On the top floor of the historic Napoleon House in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, a small painting hangs on a wall depicting the emperor Napoleon contemplating his exile to the tiny island of St. Helena. He had just suffered his defeat at Waterloo on the day of this writing 211 years ago.
In 1821, six years after Napoleon’s exile, New Orleans Mayor Nicholas Girod and pirate leader Jean Lafitte plotted to help the former conqueror escape to New Orleans, where he could spend the rest of his days in the upper rooms of what is today called the Napoleon House and perhaps plot yet another comeback.
Alas, Napoleon died before the rescue could be attempted. However, just the idea of such an escape might have put a smile on the somber emperor’s face in that painting. In the early 19th century, the city of New Orleans was a boomtown, a place of thriving commerce and a deep-seated commitment to pleasure.
(To the right, the Second Line march during our son's wedding)
My wife Suzanne and I live in Oxford, Mississippi, known as the “Little Easy”. We’ve just returned from a five-day visit to the “Big Easy”, where our son Michael wed his New Orleans native bride Lauren in grand New Orleans style. Nights at the Hotel Monteleone, fine dining at 186-year-old Antoine’s restaurant in the Quarter and downhome cooking at Dot’s Diner in the city’s River Ridge area, a reception in, of course, the upstairs of the Napoleon House, a wedding at the oldest Catholic Church in the region, plus a brass-band-led second-line march up the street to music and dance at Latrobe’s.
People come to New Orleans to celebrate, to have fun, to enjoy a gumbo of European, Caribbean, and African culture like no place else in America. They tolerate the heat, the pothole-filled roads, the threats of bad storms and bad crime (a shooting took place near our hotel while we were there), and the famed corruption and inefficiency in local and state governments because that’s the price New Orleans extracts for giving you the time of your life!
(Dot's Diner in the River Ridge area)
As the founder of the 80-year-old restaurant and erstwhile mob hangout Mosca’s in New Orleans’ West Bank, Provino Mosca, liked to say, “Without trouble, there is no life.” (thanks to New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin for getting that quote)
Certainly New Orleans has had its troubles. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 changed the city. Natives no longer joke about the city being so-and-so-many feet under sea level. Eighty percent of it was under water as a result of the broken levees from that hurricane. Hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes. Institutions like the city’s famed Charity Hospital never recovered, thanks to the political shenanigans of powerful Louisiana State University (which had hospital plans of its own) and the complicity of local politicians.
Even today, the city has to contend with an unfriendly, Republican-led state legislature and the continuing saga of political corruption. Recent Mayor LaToya Cantrell faces a federal indictment for allegedly sweetening the life of her bodyguard boyfriend with taxpayer dollars. The city’s new mayor, Helena Morena, promises reforms and a better life ahead. She got 55 percent of the vote, more than 30 percent better than her rivals, but New Orleans residents would not be blamed if they took a wait-and-see attitude.
Locals complain bitterly about the ongoing construction in the French Quarter, which has wreaked havoc with traffic and led to the shutting down of businesses blocked off from their clientele. A ride through the city’s bumpy roads—whether in the Quarter or in the Garden District—is an obstacle-course-filled adventure.
Nevertheless, it’s this writer’s favorite city—whether in the States or beyond—a city's that a living witness to a long history with the determination to appreciate that history but while not letting it ruin the present or the future. And to have fun while doing it!
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