With all the news stories of the horrific vehicular slaughter perpetrated by a “Domestic Terrorist” who just happened to also be an army veteran, I had to add my own “two cents” worth of what and how I remembered “The Big Easy” or to common folk, New Orleans, Louisiana. My recall is not just New Orleans but two historically famous and popular vicinities, that being No. 1 Bourbon and Canal Streets and No. 2 the New Orleans Superdome.
My first dealings with “N`oleans,” as many of the locals speak it, was in the early 1980s. My dad and I had just put a (new to us) 1966 International Harvester cabover tractor (and flatbed trailer) on the road. A few months prior to this trip, I had a truck motor blow up on me in an ice and sleet storm south of Washington, D.C.. It was a really arduous ordeal just getting the truck back to Florida and then finding and “rigging” the next truck for interstate duty. As my dad and I were running “team,” we took on a load of military-boxed cargo heading from around the Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyards and headed to St. Louis, Missouri. This was the week prior to the “Fat Tuesday” parade festivities, coming soon in New Orleans. On the way north, I had pulled into a truck stop and as I was getting info for our St. Louis drop, mentioned that I would love to take my dad to see the Mardi Gras in ‘The Big Easy.” A few days and a couple of hundred miles later, we offloaded our freight in St. Louis. As I was on the pay phone (NO CELL PHONES back then), the dispatcher snickered and said, “I got you what you wanted.” I walked back to the rig with a big smile on my face, and the old man said, “What the hell are you all grinning about”? That’s when I told him we were going to New Orleans with a load!
We picked up more freight in St. Louis and made it down to New Orleans in good time. It was the Monday before “Fat Tuesday,” and the city was crazy with traffic (and tourists). Now, somehow, on the way to the docks (where our load was to be received), I ended up taking that rig right across Bourbon and Canal streets (and that was one of the worst decisions to be made on that run). It took over an hour just to crawl that tractor-trailer rig around those very old (and very tight) streets. We barely made our delivery time and got the load off (right at their closing time). Then, the fight with traffic (just to get back to I-10) took another 3/4 of an hour. We made it north back across the Lake Pontchartrain waterways to the truck stop in Slidell, Louisiana, and camped out there for the night. The next day, the truck was unhooked from the trailer, and we drove back down to New Orleans. It was another interesting ordeal just finding a “safe-looking” place to park the tractor. As an anti-theft precaution, the old boy used a “redneck resource” to keep the doors from being jimmied open. He had drilled holes up through the floorboards and ran big lag screws up into the bottom of the doors!. We then caught a cab back down to the intersection of Bourbon and Canal streets and waited for the parade to commence. Of the many memories that I carry of our time running trucks together, that night, watching him laughing as he was jumping up to catch the rings of beads, is one that I will always treasure!
After the parade was over, it was another “big easy” experience trying to catch a cab back to where the truck was. We ended up walking about a mile before a cop came up to us. He was wondering what two white guys were doing in his “Quarter.” When we told him that we had a truck parked in the St. Bernard section of town, he said, “You mean you HAD a truck parked there!” Now, they had a bad problem of “auto-dismantling” in the N’oleans area. As we had earlier been up on I-10, we could see several cars that had broken down, and before a wrecker could get to them, teams of “dismantlers” would swoop in and have motor, trans, wheels, and even the seats removed in record time!
The cop helped us get a taxi, and it was a great relief to see that the truck was just as we had left it.
Fast forward about 24 years, and I was again on the way into N’oleans, but this time, with a rig carrying T.V. production equipment. I had signed on with an outfit that was producing the ball games around the holiday season. The company had flown me out to San Diego, Ca. and I (and another driver) had six days to get those rigs to New Orleans. We made it there in three days. After getting the production trailers set in place, we had some time to kill. We were parked at the area surrounding the Superdome, and the “French Quarter” was less than 10 blocks walking distance. This is the other “N`oleans” memory that sticks with me. As the sun went down and the “players” came out, the town took on a whole different personality. Towards the end of our walk, we passed by a “Voodoo Emporium” on one of the back streets. Their door was open, and a group of “locals” were hanging out just outside of the shop. Between the odors coming out of the place, the “dark” music they had blasting, and the look on some of their faces, we decided to speed up our “gait” (before we had some weird voodoo curse thrown at us)! I forgot to mention that before this production gig (and a year prior), I had driven relief supplies into that area right after Hurricane Katrina. Remembering what I saw of New Orleans on that trip made me VERY THANKFUL that I could drive myself safely back home to Florida!
I must add that if you are a young man and want to see the world, New Orleans is going to be one of the top 10 experiences that you may want to undertake. Just make sure that you can make it safely out of there and back home in one piece! I hope that y`all have a blessed week!
Steve Goodwin is a recently retired Christian conservative veteran (of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division), who still feels that “duty to country” did not end when the military uniform got hung up. He and his wife Cecelia live on the edge of a beautifully wooded tract of land just south of the bypass, and are involved in not only church activities, but also attend school board meetings and local community action events as well.
