The Cast: (Crescent City Chapter 1)

New Orleans is best in the early winter.

The fish are biting. Speckled sea trout are in shallow and the weather is cool enough you can spend all morning chasing them and shallow redfish in the marsh without feeling like you’re going to die. Days are warm enough to justify flip-flops and rolled sleeves. Nights have just the faintest hint of a chill. Every so often a cold front blows in, bringing strong thunderstorms, ducks, and crisp, cool air. There’s less mosquitoes. There’s less termites. There’s less flying cockroaches. Less smell. You can walk around without sweating to death.

New Orleans is best when you’re walking.

The roads are winding, narrow, confusing and crumbling. The other drivers are…inconsistent at best, often down right dangerous. It’s easy to get turned around and get trapped in a narrow warren of pedestrian choked one way streets. There’s no parking, and parking enforcement is aggressive and unforgiving with their tickets. But walking, especially in the winter, is a treat, especially at night. There’s something about the shadows cast by Spanish moss covered oaks, the soft yellow light of old street lights and the purple, pink, and orange neon reflecting off pools of what you hope is rainwater. It’s like being transported back in time. It’s like being an extra in the background as Elvis sings “King Creole” or Brando screams “STELLA!” in “A Street Car Named Desire.” It’s like being a minor side character in “A Confederacy of Dunces.” It’s like being a pirate. It’s like being a poet.

When I was a young man I wandered the streets with my friends, making our way from bar to bar, always searching for a girl someone knew, or a buddy who should be out, always finding someone, though it was rarely who we were looking for. It was raucous, rowdy fun. Young soldiers on leave. Country boys come to town. Later I’d wander the same streets with the girl who became my wife. She was from the area, born and raised and gave directions not in North or South or even left or right but would tell me to turn toward the river or the lake. I was born in Shreveport and went to High School in St Tammany Parish. I didn’t know the terrain. We always got lost and we somehow always found ourselves on Magazine street. We’d stroll the French Quarter, or Uptown holding hands and talking as we wandered the cobble stoned alleys around Jackson Square and the side streets off of Bourbon, or past the oak shaded mansions along St Charles. She’d fend off the hustlers and con artists that always marked me as a tourist.

Later, after we’d married and left and had a child and returned, we would wander the streets in the daylight. Still holding hands. Still talking. She still protected me from the con men and the hustlers who saw my cowboy boots and thought “Texan” and thus “mark”, but now pushing a baby carriage. We shifted from the French Quarter back Uptown, around Tulane, or Audubon Park, or Magazine, or just the few blocks around our little house on the border between two distinct New Orleans worlds, where the mansions of Marlyville Fountainbleu met the run down shotguns of Gert Town. On Sunday mornings we’d get beignets and play with our kid on the playground in City Park

It was during these walks that I noticed a phenomenon. I’d claim to not know the city, but then we’d find ourselves at an intersection somewhere. It could be on one of the big streets, St Charles, Magazine, Canal, Bourbon, Decatur, Esplanade. It could be on a cobblestoned back alley, or an industrial block by the river, or a sleepy residential side street but we’d come to a place and I would have a sudden, vivid memory of being there before. Vivid and Memory may be the wrong words to describe the sensation. It was more like an intuition, more like the sense of a memory. I’d see a restaurant or a bar or a building or an intersection and I’d think, “I was here once with…” and without remembering what came before or after I could remember the story of that place. It felt…it feels, like channeling a ghost of my past self.

And I want to tell you those stories. I want to give you a sense of those memories.
But first I have to start somewhere else. Somewhere far less glamorous because I have to tell you about some special people. Then I have to tell you about a shithole apartment just off the Interstate in Metairie, the kind of place you pass without noticing on the way from Louis Armstrong Airport to your Air BnB in Treme. Only then, once I’ve told you about these people and places, can I explain how they all helped me fall in love with the city that would become my adopted home.

After my accident I spent a year alone in my mother’s living room in the middle of nowhere St Tammany Parish, 19 miles North of Covington, 10 miles South of Bogalusa, an hours drive and a world away from the cobblestones, Spanish moss and white columned mansions of New Orleans. Moving back in with your parents a few weeks after your twenty-third birthday is miserable enough but being trapped, unable to leave and totally reliant on them is a unique form of torture even when you love and generally get along with your folks like I did. For the first few months I could barely leave the living room. I slept in a recliner. I watched every episode of “Law and Order” and “NYPD Blue”. I watched “Oprah” and “Judge Judy”. I started having firm opinions on the relationship between Ross and Rachel and I am still, and will always be, team Joey. I was hurt and lonely and bored.

People don’t treat you well when you’re hurt. I think it’s worse when you’re hurt in a dramatic way, a way they feel like they HAVE to interact with you. I came home to “Welcome Home” banners on the chain link fence and yellow ribbons around the pine trees. For a while folks, strangers, would visit. The first time I got excited. It had been so long since I’d talked to anyone but my mom or dad that the idea of anyone new, any human connection, even mom and dad’s Sunday School class was exciting. It was like waiting for Christmas Morning. It was like going to Disney World for the first time. Except, in the end, people let you down.

I know they didn’t do it on purpose, but it still hurts to remember how they wandered in and stared at me like a zoo animal. They always started with themselves. They always started with “I prayed for you” and they always said it in a tone like I was supposed to be appreciative. Like they’d helped load me on a John Deere Gator. Like they’d been in that tent in Uzbekistan. Like they’d conjured up the tailwind that brought my Medevac into Andrews Air Force Base on fumes. They’d say the appropriate words. “We hope you have a speedy recovery” and “Thank you for your service” then they’d leave me hurting and alone in the living room where I would have to sit silently, with the TV volume turned down low so as not to disturb them while they drank coffee and gossiped about church business in the kitchen. Ten feet and a million miles away from me.

There was worse. An old girlfriend, a first true love, called and I got to tell her what had happened to me and that was the last time I’d ever speak to her again. I can’t blame her. She had a kid and a job and we hadn’t seen each other face to face in years and though we clearly still cared for each other and had dabbled with something that resembled a relationship from time to time over the phone in the end all I could ever expect of her was to make sure I was okay. She did. I appreciated it. I hope she and her kid have had a fine life since.

You find out who people are in the worst possible way. My High School best friend called. We’d been beer drinking buddies for years. He and I were supposed to have joined the Army together. We were supposed to serve together, but the Army had other plans and while I was at Schofield Barracks and Fort Drum he was at Fort Campbell and we lost track, but I still considered him a friend, even a good friend. He’d heard I was home but hadn’t heard why and he called asking if I wanted to go out drinking. It’s hard to explain that you can’t. It’s hard to tell someone you can’t leave the house. “But hey man, if you get a chance swing out and visit.” The problem with beer drinking buddies is they’re only buddies when you can drink beer. He made his excuses and never called me again.

Those things hurt. They still hurt. It’s a hard lesson to learn that folks just won’t be there for you when you need them. It’s harder to learn that you can’t even, really, blame them. They had their own lives. They had their own problems. The church folks didn’t know me from Adam, they’d come because they loved my mom and wanted to show her support. I’m still mad at them, but I understand. That old girlfriend was a single mom. She had plenty on her plate and I was the reason things didn’t work out in the first place. She owed me nothing, and she gave me more than I ever gave her. That drinking buddy was the most hurtful. In fact it was crushing. I can’t believe he couldn’t even be bothered to drive out and visit. But there was a war on, and he was an Infantry sergeant, and we all had our turn in the barrel.

But there are silver linings. For five people that hurts you there’s one that will go out of their way to make sure you’re okay and I was blessed with more than a few good people like that.

John S was the first friend I made when my family moved from Shreveport to St Tammany Parish. We met on the bus that took us from William Pitcher Junior High where I’d been demoted from a High School Freshman to a 9th grader still in Junior High when we changed school system. Our parents worked together, I would go from school to mom’s work and then we’d drive home from there, so John S and I rode the bus together every afternoon for that spring semester and we were still buddies when we “graduated” to the 10th grade at Covington High School. John S joined the Marine Corp at the same time I joined the Army. What went wrong is his story to tell, but he was back in St Tammany Parish when I came home and he didn’t hesitate to drive twenty minutes out to the sticks to see me. What impressed me most was he brought a date. She was just a stranger. Some girl I’d never met, who I never saw again and who’s name I can’t remember but John S cared enough about me that he told her if she wanted to go out then she had to tag along to visit. That’s a fucking friend there.

Steve and I met Junior year when his dad became our High School JROTC instructor and we’ve been buddies ever since. In fact we’ve had a running text chat for a decade. We talk everyday. He joined the Coast Guard a year after I joined the Army, serving in DC and later, ironically, Massachusetts before moving back into his parents place in Covington. He was always…how do I phrase this…fastidious. We used to joke that he had OCD but...you know...things change. He kept detailed maintenance records on his truck in High School and drove it for decades. He was always well groomed. Organized. Focused on the details. To save money on school he enrolled in a community college in Mississippi and drove an hour to class from his parents home in Louisiana because gas was cheaper than tuition and fees at the time. Two or three times a week he’d drive a few miles out of his way to visit me on his way home from school. Like John S he drove his girlfriend out to meet me. The first time I left the house by myself after my injury was with Steve. Like a pair of dorks we put on dress uniforms and went to our High School NJROTC Military Ball as guests. We even took pictures together in the gym, posing like prom dates in Army green and Coast Guard blue.

I first met “Craig” at William Pitcher with John S. Ryan I met the next year, when we were all at Covington High School but we didn’t become friends until junior year when we joined the newly formed JROTC program. After graduation Steve and I joined the military as enlisted, “Craig” and Ryan went off to college. Ryan went to Hammond where he would stay for what felt like forever, becoming something of a local legend. Always the over achiever, “Craig” went to college in New Orleans on an ROTC scholarship, and joined the Marine Corp as an officer. After I got hurt Ryan drove out to visit me at home, and was around to buy my first beer when I finally got healthy enough to leave the house and would somehow be around again, years later, when I left the Army and moved to Hammond and gave college a try. “Craig” was in California and then overseas. He checked in on me when he was home on leave but it would be years before we truly connected again. Still, it’s important that you remember his name.

Charles and I met when he was a Freshman and I was a Senior. He’d gone to Middle School with my brother and at the time I considered him more of “Mark’s friend” though that wouldn’t last. We stayed in touch. We hung out when I was home on leave and my other, older, buddies were off in the Coast Guard, Marine Corp, and Army. Charles joined the National Guard and in the end served as much, if not more, than the rest of us, but when I moved home he was still living at his parents place just down the road and like all the others he was there, checking in on me, visiting when all I could do was sit in my mother’s living room and hurt.

Charles introduced me, or maybe reintroduced me to John K. I didn’t know John K in High School. He was a year behind my brother and Charles. We’d met a few times, we’d even talked about the Army, but before I got hurt he was firmly in the category of “Mark and Charles’” friend. He joined the Army as well. What happened there is his story to tell. What’s important is John S tagged along with Charles and together they became two of my closest friends. They were the ones who started taking me fishing, driving up to my parents and doing all the work to load the boat and the gear so I could get out of the house. We eventually learned to catch fish. Even got good at it. We’re still fishing buddies today and I swear, one day, I’ll take them somewhere amazing, like Panama, or Costa Rica and I’ll pay them back for all those trips. It was Charles and John K that went with me when I first started venturing out, helping me up the stairs like they were escorting an elderly family member and flanking me at the movies so wild ass junior high kids didn’t bump into me and knock me over.

There’s others I should mention. Folks who made the drive out to the sticks to visit me at my lowest point who deserve more words than I have time to write. Ray, the always smiling butt of all our juvenile jokes. Lisa, his girlfriend, then wife who loves Ray more than any woman has ever loved another man. Then there’s Jess, Charles’ girlfriend turned wife and one of the best people you will ever meet who deserved three thousand words of her own. There was Jake and Rebecca and the girl who became my wife and a rotating cast of hangers on. There’s high school drama. There’s romance. There’s war and heartbreak and loss and trauma. There’s also shotgun shells and beach sunsets and trot lines and raw oysters and gallons of beer. There’s love and triumph and rum punch and more laughter than you can imagine and the best food you’ll ever eat and I’ll try to touch on all of that as this series continues, I promise.

But for now this is the cast of characters. These are the people I call my friends…nah…family today. These are the folks who were there for me on my darkest days. More importantly, for the purposes of the essays I hope to write in the coming weeks, they’re the people who coaxed a redneck, Southern Baptist kid from Shreveport South of Lake Pontchartrain to the Sodom and Gomorrah that is New Orleans. They’re the people that taught me to love a town that I’d been trained to hate. They’re the folks who made New Orleans my adopted home.

I'm not a jazz guy and there's really not a better way for a country music guy to start a series about New Orleans than Lucinda Williams.