#336 Thinking About New Orleans

I watch reporters on the street in downtown New Orleans, standing in water among fallen palms on Canal Street.  Beyond, the hotel I stayed in just last month, now missing most of its windows. 

The hotel where there was, among others, a program about the pumps, one of many speakers that on my way home I regretted missing.  I thought I could always go back to New Orleans, but the speakers were gone for good.

I'm not very good at predictions, I guess.

A tour guide told us that the hotels and other high-rise buildings are built on piers driven into the unsteady silt New Orleans rests on, driven many hundreds of feet deep, sometimes deeper than the buildings are tall.  That prevents the buildings from sinking.  But I wonder, as the silt soaks up water and becomes slush, will those piers remain upright?  Are they deep enough into bedrock to resist sideways leverage?  To resist the urge to topple those buildings?

Way back in 1964, dear friend Obie, rebel from Baton Rouge, told me that he wanted to take me to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  He died before we had the chance.  I'd wanted to visit New Orleans, the New Orleans of his stories, ever since then.  To see Bourbon Street, where he played poker in the middle of the street at midnight, wearing only shoes, socks, and a top hat.  To see the second story galleries like the one Obie got pitched over the side of for trying to join a jazz session with his bongos.  More.  All of it.

I don't regret missing all those conference speakers now.  I'm glad I blew them all off and spent all my time exploring the downtown area.  I think it's remarkable that this summer was the time I finally went.  I'll always be able to read about all those dry topics, but at my age I may never again have the opportunity to see the old New Orleans.

It will come back.  But perhaps not for a very long time.

~~Silk