Before long we got down to Metrocenter Mall, which was in the news shortly before we started this trip. For all the "New South" aspirations, the Civil War continues in the minds of some Southerners. In late April a white man murdered four black people in the parking lot at the mall. When he was asked about it, he couldn't give any real reason except that the victims were black. I must say I wondered after hearing about that just what the white man was doing at Metrocenter to begin with. It would have made more sence to me for the guy to have been shooting people at the integrated [but mostly white] Northpark Mall, at the other end of the city. Metrocenter, though, represents the old-time segregation I would think the man would want to preserve. The mall is in an entirely black neighborhood (as most of west Jackson is), and it's unusual for white people to shop there. I did go there fairly often, but I was almost always the only white person in the place. No one really seemed to care about that, but I did get the same kinds of stares black people tend to get in rural Iowa.
At Jackson we saw the first sign with a destination of "New Orleans", a sign that we were really getting to where we wanted to be. We kept driving southward on I-55, past Florence and Crystal Springs. Eventually we stopped at a rest area just north of Brookhaven. I laughed out loud when the kids got out of the suburbans at the rest area. Every one of them commented on how hot it was. I had thought at the gas station this morning that it was just about the coolest weather I had ever experienced in Mississippi. The weather this afternoon was much more typical--hot and steamy, and a surprising change from air conditioning. Welcome to Dixie, folks!
From Brookhaven it's not far to the Louisiana border. Whenever I have been to Louisiana before, I've been surprised at how dramatically the landscape changes, basically right at the border. The same was true this time. Where southern Mississippi had been primarily the pine forests I remembered from graduate school, much of the trees had been cleared in what locals call "northern" Louisiana (actually the top of the foot of the "L" that Louisiana makes on a map). There was a surprising amount of agriculture for about the first twenty-five miles of the state, with crops like corn to make us feel right at home.
There was also much more of an urban and industrial feeling in Louisiana. Mississippi is about the same size (in both area and population) as Iowa. Louisiana is significantly smaller in area and has a million and a half more people. While the bulk of them live in the "Cancer Corridor" ... between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the whole state is more generally populated than its neighbor to the east. Every county seat (or rather parish center) has one or two big chemical plants, and usually a garment mill as well. From the interstate, a lot of northern Louisiana looks ... like a slightly seedy industrial suburb.
The industrial look changes abruptly just south of Hammond/Ponchatula. ... Here's where the Louisiana of legend begins, the place of swamps and bayous where there's far more water than land. According to the World Almanac, Interstate 55 in this area is carried by the longest bridge in the world. Whether it's true or not depends on what you call a bridge. It's all raised highway, all right, but it's not exactly over any particular body of water. Parts of it cross lakes, but the majority is built on pilings sunk into the swamp. You drive along the highway about halfway up the trees, like you're flying through the wilderness. The official length of what is apparently called the Manchac bridge is 181,157 feet. If you divide that out, that's more than 34 continuous miles of interstate suspended above the swamp, including a complicated interchange with Interstate 10 near the south end. This, like most of the interstates in Louisiana (almost all of which are similar in places to this one) is one of those roads that makes me marvel at the accomplishments of engineering.
I had been over this bridge once before, but it was just as impressive the second time around. The kids were also definitely impressed. They snapped photos of the swamp out the windows, gawked at the houses on stilts with access only by boat, and pndered how trees could actually grow straight out of the water. ...
One of the strangest things about the swamp is that it ends nearly as abruptly as it began. Geography didn't do that, but people did. At the end of that 34 miles, the bayou has been drained and the suburbs of New Orleans begin.
New Orleans is one of the few places I know where even the bad parts of the city look better than the suburbs. There are some nice pockets in the suburbs, but the overall effect is of a place whose best days are long since past. A lot of the suburban area is quite run-down, with empty shells of buildings, trash-strewn lawns, and seedy shopping centers from the '50s. ... Fortunately the city itself comes across as both more attractive and more interesting.
We exited the freeway at Carrollton Avenue. It's an awkward exit where you have to get in the left lane to make a right turn. I knew this exit instinctively, because when I was at college I took this exit to go to the zoo, the one place with free parking in the entire city. ... Muriel seemed impressed that I automatically got into the correct lanes through the whole mess, and I laughed when she mentioned that, because I really was driving on auto-pilot.
I woke up, though, as we made our way on narrow streets. The tournament sponsors had given specific and complicated directions on how to get to the campus. I'm still not sure why they directed us the way they did--I could have accomplished it with far fewer twists and turns--cut I decided we might as well follow the official directions ... to our ultimate destination, Loyola University of the South (not to be confused with any Loyola you might have actually heard of). I circled the rather cramped little parking lot looking for a convenient space, and finding none, settled for one of the few available spaces. Registration was supposed to be in a place called Daana Center, but when we went there we were told it was actually in our dorm, Budding Hall.
Check-in was slow and inefficient. After a lot of red tape we were each given room keys and magnetic strip cards that were to serve as a combination of meal ticket and after-hours pass key. We then started unloading our stuff from the suburbans and carrying it up to our rooms.
... After the unpleasant accommodations in Dallas last summer, the dorm at Loyola seemed like the Taj Mahal. The rooms were arranged with two bedrooms on either side of a shared bath. The rooms were fairly large (long and narrow), with almost all the furniture built in. There was lots of storage, and the overall effect of the rooms was bright and clean. (We did have some problems with insects later, but the overall effect was still much nicer than Dallas.)
After settling in we went over to Daana Center to have supper. ... The serving pattern was ... hard to figure out. They don't really have serving lines in the sense that most cafeterias do. There's a huge area with counters all over the place. Some are self-service, and others have people working. You go up to whichever one has the food you want and get it. I was worried because all the food had prices, but eventually someone told us that our tickets were "all you can eat", so we didn't have to worry about how much anything cost.
Once we loaded up our trays we got to the cashier. That was where we got the real surprise. I'm not sure which of our kids was first through the line, but whoever it was, the cashier told him a price they had to pay. I overheard that and ran to see what the deal was. We had paid $50 per person for a meal plan, and having to pay still more was definitely no part of my budget. One by one, the cashier swiped each of our cards, and none of them registered as having our meal plan paid. She then checked a paper list and, once again, none of our meals was listed as having been paid. She insisted we pay up; I was more insistent that she find a way of solving the problem. Unfortunately, on Saturday night there aren't a lot of people around with the authority to solve problems like that. The line was backing up behind us, and I made it very clear that we weren't moving until she got the matter cleared up. To drill in my point, I started eating a cheese sandwich from my tray, right at the cash register. Eventually the shift manager came out, I think basically to see what all the commotion was about. While I don't think anyone there had the authority to approve anything, we were eventually just waved through, and various people said they would check on the problem overnight.
After dinner there was still a bit of time to kill before we were scheduled to play our first game of the tournament. There was a loverly sitting room outside the dining center with a beautiful grand piano in it. One of our students could not resist the temptation to sit down and tickle the ivories. ...
When the game before ours ended, we filed into the Audubon Room, a cavernous ballroom on the second floor of the union. The moderator in the room was Chip Beall, the tournament director. I stopped him for a moment to explain the problems we had with the meal tickets. He suggested that his secretary was the person we wanted to speak with, and Muriel went off for a while to try (unsuccessfully) to find her. I then snapped a few pictures of the kids in a tournament sttting, and we prepared for the game.
This, like all our games, was definitely not the highlight of the trip. We played St. John's High School of Houston, Texas. I don't remember much about the actual questions, except that there weren't many of them that our team answered. ...
* * * * *
Probably the most amusing part of the game came when the introductions were read halfway through. They had told each team to submit a card with the players' names and two bits of information (activities, interests, college plans, etc.) about each one. Ours looked like this:
- Matt Erpelding, Senior -- All-state honors in music, speech, & academics; enjoys composing music
- Jean Lappe (captain), Senior -- Yearbook & school newspaper editor; enjoys writing
- Scott Reising, Junior -- Member of the National Guard; works for a telemarketing firm
- Jeff Geving, Sophomore -- Enjoys playing football and baseball
- Nick Reinhart (alternate), Senior -- Member of the National Guard; won varsity letters in track & cross-country
- Jen Lighter (alternate), Junior -- Won awards in speech, drama, & music
- Brian Barth (alternate), Junior -- delegate to Iowa Boys' State; recently returned from safari in Zaire
- Tim Mosbach (alternate), Sophomore -- designs internet home pages; activities include publications & tech crew
- Coach: David Burrow
It also bothers me (as an alumnus of two directional state universities) when people make such a big deal about the Ivy League. Harvard and Cornell are excellent schools, but it's not like they are the only good colleges in America. In fact, if I were a junior engineer like many of our opponents, the Ivy League in general wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list. Most of the land-grant schools far surpass Harvard in technical fields. So do Midwestern bastions like Carnegie-Mellon, Case Western Reserve, Marquette, and the University of Chicago. In this age of plastic, the foremost polymer science institute in America is in good old Hattiesburg at my alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi. Few things bug me more than academic snobbery. I'm much more concerned with what you know and what you can do than with what your credentials are.
OK, so enough of the editorializing. The kids were intimidated, and you don't exactly have to be Einstein to figure out that we lost the game bigtime. We congratulated the winners after our loss, and Chip Beall congratulated us on our sportsmanchip and wished us well in solving the meal problem.
It was still relatively early (before 8pm), so I suggested that we take the streetcar downtown to get a bit of an orientation to the city. So we headed over to St. Charles Avenue at the front side of campus to catch a train. What I hadn't thought of was the fact that this was a Saturday night, which meant the train was utterly packed with people heading downtown to party. It's about a half-hour ride from Loyola to the French Quarter, and we were crammed in like sardines the whole way. The driver, a very petite black woman, kept telling everyone to move back, but there wasn't really anywhere to move to in the back. At one point she hit the brakes between stops and announced loudly, "I ain't movin' till y'all move back!" ...
Eventually we made it to Canal Street at the edge of the French Quarter. We piled off the streetcar, and I counted twice to make sure everyone was there. The kids joked about heading over to Bourbon Street, but I assured them that Saturday night was not the time they wanted to be there. (I also promised I would show it to them later.) We just crossed the street--which is no easy accomplishment--and walked a couple of blocks to a Burger King, where I offerred to treat the group to drinks or ice cream.
The service at Burger King made that McDonalds in Illinois seem rapid. While we waited (and waited and waited), I couldn't help but notice the manager was wearing a gun in a holster around his waist. It does make you wonder just who is walking around here on a Saturday night. Several of the kids entertained themselves by talking to various employees and patrons of the restaurant, in the process getting a fascinating introduction to New Orleans. I was pleased that ... the kids did seem quite open about meeting and talking with black people. ...
After we finished eating we made our way back across the street and walked down to the second car stop on the line. I collected the kids' money and put it all through the chute, and we all crammed on a streetcar that was nearly as crowded as the other one. I assured the kids that it would quickly empty out. They didn't believe me, but I was right. Going out of town, people got off at nearly every stop. Not far past Lee Circle (the edge of downtown) there was room for all of us to sit, and we had a rather pleasant ride back to Loyola.
... Quite late in the evening there was a knock on the door. It was the woman who had screwed up our meal plan. She was most apolegetic and assured me that everything would be straightened out by breakfast. I thanked her for her help--odd, isn't it, to thank the person who screwed up after I had gotten mad at the poor cashier, who really hadn't done anything wrong. ...
SUNDAY, JUNE 2, 1996
New Orleans, Louisiana
We got up fairly late this morning and assembled together to go over and have breakfast. It was no surprise that the porblem with our meal tickets hadn't been resolved. Moreover, there was a different cashier who wasn't familiar with the problem. Again I made a bit of a scene, and again we were just waved through the line.
For all the fuss, I can't say I really cared a lot for the meals at Loyola. ... Breakfast was the same eggs, greasy bacon, pancakes, and gallons of grits you'd find in any cafeteria across the South. ... The lunches or dinners weren't anything to write home about either. ... Leftovers on starch (rice in particular) is the height of local cuisine in New Orleans, but it would have been nice to have a few other options. ...
After breakfast we played our second game of the competition, against Msgr. Kelly High School from Beaumont, Texas. There were apparently four Catholic schools in the tournament, and it was purely luck of the draw that our first two opponents were two of the other three. Msgr. Kelly was a school we should have beaten; we were fairly evenly matched, and in fact we even led at several points in the game. Unfortunately, we were way behind when it mattered. ...
While we had just eaten breakfast, after losing the game we went right back to the dining center and had lunch. It's not like anyone was hungry, but by now I was taking the attitude of "we've paid for this, and we're darn well going to get our money's worth." I guess there's a bit of my father in me after all.
After lunch ... we caught the streetcar downtown. ... As all the newcomers in our group gawked at the miles on miles of mansions lining St. Charles Avenue, I marvelled that absolutely nothing had changed since the last time I was here. ... There are several landmarks on the way from Loyola to downtown, and everyone of them appeared right on cue. Among the more noteworthy are Temple Sinai and Unity Temple in the university area; the Episcopal cathedral a bit further down; the K&B drugstores at Louisiana and Naopleon Avenues; a McDonalds that looks like a church in the Garden District; the dumpy overpass where the interstate crosses the river; and the office towers that mean the end of the line is near. There are many other less important landmarks--like the House of Garlic restaurant--that were also exactly the same as they were four years ago. ... It's reassuring, somehow, that some things never change. You wonder how a restaurant that specializes in garlic can stay in business, but it's kind of nice to see that it's still around.
It was interesting to cruise down St. Charles after having just seen a feature on Fox's Cops about New Orleans. The main patrol car they followed was based on St. Charles. The police made a comment that I knew well, but it's easy to miss when you go through here. St. Charles is lined with million dollar homes and upmarket shops, yet just one or two blocks off the main road are run-down "shotguns" (one-floor rowhouses that are one-room wide), many of which are now used as crack houses. New Orleans has the highest crime rate in America, and it's easy to forget that when you're admiring the Victorian architecture on St. Charles Avenue. ...
Since we returned from New Orleans I happened to see another feature about the New Orleans police department. This one, on A&DE's The Justice Files was a documentary on "America's Most Corrupt Cops", and it highlighted extortion, drug dealing, assault, and even murder by the people they said no one would dream of calling "New Orleans' finest". Fortunately I had never gotten in trouble with the police when I was here before (although as best I can figure, one of the murders by a policeman happened on a weekend when I was in the city a few years back), and we had no reason to make their acquaintance now. New Orleans by day always struck me as perfectly safe for those who use their common sense. By night is a different matter, but in the daytime I didn't worry about crooks or cops.
Before too long the National Historic Landmark (a.k.a. the streetcar) made its way to Canal Street, and we all piled out again. ... We set off on a fast-paced introductory tour of the French Quarter. It's particularly amusing, after that discourse on crime, that the first hin we saw once we got to the Vieux Carre may well have been an attemped crime. There were a couple of teenaged boys blocking the sidewalk, and one of them literally threw a bunch of coins all over the sidewalk. Now, it's perfectly normal to drop a few coins now and then, but no normal person throws money on the ground. As we walked by I started talking in a loud voice about how you sometimes see pickpockets who are trying to distract people with tricks like dropping money. When a passerby tries to help them, someone else helps themself to the passerby's wallet. I'm certainly not the most streetwise person on earth, and these boys may have been perfectly innocent, but I didn't want anyone in our group to test the hypoehsis one way or the other.
I took the kids first to Bourbon Street, which happens to be directly opposite where the streetcar stops at Canal and Carondolet. I had found out before that Bourbon Street on Sunday is a pale imitation of its Saturday night incarnation. You catch the tawdry feel of the place, but there's nothing much actually happening at the time--which made Sunday the perfect time to take kids there. We then wound our way down to Jackson Square, the heart of the French Quarter. I gave the group the basic orientation to what was where and then let them go off exploring in their own small groups. We had arranged to meet back for mass at six o'clock.
* * * * *
After we had been exploring a while, it started pouring--the typical afternoon downpour that gives New Orleans a tropical feel. We sought shelter under awnings and balconies, and eventually we spent quite a while wandering through the old A&P grocery store on Royal Street. Eventually the rain let up, and we were able to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. About 5:30 we got back to Jackson Square and awaited the return of the rest of the group.
* * * * *
Several of the kids described this as the strangest mass they had ever been to, and I cerainly understand what they're saying. I'm not sure I'd go so far myself, but then I've been to mass at this cathedral before. From the outside the cathedral looks like the castle at Disneyland, and it's really more of a tourist attraction than a church. They had several weekend masses, though, and since we didn't have a resident priest with us this year, I did my best to see that our Catholic school children fulfilled their Sunday obligation. This was Trinity Sunday, but you wouldn't know it from anything in he homily. He told us about a 50th anniversary he attended where the couple repeated their vows. He gave us the standard church view on abortion, and referred us to the weekly bulletin, where they had an extremely graphic and utterly disgusting write-up of what the author called "partial-birth abortion". He lamented that society was becoming too secular (while at the same time marvelling at how many people were at mass tonight). He invited us to a special mass to ve celebrated by the archbishop a week from Tuesday, apparently for his (the priest who said tonight's mass) retirement. Finally he commented on the time in his youth when he had tried out for the St. Louis Cardinals. He really never did tell us what baseball was supposed to have to do with church; I can only guess it's the fact that the cathedral in New Orleans is called "St. Louis Basilica".
Perhaps the highlight of the whole mass came at the presentation of gifts. We sang a hymn as they collected the offrering, and then the ushers took the offering up to the alar. There was a long, long pause, and finally Father said, "Would someone like to bring up the gifts?" The "gifts", of course in Catholicism refer to the bread and wine. Apparently they hadn't selected anyone to do the honors before mass. A couple of the kids in our group looked mortified, since we had purposely sat clear in back--which put us conveniently next to the gifts table. Fortunately someone from the parish did at last bring the elements forward, and Father proceeded with the consecration.
* * * * *
After mass we joined the crowd at Cafe du Monde, the famous coffee bar in the southeast corner of Jackson Square. I think I may have been the only one who actually had coffee (the espresso-strength chicory blend for which New Orleans is famous), but most of the kids seemed to enjoy being in this vaguely historic place.
We left Cafe du Monde and walked back toward Canal Street. About a block along our way (at the Moonwalk along the river), a group of young men was performing a comedy/dance routine. We watched for a while and were amazed at the finale, where one of the guys lept over a group of volunteers from the audience. After that dose of street entertainment, we made our way back to the streetcar and enjoyed the ride back to Loyola.
... The tournament sponsored a dance as their officially sponsored entertainment (the equivalent of the baseball game we went to last year), and most of the kids put in a brief appearance. Each wave of them returned soon after, assuring me that there was absolutely nothing to do there except eat the snacks.
CONTINUED IN PART THREE
Links to other sites on the Web
MORE (New Orleans Trip--Part 3)
RETURN
(Original Travelogues)
RETURN (Fortune City Travelogue Page)
HOME
) 2000 [email protected]
Here is a link to FortuneCity.
The background music on this page is "A Whole New World," the theme from the motion picture Aladin.