Five Touristy Frames from New Orleans

Today’s post continues the “bygone days of travel” theme. The county is opening up, but COVID-19 cases are soaring in some states, particularly in my home state of Texas. I don’t yet feel comfortable traveling so I can only dream. In the meantime, here are five touristy frames from New Orleans.

Jackson Square

Jackson Square from across Decatur Street in Washington Artillery Park. You can see Clark Mills’ equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in the middle of the square. That’s St. Louis Cathedral in the background.

My first encounter with Jackson square was in the early 1970’s. Every spring, the Rice Owl Band marched in the Rex Mardi Gras parade on Fat Tuesday. The school bused us in on Monday and put us up in the hallways of a nearby high school on cots with nasty scratchy blankets. Boys were assigned to a hall on one side of the entrance hallway and the girls got the hall on the other side. We arrived about 6 pm and proceeded to eat dinner and get drunk. We collapsed on our cots in the wee hours of the morning happy to see even the nasty horse blankets. At 5 am we were rousted out of our slumbers, some of us still drunk, some of us merely hungover, to put on our uniforms. We were bused to the starting point of the Rex parade where we stood around for what seemed like hours (it may have actually been five hours).

Then the parade started. I remember being told it was eleven miles long but now that I think back on it, my source may have been my buddy Steve, and he may have been drunk at the time. I think three miles might be a better estimate. We played “The Rice Fight Song” alternated with “When the Saints Go Marching In”. We were very popular with the spectators. Whenever the parade stopped, which was often, revelers passed quart bottles of beer and half-gallon jugs of cheap wine ( I remember Ripple and Bali Hai) through the band. We started out as the MOB, the Marching Owl Band, and finished up as the SOB, the Staggering Owl Band.

We were usually finished in time for a late lunch then drinking, dinner, parades, beads, and more drinking. Fortunately, they rolled up the sidewalks at midnight on Fat Tuesday. Wake up call was at 5 am on Wednesday and we were loaded back onto buses for the ten-hour trip back to Houston and the welcoming hedges of Rice University. We got back in the early evening Wednesday and were treated to exams on Thursday and Friday. My grades suffered.

Cafe Du Monde

Beignets and cafe au lait at the Cafe Du Monde – classic. My first visit to the Cafe Du Monde was likely in the late evening of one of my band trips. I came back a few years later when I was in town for a scientific meeting, that would have been in the late 1970s.

I took this photo when I visited in 2018, but I didn’t have coffee there, because the lines were down the block. I did go to one of the other locations which was near my hotel and much less crowded, especially if you were the first one through the door! See my post, Five Frames from New Orleans, for a shot from inside this location.

French Quarter

I liked the mask and decorations on this building at the corner of St. Peter and Royal. That’s Rouses Market behind the sign you can’t quite read.

Central Grocery

The Central Grocery, Home of the Original Muffuletta sandwich. I first had one of these in the late 1970s when I was ditching my scientific meeting and nursing a hangover. I got a half sandwich and a root beer and hopped on a riverboat with some friends for the two-hour tour. Friends, river, sun, and muffuletta. Life was good.

I went back to the Central Grocery in 2018. I got there right when they opened so as to avoid the block-long lines. I snagged my sandwich and… yum! Good to know that they are still good after all these years! I know many restaurants offer muffulettas these days, but there’s nothing like going to the source!

Pat O’Briens

Pat O’Brien’s, source of many a New Orleans-related hangover. Let me go on record as saying that I don’t particularly care for Pat O’Brien’s signature drink, the Hurricane. That said, I must note that I’ve never had anything but a Hurricane when I’ve visited Pat O’Brien’s. If I rooted through some boxes here at the old homestead, I might be able to find the souvenir glass from my very first visit, circa 1971.

This photo is the entrance on St Peter Street from my 2018 visit to New Orleans. Alas, I wasn’t able to slurp down a Hurricane on this trip. Maybe next time!

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These photos were all taken with a Canon 6D wearing a Canon 50mm f1.8 prime lens. They were were developed from RAW files using Darktable, which is free software for Windoze, Mac, and Linux.