A 75-year-old New Orleans native, I returned to my hometown for a Mardi Gras parade this past Sunday. Janet, my wife of 50 years, joined me, and there were some minutes into our descent into the city when I thought it might take 50 years to reach our destination.
The drive Saturday from Alexandria to the City That Care Forgot went surprisingly without a glitch for the most part. Then, as we were entering the city, Janet’s map app on her phone started giving directions that seemed totally foreign to what we were accustomed. With both of us perplexed, she tried my phone device with another map app to compare, and mine gave familiar directions with a reasonable estimated time of arrival, so we decided to try that one.
Yes, I know what you’re already thinking, and you’re right. We should’ve taken the road less travelled by, but we didn’t and it made all the difference in us “experiencing New Orleans” on parade day – any parade day – instead of avoiding it altogether by encircling the perimeter of the city via the Chalmette Battlefield and then travelling the back way to my brother’s home near Touro Hospital via Bay St. Louis.
The problem area was tantalizingly close to our destination. Our approach to St. Charles Avenue was blocked because of a parade, and there were several cars, busses and trucks in the same predicament. A longtime veteran of negotiating crazy traffic in the Crescent City, I figured there’s a simple solution: PANIC!
Just kidding. I stayed calm and told Janet (who was beginning to panic) we’ll just flip back around and head down a few blocks ’til we see a clearance, and it’ll be smooth sailing. Well, block after block after block, our way was blocked. All while we were riding down neighborhood streets clogged with people, many of whom seemed to be walking back to their cars after experiencing the parade, whichever danged parade it was blocking our path.
Meanwhile, I was using all my masculine wiles (not masculine wilds) to have fortitude and be creative, minimize my foul utterances and keep my head when all about me are losing theirs and blaming it on me.
And meanwhile, my bladder was feeling like it’s about to explode. Janet called my brother, who answered with much cheer while with the revelers on the parade route and put him on speaker phone. We both tried to explain our situation at the same time and ask for help with directions. And amid a maddening crowd, with us talking to him at the same time, he said he was having trouble “picking us up” on the phone. He understood enough, though, to reassure us that we were not likely to have success getting to our destination for another couple of hours at least.
“But I NEED to go to the bathroom!!” I shouted. He suggested that I might find one near Audubon Park. We headed that way and I seized on the idea of parking in a CVS parking lot, where I saw from a distance some empty spaces – which, at that time, were at a premium, because we hadn’t seen an empty parking pace for miles anywhere. And yet …
The only empty parking spaces were marked “Urgent Care Only.”
“Sorry,” I announced. “I am needing ‘urgent care.’ I’m parking here.” Now, after a quick scan of the stores, shops and the Urgent Care, I decided to try the yogurt place to get to my destination. I figured I’d have to look as pitiful (more so than I already looked) and desperate as I could and beg permission to use the facility, so I lumbered in, hunched my back and looked around. Seeing only a gaggle of girls sitting at a counter and gossiping and laughing, I arched my back upright and strode with haste to the men’s restroom, and “oh, what a relief it was!”
Then we went to Audubon Park, which was like a scene from the Garden of Eden compared to the traffic we had recently seen, and we walked leisurely around the circle, between a few stops at a bench or the gazebo. The lagoon was as crowded with ducks as the city was with revelers, but there was peace, and then the iconic sight of the steeple of Holy of Name of Jesus Catholic Church looming above the trees and the lagoon. Looking up toward the heavens, I heard the whisper of a fatherly voice say, “Come and see.”
A glance at my watch showed it was nearing 4 o’clock, the time for the Sunday Vigil Mass, so that’s where we went – for the first time in many years to the church where, as a youth, I rode my bike to serve as an altar boy.
With the booster shot provided by that Mass, we were ready to dive into the uptown Thoth parade on a made-to-order Sunday afternoon. I am glad to report that, despite some warnings from anti-New Orleans friends about the trouble that abounds at the Paris of the South, the parade was wonderful. People of all colors, ages, nationalities and backgrounds mingled together for a few hours in harmony and joy.
If there were thousands of beads and doubloons and trinkets and folded towels thrown from the floats, there were a million hugs and smiles – at least from our viewpoint near the start of the parade on Magazine Street. Half of those were probably exchanged among my relatives – including one family from Spain.
It was as if the large and the small and the old and the young in our area of the world channeled the kind of love and joy seen at a celebration of NCAA baseball champions at the LSU campus, which has happened several times.
As for us, when we quit fighting the battle of blockades and took the different route, that made all the difference. And even in massive crowds, love conquers all when given so generously. You cannot help but smile when floating in a sea of smiles.