September 23rd, and we start the day with fruit & Danish pastries and then we’ve got a walking tour of the Garden District arranged, including the No 2 Cemetery. Our guide this time was Anna-Ross who again was very pleasant and knew her stuff. I’m not very knowledgeable about architecture (a fact I hope to remedy as I found it interesting and would like to know more!) but I heard them talking about Greek Revival and Italianate houses. What I saw were beautiful houses with lots of balconies and ornate iron work—these people had serious money.
As for the cemetery, this was interesting as well. To begin with, people were buried below ground in the same way as anywhere else but due to New Orleans being wholly below sea level, they would hit water almost as soon as they began to dig. In addition, if they had a bad storm, it would not be unusual for the coffins simply to float away. Obviously, they had to find a solution so it was decided to build a mausoleum for each family so that they would be buried above ground. Space was tight though and it was just not practical for every corpse to have it’s own burial space so it was decided that if a member of a family died, he would be interred in the family mausoleum for a minimum of a year and a day. After this time, if the space was required by another family member, the original coffin was opened and by then, because of the heat and humidity in New Orleans, there would only be a pile of bones left. These were bagged up then re-buried in a corner of the mausoleum, leaving space for the new casket. If the space was required before a year and a day was passed, you could rent a sort of drawer for the casket until the time was up and the reason the time span of a year and a day was decided upon was that they needed a minimum of one year but felt it would be distressing for the family to open the casket on the anniversary of the original burial. Some of the caskets were equipped with chimneys and/or bells because of people worrying about being buried alive. Yep—there’s not much I don’t know about New Orleans cemeteries!!
After our walk, lunch was to be another long-awaited experience…….a Po-Boy, which turned out to be a long roll, sort of a French stick, so once again, Debs had come up with the perfect venue — well, it was more like Joe’s Greasy Café but this one was called Domilises. Let’s just say that this place was again in the low-income part of town and I had my misgivings at first but the clientele seemed to be friendly enough and as it was quite crowded, the food was obviously good.
Debs and I watched our Po-Boys being made and ours were prawns with lettuce and various other bits of salad (I achieved another ambition and said those immortal words “Hold the mayo!” just like in the films. I actually like mayo but just wanted to hear myself say it out loud in an American accent!!).
The guys though had the piece-de-resistance…...bread dipped in gravy, then lots of slices of roast beef heaped on top followed by mustard, ketchup, dill pickles and then more gravy poured over the top. Not for the faint-hearted or those dressed in white!! To accompany this gastronomic delight, we had Dixie Beers, the local brew and Root Beer for us girls—which is like sarsaparilla. Apart from the fact that a caterpillar somehow landed on my head while I was eating and a spider ran over Gordon’s hand, we enjoyed the whole experience. Incidentally, the name Po-Boys came about because that’s what the lower paid used to have as their lunch—obviously.
After Domilse’s, I thought that we were maybe going to go a bit up-market for our next bar but no, this time Debs had found a place in the guide book called the Saturn Bar. This was in another part of the low-income neighbourhood and now I was really worried because we were warned by the book that we should keep a low profile and not stare. Oh dear.
Maybe the warning that there was a mummy hanging from the ceiling should have prepared us for this place—it certainly didn’t look much from the outside, in fact I thought it looked closed (and breathed a sigh of relief!) However, John opened the door and said to the guy inside “Are you open?” to which he replied, in his Southern drawl, “I am now”……….. Imagine your hobby is collecting various bits and pieces from jumble sales, car boot sales and the like and then not doing any housework for 40 years and you will have an idea of what The Saturn Bar was like.
There was junk everywhere. A yappy dog, a neurotic cat who climbed on my lap and sucked at my dress leaving a big wet patch, two birds in a cage (which the cat obviously thought was his packed lunch as it made various attempts to get at them!), a snooker table laden with various tools, bits of furniture, old pictures, glasses and everywhere covered in 40 years of dust and cobwebs. And of course, the mummy. It hung there in a state of undress and when John asked the bloke where he’d got it, he replied “Made it” as if it were the most natural thing in the world!!
This place was famous though. The owner had pictures of himself with John Goodman, Nicholas Cage, Tommy Lee Jones etc etc—all of which had visited his bar. Here’s a photo of us there which unfortunately doesn’t show much of the surroundings but hopefully, you get the drift.
We still hadn’t finished our tour of ‘The Dives of New Orleans’ as Debbie had found us one more place to visit that afternoon but I really had my doubts about this one. It was called Jack Dempsey’s and according to the guide book, was mostly populated by ex-jailbirds and ex-boxers. Now, it’s not as if we could just go in unobtrusively—I mean, we stood out as tourists like sore thumbs—so I was really pleased to find it closed that afternoon. We’ll save that one for another day!!
Nothing else for it then but to head back into town (from this ‘low-income’ place we’d frequented for most of the day). This time, we headed for Bourbon Street and “Lafitte's”. Lafitte's was the first gay bar in New Orleans and was part of the tourist trail as it was so old.
From the outside, it looked as if it was falling down but inside, it was fine and there was a good atmosphere. It is no longer a gay bar—that moved down the street to new premises. We were served our beers in there by a gay policeman though—we knew he was a policeman because when I asked him to take our photograph, he said that his other job was as a police photographer and to prove it, he insisted on showing us his official badge. He told us that the bar was now owned by the sheriff who had asked this guy to do some bar work for him …… all sounds a bit far-fetched but that’s the story he told.
Debbie and I had a drink and then left Gordon and John while we did some shopping. There wasn’t much to see though, just tourist tat, so after about an hour or so, we met up with the guys again in another bar where the drinks were 3 for the price of 1. We ate in a burger bar called Pappy’s and then headed for this R&B Bar we’d noticed which was playing fabulous music. It turned out to be full of “in-your-face” women—you know, the type wearing things like tight trousers with a pink & white bikini top, but there was a good atmosphere and we had a good laugh in there. At one stage during the evening, we were sitting almost half in and half out of this bar people watching and some crazy guy wandered up, leaned towards me and said “I lurve you”. I could hardly understand a word he said he was so spaced out but John seemed to understand him OK as the two had a good few minutes conversation. Then you realised that none of their sentences matched and in effect, they were both carrying on simultaneous conversations with themselves. After the nutter had moved off, John admitted he couldn’t understand a word either but whatever, it got rid of him!!
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