Fred & Ed were supposed to drop us at the Louisiana border. They were heading to Reno to draw some luck from the one armed bandits, plus Reno is an easy city to be anonymous. State troopers were everywhere & that was making them nervous. Entering Louisiana changed everything. The whole state was flooded, which is why they built the highways up above ground level. We were literally driving across a lake with this little trail of pavement across it. Closest I'll ever get to walking on water. They couldn't let us off into the lake so they took us direct into New Orleans. "Least we could do for the value you were to us" Turns out all that free gas $ they had been collecting from churches was to get me home to my dying mother. "Fabulous" I thought, "I'm gonna burn in hell" .
It was with a sigh of relief we waved them off on their journey & turned ourselves to Jackson Square. Too postcardy so we headed over to Bourbon Street. Lawdy but it was all I had hoped. Wrought iron & swanky exotic strip joints everywhere. You could smell the hedonism in the air. We lunched on crayfish from a street vendor. 10 cents a pop and drank beers across from the club with the electronic plastic lady legs waving up & down enticingly. GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. New Orleans has its own amusement tax. Beer & smokes had been cheap everywhere else. $1 a draught & 80 cents a pack. In New Orleans a draught was $2.50 as were smokes. That put a dent in our impoverished armour. So we found ourselves a nice spot on Bourbon Street & took turns busking with J's guitar. We were doing pretty well, tourists took us as part of the scenery & videotaped us, we're all over Japanese home movies as part of what New Orleans had to offer in the early 90's.
About a half hour into our busking set the hotel owner comes out screaming at us about laws & culture & if we don't move a half foot to the left he'll call the cops on us. Ok, mister nice guy. Soon enough a rusty ole pick up truck pulls up & let's out 5 or 6 littleCajun kids with tap shoes and shoe boxes. They tap down the street toward us swarm our guitar case, take all our $$ & move on laughing all the way. J had already stashed a $20 in his pocket & I had stashed a $5 so we went for some site seeing, unfazed by the "robbery". We met an old smelly guy with a shopping cart full of the strangest things. He gave us 2 bars of soap & 50 or so rolls of Rolaids as a welcoming gift. What a sweetie. He saw the tapdancers grab our loot and talked to us about territory, saying " but you an go anywhere I go, I'll protect ya...."
We went down to the water front to watch the riverboats and hopefully see some crocodiles. The knats were so bad it wasn't a long stay. Big webs of bugs trying get to the juice in our eyes. We wound up at Cafe Beignet where all they served was Monte Cristos and french donuts. In the bathroom there was my first realization of how absolutely filthy I was. The southern sun had baked a kilo of dirt into my face. My hair was wild, but my clothes! Oh my clothing was horrendously filthy. The waitress recognized my accent & turned out she grew up about 25 miles from me at home. Crazy, she brought us all the Monte Cristo & donut action we could eat & cup after cup of that thick Louisiana coffee. She told us about this church she was going to after work where starting around 1am all these musicians gathered in the back around a fire to jam. Words don't exist in any language to describe the music I heard all night that night. Blues & jazz & voices so authentic & heady. The bar for music was raised impossibly high in my soul & ever since I have been ruined for those styles of music & how they are presented by almost everybody. All night we met the strangest assortment of thieves & con artists & the invitations of places to stay & wash were tempting but no thanks. We slept soundly to the music for a few hours and woke up early to the most horrid stench. That city starts at midnight & ends at 6am. The 6 am streets are covered in urine, puke & trash. We went down to the graveyard where the characters in the Anne Rice novels did their business, the one that's featured in the drug scene in the movie "Easy Rider". The sign on the external gate read "Enter at your own risk. The City of New Orleans is not responsible for the activities inside these gates."
Risk be damned, what could they mean????