nearest bar and climbed gingerly back in the saddle for the evening's first cautious, medicinal sips.
Raya, meanwhile, had been taking the pulse of the town. She'd talked to street musicians and market-vendors. She met some gutter-punks who were squatting in a condemned mansion on Esplanade St., she'd gotten the lowdown on the local scene. Thanks to her tendency to talk to everyone, about anything, we would meet a lot of locals on that trip. The standout individual though had to be Ricardo. We ran across him on Bourbon, where he was was working as a sidewalk barker, hustling customers for a “live sex show”. He wore buckskin trousers with leather lacing up the sides and a suit-coat of patchwork, harlequin-patterned, denim. I'm pretty sure it had tails. He had long hair, a faint mustache and a tendency to shift his weight from one foot to another while he spoke; dancing to the rhythm of his own voice. He'd been headed home from Costa Rica on an epic motorcycle trip when he swung by New Orleans for Mardis Gras. But it seems this year's carnival had gone a bit sideways, and he'd found himself on the wrong side of the law. So he was out on bail, waiting for a court date. That's only my summary though...Ricardo's version was rife with lurid detail and delivered with an anachronistic affectation that seemed at-odds with his Bronx accent. “What a curious character”, I thought as we walked away.
We put our departure off until the last possible minute, spending one final afternoon buying voodoo chatchkes and beignet mix and what have you. The plan was to leave late and I would drive us home overnight (oh, youth). But not before we'd hit one last spot to raise a toast to our trip...
~ ~ ~
I could have sworn I'd parked the van here. On this quiet residential street. Granted, with its flat facades and shuttered doors and windows, Creole Cottage architecture does lend itself to a disorienting sameness, but a thorough survey of the surrounding blocks had brought us back to the same spot. The spot where I now noticed a small pile of broken window-glass. Bad sign.The NOPD's 8th precinct building sits in the middle of the French Quarter and, like everything around it, has a storied history. The high ceilings of the plantation-era room we walked into made the night-duty desk seem small, but so too did the night-duty cop. He had a flushed complexion and white hair; picture “Heat Of The Night” era Carroll O'Connor if he'd played football at LSU. His accent was so thick I thought he had a boiled egg in his mouth, but I got the gist of what he told us. Apparently a lot of people “lose” their cars in the Quarter, only to find them later, in the sober light of morning. We assured him we hadn't been drinking (that much) and had searched diligently. He rolled his eyes and cursed in French but filled out a report. Then he wrote a case number down on the back of a business card and sent us on our way.
So there we were, standing on Royal Street, kinda fucked. Standing there with whatever money was left in our pockets after a weekend of reckless spending. None of us had credit cards, and though I'm told ATM machines existed then they wouldn't have helped...we were students, and broke. So accommodations in the Quarter were out of the question, fiscally. Our plan then was to stay up all night, call to see if they'd recovered the van, and formulate the next plan accordingly. (Life was more suspenseful before cell-phones...)
~ ~ ~
When the memory of this ordeal returns to me, it unfolds with no recollection of anxiety or panic. I attribute this to the company I found myself in. Because what I do remember feeling was responsible and protective, even though either of these young women would have fared just-as-well if not better without me. But I think there's something in our DNA, some animal instinct that makes concern for other “pack” members supersede our own inclination towards despair when faced with adversity. Something that keeps one from focusing obsessively on the possibility that the Dallas-Cowboys-blue-and-silver Chevy van they'd driven new-off-the-lot might be gone forever. So yeah, the three of us set off walking through the Quarter as a team, as a pack. Walking both to kill time and (as our coats and luggage had been lost with the van) to keep warm.~ ~ ~
Inevitably, like litter drifting towards a storm drain, we ended up back on Bourbon Street. Where the booze-flushed faces of the tourists now seemed less-friendly, and the marquee lights somehow harsher. It's a different boulevard experienced with empty pockets...navigated without the stupifing, syrupy crutch of a hurricane in hand. But somewhere amidst that sordid circus, we stumbled across a familiar face. Entreating a tipsy group of passers-by with the prurient promise of a “live sex show” was Ricardo. This would prove fortuitous because, after hearing that we-too had found ourselves stranded in The Big Easy, he offered to put us up. Seems he was watching a place for a friend. A place with plenty of room and an extra bed and we should meet him back here when he got off work...~ ~ ~
Candlelight revealed a warehouse stacked floor-to-ceiling with antique furniture. The brick walls were seamed with crumbling mortar, and one of them featured a massive window with cast-iron fenestration. There was, as promised, an extra mattress on the floor. There was also a toilet and, since the water (like the electricity) was off, a five gallon flush-bucket one could refill at the Chevron station down the street. As our host still had hours of pre-dawn appointments to keep, he bid us goodnight and left us to ourselves.The warehouse was situated on the top floor of a commercial building, and I still remember the moonlight flooding through that giant window...spilling over a trove of Queen Anne Chairs and Louis XV armoires, bathing works of Baroque extravagance, Shaker austerity, and the imposing Gothic conviction of a German grandfather clock in cool radiance. Revealing a jumbled gallery of styles and eras...standing there half-covered by dusty tarps, standing like elegant ghosts caught in various states of undress. I felt a measure of magic in the place, as if it were a scene from a children's book. The kind of scene a talking mouse or a doll-come-to-life might find himself in, wide-eyed and lost in the big city. I lay my head down on the battered mattress and slept.
Ricardo woke us up a few hours later with a greasy, repurposed, cardboard box in his hands and the promise of enough breakfast for everyone. The box was filled with short ribs and a loose, family-sized pile of fettuccine alfredo. We were told this was from an upscale place in the Quarter, a place where he knew exactly when the kitchen closed and regularly helped himself to whatever savory surplus the kitchen staff elected to toss out. He then detailed with pride his technique for alfredo recovery: apparently, when you stick your hand in the dumpster, what you're feeling for first is the soft outer edge of the pasta-mass. At that point the trick is go further down, until you hit the still-warm center, because that fettuccine hadn't touched any garbage. It was basically the same thing the tourists were paying $10 a plate for! I wondered for a minute why he hadn't elaborated on retrieving the short ribs, and how that would even work, before politely declining either...
I believe we stayed there for three nights, although the days fell into a routine that makes it hard to recall exactly. That routine started with a good cup of coffee and an anxious walk to the pay phone. I'd drop my coin in the slot, dial and stand there, watching bar-backs and busboys hose the wretched evidence of last night's excess from the sidewalks, fingers crossed that a police detective would answer my call with good news. When he didn't, I'd get my next call out of the way. This one was collect, to my grandmother. Who must have been freaking out, but as is customary in our family, presented as stoic on the telephone. So that was it, with the day's tasks behind us there was nothing to do but wait 24 hours and try again.
So we'd hang out. Feed the pigeons, watch the breakdancers by the river wall, count our remaining monies and make a daily meal plan...we'd chat with buskers and hustlers. We drifted and idled with a community of the broke and the broken-down, the carefree and the careless. One night we ran into those gutter-punks, and they took us to their mansion/squat. There we stumbled through a maze-like hive of rooms in the dark, the occasional lighter flame revealing runaways and fuck-it-alls laid out on cardboard palates amongst the beer cans and trash. The place smelled like dirty feet and dogs and an open septic line. Carolyn got bit by fleas. I left with a renewed appreciation of Ricardo's warehouse flop.
And speaking of Ricardo, there's something else I remember (no matter how hard I try to forget). Carolyn awakened me on the second night, grinning w/a finger pressed to her lips, and motioned towards the mattress opposite ours. Which was situated in such a way as to afford a perfect view of Ricardo's hairy, white ass--working like a pump-jack in the moonlight with someone's lithe and lovely stems wrapped around his legs and back. I looked around to verify that Raya was with us and accounted for (not that it was any of my goddamn business), shook my head and went back to sleep. Live sex show indeed... Anyway, we got the good news on the third morning; they'd recovered the vehicle and we could pick it up that afternoon.
~ ~ ~
I could tell from across the dusty impound lot that the van's extended vacation had been more exciting than ours. All the windows on the driver’s side were shattered and the beautiful Dallas-Cowboys-Blue-and-Silver paint job was perforated with bullet-holes. Adding insult to injury, the hooligans had trashed the interior as well, destroying my custom mini-blinds (which to be fair, probably would make it harder to murder someone in the course of a drive-by...). They'd rifled through all our things; absconding with Carolyn's fancy Nikon camera and the entirety of my cassette collection (hope you like Sonic Youth, my dudes). But the bullets hadn't struck any vital organs, and she started right up.Carolyn, already late returning from spring break, had changed her flight to depart from New Orleans. Raya and I dropped her off and headed west, stopping at a hardware store on the way to buy two rolls of shelf-paper. I used these to cover all the broken windows save for the driver’s-door, as I needed mirror access. It was a long, cold drive home.
