Tales From The Quarter
Tales Beyond The Quarter
By Debbie LindseyIt’s the little things – a single mile, a book, a kitchen table – and the lessons that a city’s heartache can teach. It all comes down to the potency of the small but tangible.
Mobile never elicited much loyalty or fascination from me when I was living there. Many things have conspired as time passes to soften my feelings for my hometown. Nevertheless, back then, lukewarm emotions were the best the city at large received from me. But I always loved the various neighborhoods in which I lived over thirty-four years. Yet never did I credit Mobile for these neighborhoods that delighted me. And never did I sense any allegiance to a neighborhood from its people – nothing really communal, nothing culturally shared. Maybe it was there and I didn’t care beyond the architecture or landscape. But here in New Orleans, the sense of neighborhood is palpable – and here, I do care.
New Orleans is unique in its neighborhoods. I was vaguely aware of this before the flood, but it was more a visual thing. Neighborhoods varied with their lakefronts or bayous, giant oak trees and mansions, shotgun houses and little yards, 1860s raised cottages or 1960s houses nesting on concrete slabs. Devastating poverty or ostentatious wealth. But it wasn’t until the flood that many of us and the rest of the world would learn how deeply rooted entire families were to these various neighborhoods. And this sense of living near or even next door to family and declaring near patriotic attachment to your neighborhood went beyond the confines of this city. Just talk to someone from St. Bernard or East New Orleans and listen to their desire to return, to rebuild despite all the risks.
When I first moved to New Orleans, it was to live in the Quarter. I believed the French Quarter was the center of the universe, or at least the center of New Orleans. And while historically that makes sense, a lot has been going on since the 1700s. In my eagerness to embrace my new home, I felt that living anywhere but the oldest neighborhood in the city would be somehow less real. Many a Quarterite, often fondly referred to as a Quarter Rat, believe all that is dear is near to them within the confines of the Vieux Carre. I never wanted to restrict myself to just one neighborhood. I enjoyed the city from lake to river, but still felt like what’s the point in living here if your zip code is outside the Quarter? I was wrong.
Back in 2005, as the city began to shake off the floodwaters, there was a sense of solidarity among us drowned rats, whether we hailed from the Quarter, Chalmette, Uptown, or even Claremont Harbor over in Mississippi. Our world grew closer and more personal.
The sense of defiance and pride that was felt in those early months upon returning would begin to give way to depression, anger, and just plain fatigue for many. I was one of the many. And I believe my French Quarter neighborhood was suffering as well. An economic malaise had settled upon her. And for me, my dear Vieux Carre began to resemble nothing but long hours of work and the daily struggle for a bit of peace and quiet.
Nearly three years later, we moved from the Quarter. And with due respect to the city blocks that were home to me for twenty years – I felt liberated. Immediately I began to feel the curiosity, excitement, and newness felt two decades ago when I first arrived in New Orleans. I feel like I am now part of something larger and more diverse. And it feels good. I am more than a Quarterite – I am a New Orleanian.
During the move I picked up Gumbo Tales – Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, by Sara Roahen, to read. Her writing celebrates our culture of food and in doing so, takes you to the people, kitchens, restaurants and neighborhoods of New Orleans and its surrounding parishes. She allowed me, the committed vegetarian, the pleasure of vicariously tasting gumbo again. Her chapter on Sazeracs had me ready to change my allegiance from beer to rye. I was shamed by the twenty years I have wasted not searching for St. Joseph Day altars and the Italian/Sicilian feasts that surround them. Hansen Sno-Balls! How had I missed that? I told Boyfriend we could travel Uptown for one next day off, but not until he read the chapter on Ernest and Mary Hansen and their granddaughter (now proprietor), Ashley, because we would be tasting a family tradition as well as sugary ice. In New Orleans, it snows in the summertime – sweetly and neatly into little cups.
Sara Roahen has written a love song to our city. And in doing so, she ascribes uniqueness to this region by way of our culinary curiosities and gastronomical excesses. Without reducing us with tired cliches to Mardi Gras Mambo zombies, sipping Hurricanes from the veranda of a plantation watching Ole Man River flow by, she tells tales of the physicality and personalities of this most southern anomaly – and does this as one would over dinner with friends. She writes about food as if it also was one of the many quirky characters that populate our neighborhoods. Sara’s book has given voice to that often-elusive thing that makes our city’s neighborhoods different from others throughout this country.
And it must be understood that for many neighborhoods, not all is home sweet home. There are pockets of poverty so deep that for every success story that climbs his or her way out, there are far too many doomed to failure. And the powers-that-be (and much of our citizenry) stupidly thinks that the razing of much-needed housing will solve the problems. I ask you, will tent cities under Claiborne become our new neighborhoods?
I want, for the first time in so long, to be a part of this city, to perhaps even fall in love again with her. But as I write this, outside my window, lead paint is being blasted from the house next door and settling in my yard, my neighbors’ yards. And once again the pervasive ignorance that breaches all facades of educated folk has struck again. A city of extremes where a street can change on a dime – hopscotch games chalked onto a sidewalk, and then three blocks away, chalk outlines the remains of a life that never knew the beauty and love that a city and her neighborhoods are capable of.
Hopefully, our city’s tale is not over. Perhaps we can all participate in rewriting the chapters that lead to despair and compose more neighborhoods like the one I found a mile down the road.
Gumbo Tales – Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen, published by W.W. Norton & Company is available at your neighborhood bookstore.
Comments always welcomed:
debbie@whereyat.com