Nancy and I leashed up our dogs, and the four of us set off for the Quarter, walking past low income housing projects to get there. I went to medical school at LSU in New Orleans and lived for two of those years in the Quarter. It's always fun wandering the streets, checking out shops, people watching, and listening to street music. I love the architecture and the energy of the city. Even though all the businesses are tourist-oriented, there's still a charm there.
That evening I made a pilgrimage deep in the French Quarter to Paul Prudhomme's K-Paul's Restaurant, dragging Nancy along. I got heavily into Cajun cooking some years back, using Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen as holy writ. We enjoyed our dinners but it wasn't the knockout we were hoping for.
The next day, after the traditional bad beignets and cafe au lait at the French Market cafe, we talked with a lady in a welcome center about the possibility of driving out to tour the Ninth Ward, the area hardest hit by Katrina back in 2005. She was living not too far from that area at the time, and her home had been damaged, so she was a great source of information.
We drove through the Ninth Ward, which is a poor, mostly black area. The homes didn't look quite as bad as I expected, the worst flood damage being interior, apparently. There were a couple of streets with rows of pretty multicolored new homes, all elevated on posts, so a great deal of rebuilding is going on.
Nancy, our pop culture guru, told me that a few years ago Brad Pitt started a foundation that has been constructing a bunch of energy-efficient homes in the Ninth Ward, using his wealth to good purpose, and we wanted to get a look at a few of them. We saw a very modern two story structure on eight foot posts that looked a little out of place in the neighborhood, and Nancy felt that this was the style Brad was going for.
We got out of the pickup and started walking up the street. A young black guy - maybe 16 years old or so - emerged from the house and offered us three pralines for $5. Nancy paid him and asked him if this was where Brad Pitt was building houses. He told us that in fact this was the first home that Brad had built, and that he had met Brad. "Nice guy?" I asked.
"Yes, sir, real nice. And Angelina come along, too."
"How did she look?" I asked. "Was she hot, or a little too old for you?"
"Hot," he said, sheepishly.
We asked him how high the water got in the neighborhood. A hard looking white woman on the upstairs porch of Brad's first house called down, "Got up to 22 feet here. A house in the neighborhood floated up off its foundation. There was people in the trees waiting to be rescued."
The young praline salesman said, "My grandmother" - he indicated an elegant elderly black woman also up on the porch - "was trapped on the roof of her house for twelve hours. Brad built that first house for her."
I asked if they felt that the levees had been fixed enough that they felt safe. The grandmother said, "We sure hope so. Have to trust in the Lord."
From the Ninth Ward we drove out along the levee and stopped at the Museum of the Battle of New Orleans, at the site where Andrew Jackson defeated the British in the War of 1812. The ranger there helped us to understand how Katrina's storm surge had caused the flooding.
For our last night in New Orleans, we decided to walk to Antoine's and eat at its beautiful bar. That's a walk of almost a mile, and since a few sprinkles had fallen, we took an umbrella. About halfway there, the heavens opened and the Quarter flooded big time. By the time we reached Antoine's, our shoes and clothes were soaked, and we didn't feel presentable. So we returned to our campground, took warm showers, and Nancy made BLT's. Can't eat any better than that.
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