The
only way I know what year it was when I moved to New Orleans was that
it was the year of the 'King Tut' exhibition, 1977-1978. I had been
staying in and around Washington DC the previous year, and for
various reasons which seemed sufficient at the time I decided to walk
to Boston to spend the summer there. I got about as far as Plymouth
and took a bus the rest of the way.
This
story isn't about Boston so I'll omit all that happened there- I
worked as a day laborer for a while and on one particular assignment-
bagging nuts in a nut factory as I recall- one of the other vagrants
(why be shy? It's a beautifully descriptive term in any case ,from
the Latin vagari,
to wander)
mentioned going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras as a way to spend the
winter. The bus fare left me with about $75 as my total capital so
it was not perhaps the best thought out move, but the trip itself was
interesting, as I'd never gone from North to South before by bus. The
bus passed through a lot of very small towns, and I remember how the
atmosphere changed, became more laid back and less frenetic the
further south I traveled. The trees, even, seemed to become less
ambitious, bending lower with their limbs draped artistically with
moss like an old lady's feather boa.
I
arrived in the 'Big Easy' as its residents call it late one evening
in a light drizzle which put paid to the idea of sleeping on a park
bench, something I'd never done but one thing you learn as a vagrant
is to play up to the stereotype.
Instead
I wandered into the French quarter hoping to find cheap lodgings. I'd
already been offered a bed for the night at the bus station by a
charming young lady representing the local Bornagain's- that was what
I called the groups of young people who had just discovered Jesus;
nice folk on the whole, unlike the humorless fanatics who came later,
but that scene was definitely not what I was looking for.
The
French Quarter on the other hand most definitely was. Everywhere you
looked there was someone with a backpack. This was November, and
Mardi Gras was coming up in February which meant that the local
businesses were taking on lots of extra help. Restaurants, Hotels,
you name it, all you had to be was reasonably able bodied and sober,
and if you were picturesque into the bargain, so much the better. The
atmosphere was rather like that of a house of prostitution gearing up
for a visit by the Sixth Fleet.
I
was hailed from a second floor balcony by a young woman with a German
accent. Was I looking for a place to stay? I admitted that I was, and
she said, 'Come on up, there's room here, three dollars a night!' Room
there was, on the balcony itself, open to the sky which had
fortunately stopped drizzling. About a dozen young people were
already bedded down, and it was warm for November. 'Is this your
first time in New Orleans?', the German lady wanted to know. ' You'll
love it,'she went on, 'It's a crazy place.' We spent the rest of the
night arguing politics, oblivious to the occasional light rain.
In
the morning everyone went their separate ways, looking for more
sheltered accomodations and, of course, jobs. I landed a spot in a
Japanese restaurant which had a takeout booth on the street called,
appropriately , Takee-Outee, (political correctness had not been
invented yet, and anyway this was New Orleans) It sold what was
called Teriyaki, chicken or beef on a skewer served on a cardboard
container of fried rice. In later CV's I was to call my position that
of a 'short order cook' which was a pardonable exaggeration. It was a
great job in one sense because I got to eat the leftovers at the end
of my shift, and also I could be part of the night life in the
Quarter without actually being in it, sort of like tending bar.
I
found a room in what I thought was a cheap hotel, but I should have
realized that in a city like this 'cheap' depended on what you could
put up with. I quickly found another place, a shaky wooden three
story rooming house so badly undermined by termites that all the
floors leaned downhill. ' Ah'm goin' to fix her up someday,' confided
the owner, looking me over speculatively, 'If'n I could find me
somebody to he'p.'
Then
I saw an ad advertising rooms for rent at a price I couldn't believe.
The address was on the other side of the appropriately named Rampart
street, which should have prepared me. Let me explain. Along with the
influx of restless young people with backpacks, every winter a great
many hobos came to New Orleans to escape the Northern Winters. As
Mardi Gras loomed, the police gently but firmly herded these
indigents over to the other side of Rampart, so as not to annoy the
tourists. The hobos carried no backpacks, only a history which they
would exchange, suitably embellished, in return for charity. I have
to say that these days I tend to view what are now called the
'Homeless' with a certain contempt. 'Got any spare change?' is pretty
thin gruel compared to, 'Excuse me mister/lady, Could you help a
fella down on his luck? I usta be a (insert whatever profession) till
I started on the booze, yep, it was the booze done me in, I remember
once down in Philly...'
Anyway
the room proved to be a bare concrete cube, en suite in a former
hotel; no heat, no electricity, and no hot water. You got a camp bed
and table and chair, and you had to buy your own padlock for the
door. I loved it. Concrete plus no heat meant no bugs. Cold baths
with a bucket over your head in the old bathtub didn't bother me, and
I grew to like living by candle light. Just me and the candle,
surrounded by the dark. Ah, Bohemia.
As
Mardi Gras approached I noticed the permanent residents were
beginning to gird themselves for the coming storm. The lady who
served me grits and eggs for breakfast at the local diner became
short of speech, the cops from being laid back and lazy became mean,
and overall the atmosphere was hardly celebratory as the Big Easy
braced itself for Carnival.
Of
the actual celebration I have little memory. There was one night as
people were arriving and all the roads in the French Quarter were
bumper to bumper, and the staff of the restaurant ran up and down the
lines of cars selling drinks. The rest is just a blur of grotesque
costumes, parades of floats, and noise, noise, noise. I had always
hated crowds and this event did nothing to alleviate the feeling.
Years later I read John Rechy's 'City of Night' which had a section
on Mardi Gras. Quoting from memory, one of the characters says
something like this:' You think all those folks out there is wearin'
masks? Mardi Gras, people wear they own faces!
Devils! Whores! Monsters! And some, just some,mind you -Angels!' It
felt accurate.
Morning
and Ash Wednesday came at last, and the hungover street crews
gathered up all the beads, paper streamers, discarded costumes and
other wreckage. The weather turned nasty, rain and sleet pelted down
and the streets of the French Quarter glistened emptily under the
street lights. It was cold, a damp penetrating cold that filled my
unheated concrete cube and I retreated to my sleeping bag with a
book. I visited the Tut exhibition on the shores of Lake Ponchartrain
and began to make little Egyptian-style figurines in clay to give my
hands something to do. I could have left but for some reason I stayed
on, with no idea why.
Gradually
the weather warmed, and the sun returned. From warm it became hot,
and the equatorial sun stung exposed skin. What with the cold showers
and all the grease from the cooking, I developed an unusually deep
tan on my German-Scottish hide. I found a pair of discarded shoes
that fitted me well enough, and a denim jacket with a ripped sleeve
in another dumpster; I removed both sleeves and had myself a vest. I
had brought my big concertina, a german style diatonic with double
reeds that was really too loud to play indoors but was just right for
busking.
I
had tried playing on the streets for the first time in Georgetown
outside DC with fair success- it's an area with many nightclubs and
restaurants where all the diplomats and such go to relax. Now here in
the Big Easy I found a different kind of world. The parks and squares
began to fill with wandering musicians, and everyone just found a
spot and put down a hat or an opened instrument case. You weren't
supposed to play for money but there was little enforcement of the
statute, and anyway most of us played for fun.. The concertina was
very similar in sound to the traditional Cajun button accordion and
for the first time I felt at home as musician. I played mostly the
ballads and folk tunes I'd been playing since childhood, and one
afternoon a man in a suit who looked to be fresh from a martini lunch
came over and asked me if I knew 'Lili Marlene'. It's a song from
WW2 where it was sung by the troops on both sides and I had learned
it from my father, so I obliged.
The
next thing I knew I was auditioning for an office full of Festival
organizers, and signing up to do two sets at the Jazz Festival in a
couple of weeks, billed as 'Mr. Concertina'. The New Orleans Jazz
festival was only in its second year, and bore little resemblance to
the commercial monster I hear it has become. I felt they were just
filling up space, but I have never been so nervous as in the weeks
before the show,
In
the event it was easy. The sun beat down, everyone was in a lazy,
appreciative mood, and I sat on my little bandstand in front of the
mike and did a little patter between songs to introduce each one. I
didn't sing; I was too busy concentrating on keeping enough air in
the bellows. In between my two sets I listened to the other bands. I
must have been in a section of the field devoted to local artists,
for at the next stage a group of boys with long black braids were
honking their way through a song the refrain of which was something
like, ' An' the wild Tchoupitoulas gone stomp some rump! Stomp some
rump! Stomp some rump!...etc.' The Tchoupitoulas Indians, the
original inhabitants of the region, were supposed to be extinct but
they sounded alive enough to me. Later on I got my first look at
people from the Bayous, the maze of waterways in the surrounding
swamps, bare chested young men dancing a curiously elegant two step
with their ladies.
I
received two offers of employment. One was from a restaurant owner
who wanted someone to play walking between tables while the patrons
were dining, the other was some guy who said he was making a record
of traditional Cajun music and would I sit in as back up? Which is
how somewhere out there is an LP record of me playing along to, 'O-oh
Papa Joe, ou allez vous? Ye-s, I go-o down dat ol' Ba-you.'
Then
the owners of the pottery where I was getting my little clay figures
fired asked me if I would do a series of Egyptian figures to sell,
and a woman who had been listening to me play asked me out to dinner,
and on the way back we picked up her little boy who looked up at me
and murmured sleepily, 'Are you my new Daddy?' He wasn't
apprehensive, just mildly curious.
The
city was like a cat who approaches you, circles your ankles and
sniffs at your pant cuffs, then jumps up into your lap and starts to
purr. It was a warm and welcoming place for me, but I was fresh from
two failed marriages and having none of it. So I left. Years later in
2005 I heard about the devastation caused by the big storm which
moved me to write the poem published under Hurricane Katrina