We’ve been talking about New Orleans recently – I wonder why! – and BretH found himself writing this story from when he lived in New Orleans for a time.

Thanks for sharing, BretH!

Recently in BJ there was an On The Road by frosty about New Orleans. Having lived there for a time after quitting college (for the first time) I started a comment but had to stop because I realized it’s really worth a story of it’s own…

After I graduated high school in 1977 I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or what to continue studying outside of a vague idea I might be an English major since I was pretty good at writing. I know I would not be happy at a large state university (University of Maryland, I’m looking at you) so I sought out smaller schools like Bard College and Reed College before settling on Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I guess of all the mistakes I could have made this one was the “best” but it was still a mistake.

My parents had promised to pay for a state school or the equivalent, and I had some scholarship money and Antioch offered a work-study program so it was affordable even for our barely middle-class family. However, the glory days of Antioch were well behind it, and expansion all across the country had left the main campus in Ohio severely neglected and with a declining student body. I joked about playing tennis on grass courts because the asphalt ones were in such bad shape. I also had not realized that someone like me would not do well in a school where you basically made your own curriculum. So I drifted from class-to-class without much focus, although to my credit, how much focus could I be expected to have in a class of “The Teachings of Don Juan in the Works of Carlos Castaneda”, where the professor said it was OK to fall asleep in class since he knew we would be absorbing information even in that state?

But outside of studies I had a great time.  I learned killer Ultimate Frisbee, had a wonderful Spring semester teaching at an outdoor education center in New Hampshire and had work study jobs that consisted of wandering the nature preserve in a gorge next to campus telling people to put their dogs on a leash and managing the college darkroom which meant I had 24/7 access to it and spent some wonderful nights there, alone with my negatives and prints.

Still, two years in I made the decision that I should leave school for a while until I had a better sense of what I wanted to do and could use my education money more effectively. But the idea of returning home to Maryland depressed me no end so when a friend down the hall asked if anyone was interested in going with him to New Orleans (where he intended to work in a stereo store), I jumped at the chance. My best buddy in college was also ready to leave and things fell into place amazingly well. The first friend had already hooked up with a graduate who rented a two-bedroom shotgun house near City Park and needed roommates while he worked offshore on oil rigs. So with a guaranteed place to stay my buddy and I headed South with the goal of working in a bicycle shop as we were both mechanics.

My first night in New Orleans was epic in ways I did not fully appreciate at the time. We arrived late in the day but the roommate who lived there insisted we all go out to a small club to hear this local band The Neville Brothers. Tired and wired we agreed only to be so seduced by the music and atmosphere and beer that when the first two guys left around midnight my buddy and I stayed to the end. At two-thirty or so we stumbled out to the street and stuck out our thumbs and within minutes were picked up by someone who not only drove us to our place but had us roll a huge joint from a bag of pot he had in the glove box.

We settled in reasonably well in the row house which was cramped but was cheap and we were in our early 20’s so it didn’t matter to us. I do recall one time my buddy said he witnessed me spontaneously levitate when a huge palmetto bug (American cockroach) dropped from the ceiling onto my bare chest while I was napping on the couch. And our friend did end up working in a stereo store, and the first guy had tons of money from working the oil rigs and wanted the best stereo money he could afford (even though he was home only a few days a month) so our living room ended up with the most amazing hi-fi equipment that a kid like me could have only dreamed of owning. To this day I feel sorry for the neighbors – we strictly respected a 10pm curfew on volume but up till then we put the stereo to hard use.

Our good luck continued as my buddy and I both found work at The Bikesmith, a little bike shop in a dicey neighborhood on Freret Street. The owner was a refugee from New York City who found the loose structure of life in New Orleans more to his liking. We had a good relationship with the locals too, as we were known to never turn away a kid who just needed something tightened on his bike and would price other repairs on somewhat of a sliding scale. The shop itself was a rabbit warren powered in part by a cord the owner had hacked into a city outlet, with a back room where the weed was plentiful. But the best part for me was the mobile bicycle repair van.

The Bikesmith van was a decrepit panel van painted yellow and stuffed with parts and tools to handle most repairs. In the morning I worked in the shop but we took appointments for repairs on location in the afternoons. So after lunch we would head out, me and a local mechanic who went by the nickname Bic (“like the pen”). Bic was a character himself, having worked at many other bike shops around the city but ending at the Bikemith due to incidents that were probably at least somewhat his fault. Bic loved Italian bicycles and his pride and joy was a Colnago frame fitted with all top-of-the-line Campagnolo parts.

I spent many memorable afternoons in that van with Bic. Some days when we had no appointments we would head over to the Tulane campus where Bic tried his best to pick up the ladies in between doing the odd repair job. On any given day we might be flagged down by someone with a flat tire or something small and Bic might not report that repair but we’d end up with a six-pack of Becks which we would finish by the end of the day. I remember one appointment in the French Quarter where we pulled up to a nondescript gate fronting a run-down building – and went inside to a Shangri-La of a fountained courtyard with a garden and balconies overlooking it on both sides.

The van itself was held together with baling wire and duct tape and just driving it was an adventure. One day we felt the van give a lurch and we watched our rear wheel pass us then hit a curb and get launched into the air over the sidewalk where thankfully no-one was walking. Another time I was driving when there was a huge BANG from below between the seats where the clutch assembly basically exploded in a spray of springs and other metal bits. As luck would have it we were actually descending from one of the few high points in the city – an overpass – and were able to coast into a gas station at the bottom.

I was in New Orleans for exactly one Mardi Gras – a historic one as it turned out as the police were on strike (https://www.wwltv.com/article/entertainment/events/mardi-gras/40-years-ago-the-police-strike-that-canceled-carnival-parades/289-f96f97c4-6459-41b3-87cc-66cea2987001). Thinking to hold the city hostage to their demands they even put up posters at the airport claiming that the prior month there were 31 murders in the city and did tourists really want to come there without the police on the job? Of course Mardi Gras happened anyway, without the big parades, because the residents simply came out in costume with the necklaces and beads and partied in the streets. My memories are not as clear as they might have been because, conscious of the ban on glass containers, we had filled gallon milk containers with a mix of Guinness and Heineken which we carried around with us throughout the afternoon.

Surprisingly we found ourselves mostly avoiding the French Quarter once we had visited a few times. We didn’t have enough money to hang out in the bars to hear the music (especially when you could hear it on the street). And under the façade of fun the Quarter was really a cramped, dirty and smelly place (especially early Sunday mornings). Our style would be to have beer at home then hit the Quarter very late and end the evening at the Cafe du Monde for coffee and beignets. But there was so much to do and see elsewhere in NOLA that we never missed it. Just walking or bicycling through the city was a sensory experience. My recollection is that it was a patchwork of blocks without much zoning so there would be a street with resplendent mansions like gilded Savannah, then a block or two of very modest shotgun houses. And little businesses everywhere – tailors, bars, salons and what have you.

One final memory was the night we decided to try and see the David Bromberg band (in it’s “How Late’ll ya Play ’Til” phase) in a club across the Mississippi River from the city proper. Arriving late there were no seats available and we were despairing and about to leave when an older guy right up front saw us and waved us to his table. He explained he was a record exec and preferred sharing his table to being alone and by the way, “anything you want to drink boys, it’s on me”. Dangerous words for two 20-somethings. Memorable night.

After a year and a half I was burnt out on New Orleans so the thought of living a while at home and even going to University of Maryland seemed less awful than before. I moved into the basement of my old house (my parents had split by then) and did attend a couple more semesters which proved equally fruitless as the first stint in Ohio. So I decided I wanted to become a motorcycle messenger – only I had never ridden a motorcycle and know next to nothing about downtown DC.

Full of confidence after making my way in New Orleans for a time that’s exactly what I did, becoming a motorcycle and bicycle messenger in DC before the fax machine, before personal computers and email when the absolute fastest way to get anything across town was by messenger…

…but that is a story for another time.

How About a New Orleans Story for a Saturday Afternoon?Post + Comments (17)