Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

Culture shock USA - Part III

When I left New Orleans in 1990, I didn't miss the town. David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan member, had just lost the election for the state Senate - receiving "only" 44% of the vote. I tried to explain to people in the city of my birth that a racist neo-Nazi winning 44% of the vote is a catastrophe and that Hitler never won more than 40% of the vote in free elections in Deutschland. But the winner-takes-all principal in the US meant that the man had suffered a "major" defeat. New Orleans celebrated itself as an enlightened city in the "New South". I moved to Texas to get a master's degree, and the only thing I missed about my hometown was the unparalleled beauty of the trees.

New Orleans had betrayed me. My life was better in Austin, Texas, and I thought of the city of my birth as I might have thought of a lover who didn't deserve my love. Since its inception, la Nouvelle Orléans had not taken care of herself. She lived the life of a hedonist, never turning down a pleasure, and drank herself into oblivion instead of doing great things. And yet, she would've had so much to offer. Not just the trees, which another Orleanian named Louis Armstrong once sang about:

The Baron in the trees? Some of the old trees in New Orleans can no longer stand up straight. They're still alive; they're just lying down. New Orleanians sit and walk in the city's trees. And they learn from the trees that you never give up the joy of live - you just keep on being your pretty self no matter how hard the hurricanes of life have hit you.

Having not been back at all for almost eight years, I had almost forgotten how much this city loves all kinds of intoxications. One evening, some nice people from an organization I was going to hold a lecture for in a few weeks had invited me to a social. There was lots of wine and cheese on the buffet, but I started off with iced water because I had eaten too many salty tortilla chips beforehand and was parched. Out of the blue, my swamp instinct grabbed me, and I thought, "you'd better start drinking some wine or everyone is going to think you are an alcoholic". No sooner had I thought that than the hostess approached me and intimated under her breath that I could have something harder to drink if I didn't want wine - how bout some whiskey?

A few days later, I was having a light lunch with some people from the energy industry, for whom I would also hold a lecture. When a colleague showed up, we were all distressed to see a large wound on his head with stitches. He assured us that everything was OK; he had just gotten into a little scuffle with some out-of-towners on New Year's. It was really just a misunderstanding: he had probably had a little too much to drink, and their car looked incredibly like his in the dark...

We all had a good laugh, and then another colleague used a phrase that, for a certain generation, often starts off stories from the days of their crazy youth: "One night at a Pink Floyd concert..."

At the end of 2004, I had a hard time not loving the town of my birth. One night in a bar in New Orleans, a real down-home brass band (with a Tuba instead of a double bass) was playing the town's folk music that is known the world over as jazz and funk. After so many years in Europe, I was less amazed by the obvious virtuosity of the musicians, which I had come to expect, than by the audience participation. Blacks and whites, rubbing sweaty butts on a warm December night, were clapping on the second and fourth beat - the beats the band was not playing.

Blacks and whites rubbing sweaty butts

The history of racial segregation in New Orleans is a bit of an anomaly in the US. When the French founded the town in 1718, the city's tradition of men from the Old World sleeping with women from Africa began. So was the offspring of such relations free like their fathers or enslaved like their mothers? According to the "Code Noir", these children were slaves - but who gives a damn, as long as we're having a good time.

And thus it came to pass that New Orleans had a large number of wealthy, free blacks - including some who owned slaves - when the city passed into Spanish hands in 1763. Like the French, the Spanish did not have such strict racial segregation as the British did in their colonies, so New Orleans became a haven for mulattoes who had escaped from a country plantation. By the time the city reverted to the French in 1803, who turned around and sold it right off to the newly founded United States of America a year later to finance a war against the rest of Europe, a third of the blacks in New Orleans were free.

In 1811, the city attracted a group of slaves from a plantation just north of town. These slaves organized the largest rebellion against slavery that ever took place in a US city. Haiti is not that far away, and slaves there had done away with slavery only seven years before. But what these slaves in Louisiana did not know is that you can't win a damn thing in New Orleans (the New Orleans Jazz didn't start winning basketball games until they went to Utah in 1979, and just look at the Saints win-loss record - or better yet, don't), and the rebellion was quickly crushed.

New Orleans is also the site of the largest street battle that ever took place in a US city. In 1874, a group of esteemed Southern gentlemen decided they had had enough of reconstruction. They demanded nothing less than the restoration of the Old Order and set themselves up at Liberty Place to fight for it. They may have lost the battle after a brief period, but they did once again prove that nothing ever works in New Orleans.

For long time, there was a monument commemorating this event on Liberty Place, but it proved to be controversial: after all, how are we supposed to commemorate these bozos? Today, the memorial has been moved to a less frequented quarter of the French Quarter, but the wording on the plaque is still a bone of contention today. But hey, at least those nostalgic for Old Dixie can still drive all day around the statue of Robert E. Lee at the Circle named after him. Just don't hold it against the General himself; he's dead and can't do anything about ignorant Southerners who mistakenly think he tried to defend the Old Order:

Long after the uprising at Liberty Place failed, racial segregation continued to be strictly observed. When the city was finally forced to integrate gradually in the 1960s, white city council members decided it was time to cut funding for public facilities. They didn't want to waste any tax money, and they sure as hell didn't want to share anything with blacks. Privatization à l'américaine has its roots in racism.

Integration in schools

I entered first grade in 1974. Back then, we learned that the South was integrated. I later saw pictures of brave blacks who had dared to be the first to go to a white university more than 10 years earlier. It is hard for us to imagine today how brave you had to be back then to be the first black to go to a white university. In 1962, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi. My father was also enrolled there that year. He told me once that the night that Meredith entered the University and riots broke out, he was in bed because he had to go to class the next day. Where would I have been that night?

12 years after Meredith entered Ole Miss, I went to school and learned that the South was integrated. Just before Christmas of 2004, I spoke with my uncle, a retired school principal from Louisiana, who informed me that the schools in the South integrated several years later than the universities. I was one of the first whites to go to an integrated school because the schools in my part of the country had only been integrated in 1970-71.

And my uncle told me another interesting story. When the schools were integrated, there was not only a mixture of black and white schoolchildren, but also of black and white teachers. For once, there was a concerted effort to get all young people to go to school, which had not been done consistently with some of the black kids. The most troublesome ones had simply been left to their own resources. As a result, a few black hoodlums suddenly had to start coming to the newly integrated school, though they hadn't darkened the door of any in a while. According to my uncle, even some of the black teachers were upset, because no one had been interested in these boys before, and now they were there practically as representatives of the black race for all of the shocked white parents to see. Those who could afford it sent their kids to a private school - and voted Republican to lower taxes so they could afford the private school.

Fat Tuesday

The Old Order is also reflected in the famous carnival festivities known by the French name Mardi Gras. For a long weekend, the population of the town doubles - and sees double. When the tourists are not standing in long lines waiting to pee, you'll find them lining the streets where the parades take place. Plastic beads and coins with the historic name "doubloons" are thrown off the parade wagons into the screaming crowd.

Strange fruit

As a kid, you quickly learned not to bend down to pick up a doubloon; rather, you cover it first with your foot. But Mardi Gras is not really a family occasion. In addition to being called the Big Easy (somehow you can always get what you want in New Orleans, even though nothing works right), the Crescent City (the Mississippi cradles the town), and the City That Care Forgot (yes, my love, you have never taken care of yourself), New Orleans is also one of a few towns called Sin City.

The day before Ash Wednesday, you'll probably see more naked breasts in the French Quarter that on a French beach. Men hold up their best plastic beads and yell, "show your tits!" Women pull up their shirts with one hand and catch the beads with the other. If it wasn't so cold in February, a lot of people would probably just walk around naked during Mardi Gras. But it's probably just as well they don't, cos then you wouldn't be able to see all of the menfolk's nice dresses.

Mardi Gras not only has its roots in the carnival traditions of Catholic Europe, but also in the town's racial history. Back in the good old days, the Haves paraded through town throwing trinkets to the Have-Nots (not to be confused with the Huguenots). Then there were also the parties of the blacks, who used to get together even back in the days of slavery on Congo Square (now in Louis Armstrong Park) on the outskirts of the Vieux Carré to dance and play music on anything that could be made into an instrument. Legend has it that proto-jazz was born in Congo Square.

Marching

But the Have-Nots also have their own Mardi Gras parades. It is said that blacks used to organize parades to get in the way of the white parades. Today, visitors remark at how often they see people dressed as Indians. Legend has it that everyone who was not white dressed up as an Indian to show solidarity not only with each other, but also with the exploited Native Americans.

In the film "Down by Law", the girlfriend of Tom Waits throws his stuff out the window and onto the street from the window on the top floor of this building. The movie was shot in 1986, and 19 years later the building looks like it's ready to be torn down. How can a town let a house go to ruins where such a great movie was shot? Why hasn't anyone put a plaque on the wall reading, "Down By Law was shot here"? Whatcha complainin' about? If we put plaques all over town where something important happened, you'd never stop reading. Come on, let's go get a daiquiri!

One of the oldest black Mardi Gras "Krewes is the Zulus (warning: they throw coconuts!). The Zulus were originally called the "Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club". This name reveals what is probably the most important and unique attitude towards life in New Orleans. Most people in New Orleans are not doing that well: bad jobs, bad schools, bad opportunities, bad luck. But you stick together (social aid) and never forget to enjoy the moment (pleasure club). Don't ever let nobody make you unhappy.

At another march that is also unique to New Orleans, this survival strategy is taken to its logical conclusion: the funeral march. In this tradition, which had practically died out a few decades ago and was only revived in my youth, a brass band plays a sad song on the way to the cemetery. On the way home from the cemetery, the band plays something upbeat - maybe even the same sad song they played all the way over, just now it's in double time. Time to get on with life - enjoying it, that is. (Incidentally, on January 20, 2005 a "Jazz Funeral for Democracy" was held at Congo Square.)

So when you walk by a brass band playing on the street in New Orleans and you think, "man, they are getting' down" - pay attention to the lyrics. They might be singing a sad song:

And a lot of the lyrics would make pretty nice survival guides:

Or:

Sure, all that sad stuff doesn't really match the upbeat music - at least, not if you're a foreigner from New England or California. We didn't invent the blues in New Orleans; it comes from Mississippi, just south of Memphis. But in New Orleans, people sing and dance their sorrows away. And the more sorrow there is, the more singing and dancing.

After so many years in Europe, it was all these happy faces that impressed me the most. In New Orleans, even the people who aren't homeless sometimes look like they are. A lot of the cars in town would never pass inspection in Germany. The streets of New Orleans don't have potholes; they are potholes. And if you see a row of nice houses, just keep going - there's bound to be one falling apart not far away.

"The City That Forgot to Care"

The big cities of Europe are taken care of much better, but somehow I just don't like them as much. People in Berlin and Paris just don't smile. So many of them seem to be drained from the effort it takes to get through the day. They carry their bags around as though they were filled with stones, and that look in their eye says that they've have a hard day.

People in New Orleans look like they've had a hard life. But when you stop to ask someone for directions, you might get a little more than you asked for - a story, a smile. Just think of it as a survival strategy.

I'd like to close with a few tips so you don't misunderstand us when you visit New Orleans:

This article is dedicated to the memory of my uncle, David Greer Sr., a retired school principal and husband of 45 years, who passed away just before Christmas 2004.

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