From NOLA and Back with the Cajun Navy

This will be my second attempt at blogging.  The first and only installment of my first blogspot was a scratch-the-surface analysis of the profound truth that true New Orleans French Bread cannot be duplicated outside of New Orleans.

Some analogy was drawn to the return of bell bottom pants to the fashion scene.




I think the connection was that the French bread recipes of New Orleans are protected (as opposed to forgotten) and that maintains their value and prolongs and preserves them for future generations.  Fashion horrors like bell bottoms are forgotten (as opposed to protected) by intervening generations and faded memories of the horror are replaced by fond reminiscences of the past resulting in youngsters of the newer generations adopting them as their own (absence makes the heart grow fonder), thus preserving them.   Huh???  Oh well.  I was astonished that fellow deep-thinking bloggers did not immediately inundate my enlightened blog with insight into this phenomenon that I had discovered.

Yeah, like I said:  Huh??

I also recall that I attempted to set ground rules in that seminal blog to prohibit personal attacks on participants, thus encouraging discussion to be directed at ideas and not personalities.  Then, and now, it amazes me that online interactive discussions routinely denigrate into personal attacks, whether in blogs, comments to news or sports stories, and virtually everywhere on the internet that interaction is allowed.  This occurs whether the discussion is about rival sports teams or someone expressing sympathy at the loss of a loved one.  Perhaps it’s the anonymity that is allowed (or encouraged).  Perhaps it’s what I will call (once and only once with no links provided intentionally) the Hilton/Kardashian Age, in which talent and fame need not be connected and everyone is trying to scoop up their 15 seconds of fame.

Andy Warhol allowed for each of us having 15 minutes of fame but the internet age has dramatically compressed that.  The interweb blogging machine thingy gives everyone the perception that they can say exactly what they are thinking without any social filters that might consider civility.  Anyway, this is still a hope that I can encourage participants (if there are any), to avoid personal attacks on those presenting other ideas and to actually address ideas, even if they leave the original point of the discussion.  Just a thought.

Although I have not lived there for nearly 40 years (and for 15 before that I technically lived in the suburbs), I consider  New Orleans, LA (USA) my home.  It’s in my blood and always will be.  Second in the DNA composition of my blood and connected to that first fact is I am an insufferable New Orleans Saints fan and permanent member of The Who Dat Nation.


I can’t help my love for either the city or the team.  It’s like the color of my eyes (blue)…Can’t change it.  I remember as a 10 year old hearing on the radio that the new franchise destined for New Orleans would be named the Saints, and I was appalled.  In the then-significantly smaller NFL of the Colts, Cardinals, Bears, Giants, Rams etc. why the heck the “Saints”.  Of course I know now why it is the perfect name for the team, and no child within 100 miles of the city reaches the age of 2 without knowing how to sing and to dance to “When the Saints GoMarching In”.



In old Tulane Stadium, before the Superdome and before the soccer style kickers in the league, I watched Tom Dempsey, overweight and with half a foot, kick the first 63 yard field goal, a record that stood for decades.  It has now been matched 3 times, but never beaten.  In 2010, my youngest son and I got to attend Super Bowl XLIV (44) in Miami and saw the Saints whip Archie’s son (Peyton) and the Colts.  (Luv ya Peyton - Go Broncos...just not against the Saints).  Hopefully that’s not a once in a lifetime experience.  What I hope will be is what has come to be known as “The Homecoming”.  I was fortunate (at the risk of exaggerating I’d say “blessed”) to be in the Superdome for the re-opening of the stadium one year after Hurricane Katrina.  It was waaaaay more than a sporting event and represented the resurrection of the city.  The City of New Orleans and our Saints are imbedded deep within my inner core.

Bones

Grunch & Bones McGregor

As the 9^th of 10 kids (yeah Catholic) I was skinny as a bean pole and bore all of the nick-names, “skinny minny”,         “boney-maroney”, “bone head”, “whiteroach”(?) etc., but the one that stuck was Bones.  I have adult friends and relatives who still call me Bones and Uncle Bones. One that didn’t really stick, but it was exclusively used by my Dad (aka The Grunch), was Bones McGregor.  I don’t know where it came from, but I always assumed it was connected to the sports equipment manufacturer “McGregor”.  From that moniker come my occasionally used screen names “Bones McGregor” and @boneymac.  No deeper meanings or double entendre…just a nick-name my dad called me.

Being from NOLA, one area of my brain stores un-erasable knowledge of hurricanes.  Until Katrina and Rita in 2005, the most prominent storms had been Betsy and Camille in the late 60’s.  The eye of Betsy passed over the roof of our family’s small wood-frame track home while we listened to local storm reports on a battery powered transistor radio while mopping water up from under doorways and waiting for the “picture window” to implode.  Fortunately, it never did.

On the heels of Betsy came Camille a year or two later.   This time dad sprung for a room at the Jung Hotel on Canal Street, a huge, square, plain-brick (trans. "butt-ugly") downtown New Orleans hotel, then touted to be the largest in the city.  Fortunately for us, but devastatingly for the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Camille turned north in the last hours before land-fall.  Only Katrina, nearly 40 years later could wipe out the remnant destruction of Camille, by adding a layer of destruction over the top of it.

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Rita

Katrina will be the detailed topic of my first set of blog posts.  Suffice it to say now, being in the streets of New Orleans within 48 hours of Katrina’s visit, left memories and images I could never have anticipated and will never forget.  I had no time to come down with post traumatic stress disorder because 3 weeks after returning home to southwest Louisiana, Hurricane Rita devastated that area and put an oak tree in our bedroom.  It took a year and a half to repair and move back in.

I am the father of 5 children ages 13 – 30 and Pe'Pere to one grandson with another on the way.  Only one of my children (to my knowledge) has spent any time in jail. That was just a few hours and no one was hurt.  I “married up” as they say.  My wife of 19 years is a strong, charismatic (in the traditional, not the evangelical sense) and special person, unique among her gender.  We were both political junkies when we met at a campaign seminar during my unsuccessful run for the state legislature 21 years ago.  With age our political feelings remain strong, but are now held in check by severe cynicism resulting from the non-productive nature of the slash and burn politics of the last 20 years.

Despite the early death of my father and of other family members and friends, I have lived a moderately charmed life…I mean I’m not Bill Gates, Bill Clinton or the governor of some south Pacific island, but I feel very fortunate.

I’ve always fancied myself a writer with a combination of adequate brain power and perspective to have ideas worth discussing.  I blame my French laissez faire blood and upbringing for my less than disciplined approach to writing.  I’m sure I am fooling myself into thinking that this blogging stuff will be just what the doctor ordered.

I'll start with something I've already written.  It was written seven years ago after being lucky enough to get into the City of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  We were among the various groups of Louisianians who brought boats into the flooded city and later came to be know en masse as The Cajun Navy.