In honor of the holiday, I'm gonna put up something I wrote last year to commemorate the journey out west to NoLa. I hope y'all enjoy it. In the meantime, please keep us in your prayers, and watch the game. Go DAWGS! Sorry for the lack of biting wit and interesting comment, but I don't have time. See y'all in Mickey Town!
New Year's Eve On Rue Bourbon
The weeping city of New Orleans sits on the banks of the Mississippi River. Most unfortunately for them, these banks tend to get above their limits on occasion, which has caused much suffering for the people living in this Pearl of the Mississippi Delta. Thankfully, the city of New Orleans rose from the proverbial, and in some places quite literal, depths to restore such a beautiful Mecca of the South to its former glory.
An annual tradition in this Paris of the American South is a classic gridiron match-up known as The Sugar Bowl. New Year’s Day in New Orleans usually features fans of the best football team in the South preparing to defend the region from some interloper from another part of the country, either the East coast, the mid-western plains, or in this one particular case, the Hawaiian Islands. My good friend and I partook of a gentle train ride from our home in Atlanta to New Orleans on New Year’s Eve so we could enjoy this elegant contest of football.
These shut-eyed college students we were could never have anticipated the experiences that lay ahead for us in that fair city. Before stepping foot in town, there were Appalachian Americans drinking beer and cajoling up and down the aisles of the train! It was senselessness on rails, I tell you. Yet this was only the beginning.
Being New Year’s Eve, we decided to stretch our usual bed-time of strictly 10pm a little more so we might enjoy our first Midnight on New Year’s. After meandering through the shabby streets littered in trash and conspicuously passed-out individuals, we were starving. So we tried to find food on what we’d heard was the fanciest, most reputable, cleanest place in town: Rue Bourbon. I’d expected the sweet aroma of Creole cooking to waft through the vine draped walls of white and iron-wrought balustrades to my delighted nose, but not the noxious fumes of some unknown substance between battery acid and a thick fog that won’t lift. The smell was suffocating. I later learned it was the smell of alcohol and stogies, things that I’d only rarely seen before, coming from such a prestigious, upstanding Southern university. People crowded on the street by the hundreds, blasting out loud music that led my ears to bleed and tripping all over each other. I had never seen such shameless fondling and random hurling of beads, which I am proud to say I have not seen since. When I thought we’d found safety in a girl I knew from class, she did something I shutter to recall, yet will for the benefit of my reader. She lifted her shirt in front of us. I was startled and appalled, and successfully dodge her to this day, for fear of public blushing.
The worst event of the night was when a man-yes, a man-brushed up against me and took hold of my overcoat. Fortunately, it was a cold night and I had a coat, or else I faint to think of what else he may have gripped. I pushed him away in disgust and kept on walking. I tell you, I am yet to experience so much sin and personal degradation in a month of Sundays as I did on that one street the last night of the year. And I tell you now, if I ever visit that deplorable town again, it will be with armed guard for enough time to see the game and leave. I assure you, I will never spend New Year’s on Rue Bourbon again.
An annual tradition in this Paris of the American South is a classic gridiron match-up known as The Sugar Bowl. New Year’s Day in New Orleans usually features fans of the best football team in the South preparing to defend the region from some interloper from another part of the country, either the East coast, the mid-western plains, or in this one particular case, the Hawaiian Islands. My good friend and I partook of a gentle train ride from our home in Atlanta to New Orleans on New Year’s Eve so we could enjoy this elegant contest of football.
These shut-eyed college students we were could never have anticipated the experiences that lay ahead for us in that fair city. Before stepping foot in town, there were Appalachian Americans drinking beer and cajoling up and down the aisles of the train! It was senselessness on rails, I tell you. Yet this was only the beginning.
Being New Year’s Eve, we decided to stretch our usual bed-time of strictly 10pm a little more so we might enjoy our first Midnight on New Year’s. After meandering through the shabby streets littered in trash and conspicuously passed-out individuals, we were starving. So we tried to find food on what we’d heard was the fanciest, most reputable, cleanest place in town: Rue Bourbon. I’d expected the sweet aroma of Creole cooking to waft through the vine draped walls of white and iron-wrought balustrades to my delighted nose, but not the noxious fumes of some unknown substance between battery acid and a thick fog that won’t lift. The smell was suffocating. I later learned it was the smell of alcohol and stogies, things that I’d only rarely seen before, coming from such a prestigious, upstanding Southern university. People crowded on the street by the hundreds, blasting out loud music that led my ears to bleed and tripping all over each other. I had never seen such shameless fondling and random hurling of beads, which I am proud to say I have not seen since. When I thought we’d found safety in a girl I knew from class, she did something I shutter to recall, yet will for the benefit of my reader. She lifted her shirt in front of us. I was startled and appalled, and successfully dodge her to this day, for fear of public blushing.
The worst event of the night was when a man-yes, a man-brushed up against me and took hold of my overcoat. Fortunately, it was a cold night and I had a coat, or else I faint to think of what else he may have gripped. I pushed him away in disgust and kept on walking. I tell you, I am yet to experience so much sin and personal degradation in a month of Sundays as I did on that one street the last night of the year. And I tell you now, if I ever visit that deplorable town again, it will be with armed guard for enough time to see the game and leave. I assure you, I will never spend New Year’s on Rue Bourbon again.
Adam W.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment