A Walk With the Palm Trees

Today was for the oysters. I woke with the dawn, well-rested for the first time in days. The distant cry of the morning train reached my ears from the crossing on Gause Boulevard, heralding the break of day with the unchanging punctuality of sunrise. I worked the property with Tom for several of the day's cool early hours, then we went to visit his ailing mother in a nursing home a few miles away. After a short time there, we left on Highway 190 for Biloxi. This small two-lane road took us to the coast. We saw the remains of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina: empty foundations, shattered remnants of private wharves, and houses twisted and torn as if by giant, clutching hands.

We stopped and ate at a harbor in Pass Christian, Mississippi, at a precariously leaning shack called Shaggy's. We snacked on Tuna and seaweed on the second-floor deck overlooking the harbor. Fish gamboled just below the surface of the water twenty or so feet below, flashing their silver bellies at the sun.

From the harbor, we continued east along the coastal highway, white sand beaches to the right and sloping lawns, live oaks and antebellum plantation style houses to the left. It would be worth whatever these places cost just to have a rocking chair that faces the Gulf of a summer evening.

Stopped at one section of beach and waded into the warm salt water. 100 yards out and i was barely waste deep. I swam for a few minutes, then returned to shore. There was another brief period of driving before we arrived at the Hollywood Casino in Waveland, Mississippi. I ate myself sick on fresh, grilled and fried oysters, fried catfish, hushpuppies and peach cobbler, then proceeded to watch old people gamble for a few hours while the food settled. Back on the road and back to Slidell. My three-day weekend is at an end. Time to rejoin the working world in the morning.

Cannon Balls and Mud Bugs

Up at 5am, dropped the car at Dorr Automotive to get a new transmission mount and an oil change. I drove into New Orleans with Tom as the sun rose over Lake Pontchartrain. I looked for a moment out the back window at it as it broke over the rim of the world, as firey and beautiful as any sunrise I had ever seen, but with the liquid glass surface of the lake below to cast its reflection back a thousand times from every ripple in the lazily shifting surface. A sheet of flame seemed to have fallen onto the water, and it burned there with a feverish intensity that grew, grew, and faded as the sun crept up and up, finally parting company with the horizon.

Tom broke the silence with a racist joke, something about moon crickets being distant relations of Spanish Moss, because they just hang around and do nothing. He was driving me into town so that I could attend a meeting at Commander's Palace on proper alcohol service. The meeting was a formality. Each member of Commander's staff is required to attend the class, take an absurdly easy test, and most importantly pay $25 cash in order to legally serve alcohol in the state of Louisiana. Paid the man, took the test, and was headed for the Quarter by 10am. We tried for Cafe Du Monde, but it was jam packed with a line out the door and down the street. We ate instead at the French Market, a restaurant on Decatur that has been open since 1803. A dozen oysters, a basket of alligator tail, and a giant assorted seafood platter later, we were uncomfortably full and ready for a walk. We went down to the riverfront and watched the cargo ships pass beneath the bridge for awhile. Back in the Jeep, we were headed to the Chalmette Battlefield, where was won the most important conflict of The War of 1812. The battlefield, which butted upon the Mississippi River, was nearly silent. The muted sounds of the traffic from the adjacent highway was nearly cut off by a line of trees. I found it ironic that a place where so much blood had been shed should hold such complete stillness and peace. To look out over the field, one would never guess that thousands had died here. It was full of flowers and crawdad mounds, green grass and not much else. A replica of the old plantation house stood off to the side like a half-finished afterthought. The live oaks bore silent witness to all that had passed in the 200 years since the men of three nations had come together to fight and die on the ground where I walked. Like me, they didn't have anything to say about it.

We left behind the old ghosts of that strange, silent place and took once more to the road, rounding Lake Pontchartrain on the Chef Menteur Highway, past Fort Pike and once again into the lush, swampy depths of Irish Bayou. We followed back road after byway after near-hidden track, and ended up once again on the banks of a river, this time the West Fork of the Pearl, across from a line of old fishing camps where Tom had spent his summers as a teenager. Tom told many stories as we drove, stories of his childhood, his family, and his life in the 32 years spent in the United States Army. I will record those at some point as well. He's a hell of a human being. The murky, swift-flowing water, the vibrant green of the jungle-thick foliage all around, the weather-beaten boats lined up on the shore, all of it appealed to me more than anything I have yet seen in this state. I will be sure to return before long. After a quiet minute on the river's edge, we returned to Slidell for crawfish, shrimp, and File gumbo. I've had worse days.

Mofro Country

More than four months later, here I sit in Slidell, Louisiana on the edge of Irish Bayou in St. Tammany Parish. I stayed too long in Las Vegas, but I left at the end of January. After a three day drive which took me across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, I crossed the Sabine River and entered Louisiana. A few short hours brought me to this place. It's been a couple of months now, but I remember walking through the front door and feeling the crushing loneliness that was to be mine for the foreseeable future. I realized in that moment that I had come to a place where I knew no one, and no one knew me. I realized that I had left behind all that was familiar, and much of what had become important to me. My heart was sick, and I felt foolish, selfish and weak. Not the best way to begin, but it was a beginning nonetheless.

I went into town the next day and met with Freddy, the only contact I had made before arriving. He got me a job at Borgne, John Besh's new restaurant at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I worked there for a two weeks before securing a position at Commander's Palace. It's one of the oldest restaurants in the city, and very prestigious. I feel that if I there were anyplace in the city of New Orleans where I could learn about the service industry, this is it. I trained during Mardi Gras, cut my teeth on the busiest days of the year, and since then have been learning new things about food and service every day.

For the rest, I am finding new places.