I had a post in mind to write today, but then I read Stephanie’s. Go read yarnharlot.ca if you haven’t yet. Beignets and bottle trees–that is the best-written piece on New Orleans I have ever read. Absolutely essential. And boy did it bring back memories: I will try to add some old pictures in when the technical help in the household is around. I loved the place.
I was 16, my little sister was 15. We had had a fabulous dinner at the Commodore Inn, where the cute waiter actually flirted with me, which, when you’re 16, is totally and dizzily mindblowing. We were staying in the French Quarter.
After dinner, Dad told us, “Come on, girls, I want to show you where jazz was born.” We started walking along Bourbon Street. There was a street musician sitting at a corner, playing a jazzy tune, smiling and nodding to us as we went by, including us in in his fine summer evening.
Being a good little Mormon girl, I knew nothing of the culture of the bar scene, so when I saw one door that was right up against the pedestrian-only street with a sign saying, “No Cover,” I opened my mouth to ask Dad what that meant. Just then the door was thrown open and a girl stumbled out, fast. I looked at her and what popped out of my mouth instead was, “Dad. The sign’s right.”
My father, boulevers’e with embarrassment at exposing his teenage daughters to more than he’d expected, wheeled around on the spot and pronounced emphatically, “I think you’ve seen enough of where jazz was born!”