Landfall

McPickles Editorial

It is very hard for me talk about, let alone write about New Orleans and the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. After a year contemplating the subject I think I have figured out why. Simply put, Hurricane Katrina put a symbolic end to my youth.

New Orleans had always played a central role in my family’s history. For starters, my parents met at an AEPi party at Tulane. Growing up, my family and I visited New Orleans often. There were the Mardi Gras trips. There were the trips in early April for the Crescent City Classic. There were the spontaneous weekends in New Orleans whose sole purpose was to escape the monotony of Mobile.

One memory I have very clearly - and this is random- is walking down a crowded Canal Street with my father when I was 5 - and hearing "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics blaring out of a storefront. And I remember thinking how much I loved the pulse of the big city – the quick tempo of people and inanimate objects in motion. New Orleans was the first big city I can ever remember visiting - it was the only outside world I knew for a very long time.

I remember when our Ford Aerostar was broken into during Mardi Gras and that the only thing the thieves managed to steal was my badass Levi's Jean Jacket. I remember my Aunt Babette taking my mom, Howard, and I to Commander's Palace and my father getting upset when he learned we had eaten turtle soup. I can list the restaurants my family used to dine at when we visited. Names like Charley's, Mr. B's, Maspero’s and Gallatoire's ring a bell. So too does Plum Street Snowballs, Martin's Wine Cellar, Mother's and, yes, the Camellia Grill.

At the Camellia Grill, the chef would cook slices of pecan pie on the same griddle where the strips of bacon were frying. When the massacre was over he would slather a heaping scoop of ice cream on top. Some people were brave enough to try the concoction. And for those who were downright suicidal, there was the chili omelette. The place was more of a circus than a restaurant. The Camellia Grill was also home to the Mocha Freeze. I can always remember my father adding teaspoons of coffee to my Mocha Freeze to make it taste better.

Visiting New Orleans as a child was, in many ways, better than any amusement park. The performance artists in Jackson Square – seeing the big steamboats on the Mississippi River, the beignets, the fabulously loud people in the Quarter, the playgrounds in Audubon Park – what was not to love?

Eventually I decided to go to law school at Tulane in part because New Orleans had become a second home to me - even if the city itself felt a world away from Mobile. New Orleans was close to Mobile – it was familiar territory – it was warm – there was a memory at every corner. It was the right place to go at the right time. Further, New Orleans provided the ultimate study environment – which is to say you could never study too hard.

It was during law school that I really began to appreciate the romance of the Crescent City. The way the city smelled after the summer rainstorms – the sweetness of swamp fauna mixing with the dense, fragrant humidity blanketing the city streets – I can still smell it. There is no place in the world that is sexier than New Orleans after a summer rain - or at dusk for that matter.

There were so many other unique sights and smells in New Orleans - the oak tree canopies covering the Uptown neighborhoods – glimpses of ivy growing up the exterior walls of an art gallery on St. Charles – the smell of chicory coffee emanating out of cafes along Magazine Street –the smell of red beans and cheap beer at Vaughn’s on a Thursday night.

On so many levels living in New Orleans was the ultimate fairy tale experience. The eccentricities are in such abundance – the accents, the food, the poverty, the music, the architecture –it is like the entire reality of the city is suspended. In that regard, it was easy to fall in love with New Orleans – her wildness – her grandeur – her vulnerability. I would have done anything to protect her innocent, magic self.

So when Katrina rolled ashore and destroyed a good chunk of the city (not to mention a bigger chunk of the Mississippi and Alabama shorelines), it was as if the magic kingdom of my youth had finally been overpowered. By a fat German no less.

I know the City still stands. I know some of the places where my parents took my brother and I are still in existence. But if you wander off the main paths – to the places that constituted the eccentric soul of that city – there is nothing. Neighborhoods without neighbors – houses without lights and people. The after the rain smells, I imagine, are gone. Replaced with what, I do not know. For now, it seems, the magic has vanished from the city's lush avenues.

I am hoping New Orleans makes it back – I need her in my life.

McPickles