My Old New Orleans Home

 Well, it was home for awhile in 1983. This was a former mansion in the lower-garden district of New Orleans, across from Coliseum Square, on Coliseum by Terpsichore. 1629 was the address, if I recall correctly.

I was tending bar at the now-defunct Petroleum Club of New Orleans. A coworker- Mac Tyler- helped me get in there. Well, he sorta helped, I guess. He told me about it, told me the name of the landlady- Miss Daisy- and said to mention his name. I went down there one day after work, rang the bell and introduced myself to Miss Daisy.

It was like the dream sequence It's A Wonderful Life when George Bailey went 'home' and and his mom was running Ma Bailey's boarding house. Miss Daisy was a little woman, maybe 70- 80 pounds, dying of cancer, I would later learn. She said there were no rooms available and even acted like she didn't know Mac. At least she didn't say: "Mac Tyler? He's been in the insane asylum since he lost his business. If you know him, you must be insane too!"

Mac assured me the next day that he would talk to her (I figured he actually had not) and he'd put in a good word for me. He did, and I soon moved into a room for $33 a week. It was worth every penny. In the photo, my room is to the far right on the second floor, obscured by trees. It was a large, furnished room, 12' ceilings,with its own kitchen and bath and worked for me as a young man footloose and fancy-free in the early 80's. Aside from Mac, there were two other guys from work living there, a waiter named George and a Marieletta Cuban whose name I don't recall. That guy was a little crazy (Castro had emptied out some of the prisons and nuthouse's and let them boat over to the US in 1980?) Whatever his name was, he made excellent Cuban coffee. I do believe the secret ingredient was rum.

It was a pretty cool place to live. I think it had been like 14 rooms back in it's glory days. The 3rd floor, I believe was unoccupied and uninhabitable. I would have fucking loved to explore it and the whole place, but I was so happy to have an affordable place that I wasn't about to go exploring risk looking like trouble.

It's the story of so many cities in this country. Grand homes are built in good times for wealthy families and carved up in the bad into apartments or rooming houses. It wasn't hard to imagine it's past splendor, inside or out, but yeah, it had been awhile since it felt the warmth of a family.

The park across the street wasn't much then. Bums slept there at night. I'd pass through it to make groceries at the A&P which was probably on Magazine Street at the time. I'd go there a couple times a week. Never had a problem until once when I went at dusk. There was like a hundred little black children running around playing. Odd for this trek, but OK. Suddenly, it wasn't OK. A lot of small stones came my way. Pebbles really, but what might come my way when they ran out of those? Not sure why, but I took a hard left rather than turning around. I was young and proud I guess. I took another left when I could, to backtrack to the mansion and passed an older, grinning black guy on his porch. He said, "I like da white boy..."

I told him I liked me too and kept on walking. Apparently I had a lot of guts to be there near dark. Well, not so much guts as poor timing. It wasn't until I moved from the mansion that I learned that my path to the A&P took me by the St. Thomas housing project, at the time one of the most dangerous areas of the city. Yikes. I had always gone there during the day. Never again near dark.

There weren't a lot of house rules but I did break one. You weren't supposed to bring women in over night at least. I think a woman lived there so it wasn't an all male cast, but I really don't recall. I can appreciate that Miss Daisy didn't want people having roommates or any prostitution going on. Well, one night I was out with Extremely Blonde Susan, a girl I worked with, and one thing led to another and we needed to get busy. We were as quiet as we could be. I don't know if Miss Daisy would have bounced me for having a girl in my room, but I didn't hope to find out. But that was the night I found out why I would call her Extremely Blonde Susan. No risk, no reward.

 Another rule was that if you were locked for any reason at night, DO NOT RING THE DOORBELL AND WAKE MISS DAISY. I had to remember that one night when I came home late- a little drunk- and broke the key off in the door. Oops. It was a bit late to be bothering friends for a place to crash for the night so I made the command decision to tough it out on the porch until morning. It was a decent night. My only concern was it was payday and I had cash on me and the bums in the park could see what was going on. I decided to stash my fundies in my undies and hope for the best. The guys in the park weren't necessarily bad people, just men down on their luck. We were kindred in spirit, at least for that night.

In the morning some housemate I had never seen before advised me that the door was open. My broken key was out and a new one was just a stern look from Miss Daisy away.

Thanksgiving of that year, some of the mansion housemates decided to go off the wagon. I had been back in Chicago for the holiday and caught the end of that. It seemed like I was the only person in the mansion with a job. The Club manager Mike asked me to see if our guys, Mac, George and maybe that crazy Cuban guy were coming back. Mac and the Cuban were never on the wagon so I guessed they would return. Not George. I don't know whatever happened to him as shortly after Thanksgiving, we were notified we had like 14 days to vacate. The mansion had been sold to someone who had the money to bring it back to it's former glory, in a condo sort of way.

I house sit for friends at the club, first for Rebecca and her husband Michele, while they were out of town as I was eligible for an apartment in the Quarter, across the courtyard from them. I was set to take that one but the guy living there was fighting his eviction. Who knew how long that would take? While I wasn't hot to live in the Quarter, courtyard living wasn't bad while I was there. It was remarkably quiet, walled off from the hustle and bustle of the Quarter. I don't recall what the rent was but it was reasonable. What wasn't reasonable was French Quarter groceries. No A&P in sight, with or without rock-chunking black children. I found a boring, typical apartment complex with a pool- on Coliseum- but further Uptown. I also found Sonia. Story for another day.