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Politics : A Neutral Corner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (1694)	12/15/2005 4:49:14 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 2253

The New Orleans I knew as a child is gone, anyway. Things I remember: When the French Market was where people went to buy groceries. The seafood store that sold turtle meat, and the counter man killed the turtles by a thick glass window that was always splashed with red blood so thick you couldn't see inside. The men who drove mule-drawn wagons through the neighborhoods selling fruit or buying old rags. The organ-grinder with the little Capucin monkey on a chain who would tip his hat for tips. The black longshoremen who unloaded the ships at the riverside docks carrying bales and huge sacks on their backs, rippling with muscles. The hordes of sailors from all over the world, rushing eagerly through the French Quarter, looking for booze and women, not necessarily in that order. Streetwalkers walking arm in arm with sailors from Greece or France or the Netherlands, wearing uniforms -- not military uniforms, but striped black and white jerseys and hats with pom poms and so forth. All gone. But the culture didn't die, it just morphed. I remember when all around Jackson Square there were many, many artists and a few fortune tellers. And then the hippies came and it was more fortune tellers and street theater. And then the Goths came and it was even more fortune tellers. But Jackson Square never changed. And I remember long before the gay costume contests, back before men didn't wear assless chaps in public or grope each other in the street. But there were always a lot of gay men and women. And the socially prominent enclaves never changed a hair, except that some of the wives got jobs that paid instead of doing only volunteer work. Thank God that those tiny shacks that a dog shouldn't have to live in are gone. I hope those things never come back. Maybe the answer is something like Habitat for Humanity. Remember how it used to be cool to go to Cuba to cut sugar cane? Maybe it will become cool to go to New Orleans to hammer and paint new houses for poor people.