Voodoo Mambo

On Patrick’s first visit to New Orleans, we wandered over to Rampart Street to visit the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. I was surprised because it reminded me more of one of those storefront churches that I remembered from my childhood. This place was totally different than the voodoo shops through the French Quarter that were basically built to cater to the tourist trade. There were hand packaged herbs, hand made gris-gris bags, cowry shells made into necklaces, and amulets of various descriptions. An impressive black woman dressed in a hand sewn extremely colorful dress and head cover walked out of the back room to greet us. It was Priestess Miriam. We all chatted a bit, and Patrick and I bought some magical potions and left.


Outside, Patrick turned to me and said I now know the Black Mother Miriam and the White Mother Myriam. Little did we know that my knowledge of the temple would grow over time through some interesting coincidences and that my respect and knowledge of fusion religions would forever be changed.


A week later, I met a French spitfire that was a friend of my son. Claudine was a tour guide in the French Quarter and did a voodoo tour in the afternoons and an evening ghost tour. She offered to let me go on her tours free which I gladly accepted.


She met the tourists, me included, at a small bakery and we began to walk through the voodoo history of New Orleans.


As we walked Claudine never stopped talking but with her accent and rapid-speed delivery I didn’t understand half of what she said. Her hands moved as fast as her lips as she pulled us through the Quarter pointing out places of interest from the classic tourist traps of the area but then she started walking toward to the edge of the Quarter and paused in front of a house that had been the home of Marie La Veau. She then began to spin the story of this famous scion of New Orleans’ voodoo.


Marie La Veau was a free woman of color who worked as a hairdresser to the wealthy and often offering them advice, potions and spells to handle the problems of love, health and business. Apparently someone had tried to take away Marie’s home and she cast a spell that caused him to get into dire circumstances. The final resolution that to have her remove the spell, he had Marie’s home returned to her.


As we continued our walk we arrived at Congo Square, now called Louis Armstrong Park which is located across from the Voodoo Spiritual Temple and Priestess Miriam.


It seems that Marie was definitely more than a hairdresser and helper of the wealthy elite. In New Orleans, slaves were given Sunday afternoon’s off because – well because it was a way to allow the slaves to worship. Voodoo to those not in the know or perhaps those in the know preferred to think that the slaves were just Christians but beneath faces of Saints lay the spirit of the loas and teachings of the African religion that the slaves brought with them to America.


On Sunday afternoon till six in the evening the slaves would gather on Congo Square where Mare La Veau was their Priestess. They would drink rum, smoke cigars and seem to be apparently just having a little steam release from the pressures of life. What was going on was the rituals of the old religion. The beating drums would intensify as the day wore on and Marie would be seen in the center of a circle dancing and expressing her passion for her spirits. There were often sacrifices of live animals, usually chickens and the blood and rum would flow and the drums would beat out the passion of divinity. As Marie would intensify her dance, she would be ridden by a loa with messages for the people. To be ridden by a loa is to have one’s body taken over and to become a channel.


As we left Congo Square we walked to the cemetery. Before we entered, we heard the story of St. Bridget and the Baron – the bride and groom of the cemetery. These are the loa that can exist in the underworld or the black side of magic and in the upper world which is the white side of magic. Upon entering the cemetery for protection, one would place coins at the entrance as gifts to the loa for protection. As we walked around we stopped at the tomb of Marie La Veau where one would see flowers and gifts placed as at an altar. There were red crosses marked on the tomb which were thanks for petitions that had been granted through the intercession of Priestess Marie.


As we walked through the cemetery, Claudine told the story about how widows would come at night with lamps and walk around the cemetery to listen for bells. At a time where people were sometimes buried because they appeared to be dead, but actually might be in a coma bells were tied on the fingers of the corpses and widows would come and walk and listen for the bells. People in the tour stopped and then heard tinkling bells. I looked down and remembered that I had on some bells that I carried as talismans that came from Malta and were considered protection from St. Christopher. We all sighed in relief and proceeded to the end of the tour which was the Voodoo Spiritual Temple on Rampart right across from the place where Marie La Veau conducted the rituals of her people.


We entered the storefront where I had first visited with Patrick but there was more to see. Priestess Miriam invited us into the temple which was in an adjoining room. It was filled with colorful and interesting altars in the name of various loa where one could make an offering to the divinity that is Voodoo. The gifts were simple. Cigarettes, a cup of coffee, some cornmeal, a bottle of rum, were some of the examples we saw. Each loa had a Saint’s name and the saint would have similar energies as the loa whom they masked.


At the back of the temple was a simple area with a bench, a table and some chairs. It was here that Priestess Miriam would do readings for the faithful and the curious. I noticed a cage which housed a snake which I was informed was Congo which Priestess Miriam would dance when doing rituals for her congregation in the same manner as Priestess Marie La Veau had done some hundreds of years ago.


I don’t know how to explain this but I felt at home. I felt a kinship with Miriam that I seldom feel with another person. It was not but a few weeks later through the help of Claudine that I came to work with Priestess Miriam or as some know her Mambo Miriam.

They called her Rita... She was a dancer

I first met Rita when she was around 18. She was friends with my son Jimmy. They were both into the grunge Goth thing. I thought she was probably one of the ugliest girls that I had ever seen. She had her hair shaved except for this giant Mohawk that was died some god-awful colors and was wearing black and bedecked herself with black leather with spikes sticking out as a choker around her neck. Her eyes were rimmed with kohl and her skin was rough and blotchy.



The next time I saw Rita was 12 years later. She had moved to New Orleans and shared a house with her sister and her sister’s kids. Well it wasn’t her sister but Rita had adopted her. Rita had adopted Jimmy when he moved to New Orleans and gave him a place to live as he learned to survive in one of the toughest areas in America. As I was to learn later Rita was always adopting stray young people who showed up in New Orleans looking to find the dream of the Big Easy.



This was definitely not the same Rita. Her hair was long and lustrous and the natural light brown color shined with highlights. Her make-up was perfectly applied and her clothes were simple but stylish. Her home was in perfect order and well-decorated on a small budget. I never did figure out what caused the change.



But Rita still had an edge; it was just packaged in style and elegance. I now realize that even in her grunge Goth stage Rita wanted attention. She craved love and wanted to know that men especially loved her. Rita had been badly treated by an alcoholic father and it scarred her for life. She was like many of the young women I met in New Orleans who had came looking for love and were finding it in all the wrong places.



When I moved to New Orleans, Rita was 35 and she was one of the oldest strippers, pardon me, dancers on Bourbon Street. I had never seen her dance and so she invited me to come to where she worked and when I arrived she introduced me to all the girls. I learned how they worked the room and earned their money. Even though the sun glared brightly on a hot sunny day, it was dark and cavernous in the bar.



A small stage was surrounded by mirrors and a brass pole went from floor to ceiling. Around the stage was a bar with chairs and there were about ten tables in the room plus another bar with a bartender. I sat with the bartender as Rita now went and put some money in a jukebox and made her selection. The place was mostly empty with just a couple of guys drinking beers sitting in front of the stage. I watched Rita as she went to the two steps that went up to the stage.



She was elegant. She was beautiful. She was wearing a long black dress with sequins that she had hand-sown herself. She had on five inch spike heels in black suede with a red dragon emblazoned on the platforms which took her from about five foot three to about five seven. She started to move to the music. I was witnessing a spiritual dance dedicated to the Goddess. As she moved in perfect rhythm to the music she was not in that bar. She was someplace far away – perhaps a temple of Erzulie, voodoo goddess of love. I could not take my eyes away as she sacrificed each item of clothing to ecstasy. Totally naked except for her heels, the tempo increased as she wove herself around the pole like the boa used by the priestesses of voodoo in their sacred rites. She slowly slid down the pole until she, in orgasmic relief, lie on the floor as the music came to an end.



She picked her dress up off the floor, exited the stage and walked back to the women’s restroom which also functioned as the women’s dressing room. She emerged in tight black pants and a halter top but still wearing her spike heals. Impeccable, she sat with me at the bar and had her traditional Bud in a long neck bottle with no glass. Somehow, it was extremely sexy and up until then I never had been able to accept that women drank beer if they were ladies. I changed my mind about a lot of things that day.



In a dark, smoky strip club in New Orleans, I learned that spirit can be evoked and love can be shared and sometimes girls just want to have fun and as I wrote earlier, “Ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thievesBut every night all the men would come aroundAnd lay their money down …

Cher

Before I moved to New Orleans and would just come to visit to listen to jazz, eat good food, and play, I loved to go to Jackson Square. The artists were lined around the tall black wrought iron fences. Psychics set up little shops on the sidewalks and would do readings. I always had to have a reading when I went to the French Quarter. Musicians would play great jazz on the square and pass around a hat to collect money. Performance artists would do everything from balloon animals to magic shows to being an angel statue that would only move if a tip was placed in a bucket. It didn’t change much over the years.

When I came to live in the French Quarter, I wanted to be one of the psychics on Jackson Square. I didn’t quite no how to do it because when I do astrology I use a computer and some checking around and I found out that the police were less tolerant of astrologers so I got a deck of Karma Cards. These are really cool cards to do readings and have all astrological symbols on them so I was able to read cards and I was determined to do it. I had my cards; I had my attitude so all I needed was two chairs, a table, and some decorations for the table. Of course, an umbrella was needed because it is hot in the Louisiana sun and the rains can come without warning. Miss Maxie loaned me a cart to drag all my stuff from Sin City to the square. It was about 4 or 5 blocks. My first morning walking to the square I was scared but I was excited. I have to tell you I am not the most coordinated person in the world and I am not the strongest and I must have looked like a hoot in my long black dress and straw hat trimmed in black ribbon.

I looked around the square as everyone was setting up. I wanted to set up next to someone who looked safe and comfortable. I made one of the best decisions of my life on that steamy morning. Sitting directly in front of St. Louis Cathedral was an amazing looking woman. She was tall, thin, blonde, and was wearing the most amazing broad brimmed hat. I thought I like the way this broad looks. I went and put my stuff next to her and began to set my stuff up.

I smiled.

She smiled.

I met Goddess.

It was like we had been friends forever. She was truly mi hermana del alma or soul sister. Goddess was and is a trip through fantasy land. She was living in the Quarter and helped support her son who was an aspiring musician. (He formed a band with Jamie whom you can read about in the Jamie Show http://maytorena.blogspot.com/2005/09/jamie-show.html ) She was suffering from a disease that was potentially terminal and was in constant pain and could barely afford to pay for her medications and support she and her son. She had been married to a very wealthy man and had been, in effect, a trophy wife but he ex-husband traded her in for a younger model and paid nothing toward the support of Goddess and her son. Goddess had been born and grew up in Haiti. She is the only white woman that I have ever known who was initiated into Haitian Voodoun. On her stomach which was flat and firm even at 50 something (never asked something when or what) was a tattoo celebrating the loa Erzulie. She had style. She had class. She was truly a goddess of the French Quarter.

Goddess attracted clients with magical charm. She would take a magic wand with tinkling bells and shake it at the tourist and wink and say she was sending them a little magic dust. She would call them over and do readings using Tarot cards. I have to tell you right now Goddess didn’t know shit about Tarot but with an IQ of 160 she did a great reading and a great show that the tourists loved. She would charge 25 dollars for a reading and would often be tipped another 20 or 25.

Many of the other psychics on the square resented the Goddess or they were jealous. Many a gossip was shared with me warning me of her. I can tell you this about her she became my mentor and made it possible for me to be a successful psychic on the square. She introduced me to a homeless man whom I would pay to come and retrieve my things in the morning and take them back to the bar in the evening. He became a protector and would keep an eye on me so that I was not ripped off or harassed by the many beggars and con-artists that filled the square especially when the tourists were there.

His name was John and he was an older man. He was black and had been released from prison a year ago after spending 25 years in prison. (Oh, and like every ex-con I have ever met, he was not guilty.) He had lost his family. He had lost his dreams. He had not lost his kindness or humanity. John would do what ever work he could pick up in order to survive, eat, and buy a pint of bourbon every night before he went to sleep in the homeless shelter. No matter what he did or what he had to do, John was always there to help me in the morning and the evening.

I remember one evening after midnight I was walking from Sin City to our shotgun house on Urselines. I ran into John and a friend who both were a bit toasted. We were having fun and chatting when a van pulled up and a very clean cut gentleman asked for directions. I talked to him and went back talking to my friends. I said, I wonder what all that was about. John and his friend burst out laughing. The guy who asked directions was an under cover New Orleans police officer and was concerned that an upper class white woman who could be a tourist was talking to two drunk, black, homeless guys on a street in the Quarter.

I met Sonia at Sin City. I would see her in the bar trying to con a patron out of a drink or pandering for money on Jackson Square. She was thin, emaciated, with sunken lost eyes. One afternoon Sonia came into the bar with a neatly dressed man and two young children, a boy and a girl under the age of six. The little girl was hanging onto Sonia and the little boy hid behind her with big eyes starring at me. She wanted to introduce me to her husband and children. Sonia was a crack addict and her husband took care of the children and lived in the 9th ward. She never went home because she was always scamming for a rock so she could survive the pain in her life. He worked and took care of the kids and sometimes when she was a little bit under control he would bring the kids to see her.

The next day, Jimmy, Mel and I were sitting at the bar. Jimmy was having his usual bourbon and coke, Mel was drinking ice water and looked like she had two watermelons in her stomach as she was in her 7th month of pregnancy, and I was drinking coffee waiting for John to pick up my stuff so I could go to work. Sonia walked in and was chatting us up. While we were diverted by her conversation, she grabbed a twenty dollar bill off the bar that belonged to Jimmy. She left before we even knew it was gone. I was furious. I told John not to bother taking my stuff to the Square as I was not going to work today. I paid him what I would have paid him anyway and I walked toward the square.

I started circling it looking for Sonia. I was furious. I was enraged. I kept focusing on Sonia. I saw her kids. I saw her life. I saw her desperation. I, now, can forgive her for stealing the money because I understand what drove her better. Then, I felt betrayed and I was to the boiling point. I kept sliding my beads through my hand and as I touched each bead I visualized the police finding her and arresting her. I finally went back to the bar and had my traditional vodka and tonic. Three hours later, John came to find me.

He said that the police had arrested Sonia for stealing money from a tourist. She was off to jail. He told me that with her record it would be a long time before she was back on the streets. I thanked him and I thanked spirit because I knew while jail is hell, the hell of crack addiction is even worse. I realized that her children would go and see her and she would be clean for as long as she was locked up. I prayed it would be longer.

A Patchwork Memory - The Quilt Shop

I was walking down Decateur Street one cool Monday morning after a cup of coffee at Café Dumond. I was bored. Hard to believe, I am living in the city known for Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, fun and frolic, and I was bored. Well you can only drink so much and sleep too little and be involved in the rush and mania of this town – after a while one is no longer a tourist. Looking in the shop windows at the glitch and gewgaws that provide a major source of income for the residence of New Orleans, I found myself looking at some beautiful handmade quilts. I had discovered the Quilt Shop of New Orleans. In the window was a sign: Help Wanted! On impulse, I walked in and applied for the job. I filled out the application and Donna, the woman in charge, asked me to wait a minute. I went and sat on the bench outside the store and watched the world go by. After about five minutes, she called me back in and offered me the job. She apologized because she could only offer me six dollars an hour. I said that was fine, I was a bored grandmother and needed something to do.



I started the next morning. I can tell you this Fibromyalgia and standing on concrete floors for 8 hours does not work well together. By the time five came, I trudged back up St. Phillips to our bar Sin City and ordered an orange juice and vodka. After three of them I went to bed and thought about the events of the day and how I hurt. I fell asleep to awaken the next morning wondering what to wear in my new adventure as shop girl. This became my routine for the next three months as I learned about quilts, how to sell to tourists, and discovered another side of New Orleans.


Living in the south is a different environment that cannot be explained. And living in New Orleans is different than any other place on earth. I was used to being the majority and not the minority and even in the French Quarter I mostly had found myself surrounded by white folks. The Quilt Shop changed all that. Donna the woman that hired me and I were the only two white employees of the shop. The other women were black and born and bred in New Orleans. The owners, the Garrets, were transplants from Arkansas but were still “suthen” and proud of it. Mr. Garret wore suspenders all the time and you never called him by his first name which I did not understand. Most of the people I know didn’t have a last name or if they did I had never known what it was. It seemed rather pompous to me and I think, in retrospect, it was and designated him as “the man.” The Quilt Shop marketed the works of the women of Mena, Arkansas and Mrs. Garret was especially proud of the Crazy Quilts that she had designed and had her workers make. In fact, she had designed the stage curtains at the House of Blues. She would often sit and embroider on a quilt in progress as she watched her girls take tourists on a tour of what the shop had to offer.


I soon learned that I was not a shop girl, but a gallery tour guide. I learned more about quilts in this job than I had when watching Aunt Gracie doing her piece work or Mom tacking her quilts for good warm covers for winter. This shop was a gallery of women’s art and was truly fascinating. I still keep a couple of works in progress for doing my own original crazy quilts.


The crazy quilt, I learned, was actually inspired from the 1800’s when Japan came to the United States and did an exposition of their beautiful needle work. The fractals and geometric designs are amazing. American women soon adopted this work and would embellish it in the new world way.


On one wall hung an exquisite bright yellow quilt that was over a hundred years old. An uptown family of “quality” was down on their luck and discovered the quilt in the attic and sold it to Mr. Garret where it was proudly displayed with a price ticket of 7000 dollars. I later learned he had paid $250 for the masterpiece that represented a quality of stitchery that would be hard to duplicate today. I would often just stare at it and imagine the thousands and thousands of small perfect stitches being sewn by a fine lady was she supervised her servants from her sewing room.


It didn’t take me long for me to learn what Mrs. Garret meant when she said “quality” people. She asked me if I knew any “quality” people who would be interested in working at the shop. I said what do you mean? She replied in a confidential whisper, “You know people like you and me.” It finally dawned on me that she meant white folks.


When the master is away, the slaves will play.


The Garrets were often away from the shop. They had a business office in the apartment complex where they lived. I have to admit while I liked her stories and found his Big Daddy of the south demeanor amusing, it was more fun when they were gone and I got a chance to really know the women with whom I worked.


Linda was tall, black, and fearless and could sell a $2500 quilt to a tourist better than anyone. She liked those $25 commission checks. She was also ruthless. She would steal a potential client away from me with the smoothness of good bourbon sliding down the throat. I learned in time and she was rather surprised when I confronted her and got my commission on a particular sale. I had proven not to be such a wimp and she began to like me or at least show a little respect. When she found out that I was a psychic and astrologer, I became even more interesting to her and the other women that worked there. She held out her hand and asked me to read for her. I loved her hands. They were strong and deeply lined and etched with character. I remember having a dream one night and I came in the next day and said to everyone something has happened to Linda. There has been an accident. It wasn’t five minutes later that there was a call that said she would be late, she had been in an accident and her husband had been killed. The woman, who answered the phone, told her that they knew because I had had a dream.


When she returned to work a week later, we became better friends and so did the other women and I. This brash black woman was even more powerful than I realized. She now was the only provider for her children and did not have time to mourn. We would often talk about her life and her children’s life and what it was like to be a widow at such an early time in her life.


Kathy was sassy! She was also tawny, skinny and always styling. I don’t know if she ever wore the same outfit twice. On lunch break, she would have a couple of screwdrivers and play video crack. She was a trained accountant but jobs were hard to come by so she was a shop girl like me. The Garrets had her come to the office to help with getting their books in order and clearing up some tax issues. I also ended up doing some work there also.


It was then that I had another epiphany. New Orleans afforded me many of those. All of the women who worked at the quilt shop except for Donna and I made $5.50 an hour. Now that didn’t make sense to me. I finally thought well Donna is an assistant manager and I had a couple of college degrees so that must be the reason. Boy was I wrong.


At my bar there was a young girl who would often come in for a drink and to have fun with the other Quarter Rat locals. Her name was Lisa and she was about 21 or 22 but I do remember she was a Leo. She was a painter and had come to New Orleans to pursue her art. She ended up painting murals on the wall of the small hotel across the street. In need of money in order to survive, she wanted a job. Now Lisa was eccentric which the norm for my social circle was and is. She had a shaved head and wore shabby chic clothes – in other words what ever she could afford from the thrift shop. I said they have an opening at the Quilt Shop but I don’t know with your head shaved. She borrowed a wig from a dancer and put on some conservative clothes and showed up to apply. She was hired immediately. She started out at six dollars an hour. Mrs. Garret thanked me for finding such a “quality” employee. Lisa was soon not wearing her wig and wore more and more of her thrift shop designs and used her artistic temperament to explain the art and creativity of women’s art or quilting.


Mrs. Garret had Fibromyalgia also and understood my physical limitations. She soon made me head cashier and put a stool behind the counter so I could rest. While I appreciated her kindness I was beginning to be more and more concerned about the apparent racism that no one, black or white, thought anything about.


I decided to quit. My journey into the world of selling to tourists on Decateur Street was coming to an end. I convinced Mrs. Garret that Kathy was the best person to take over my job since she was trained in accounting. Before, I left, I asked Kathy to go to lunch with me and I explained to her that I was infuriated that I was paid fifty cents more an hour just because I was white, and that when Lisa was paid that also it made me even angrier. She just smiled at me in a sad but knowing way. I said now that Mrs. Garret is going to give you my job, I think that you should ask to be paid the same that I was paid.


She gave me a hug. I never saw her again. I often wonder if she got that raise.

The Jamie Show

Marylyn Manson aside, it was strange to see a tall lanky kid with black hair dressed in a sequin dress, army boots and make-up tending bar. Jamie was a Goth of New Orleans.


Jamie came from Texas and could not consider if he were heterosexual, homosexual, or bi-sexual. He just knew he was sexual in his own way. He lived on his crazy check and went to see his psychiatrist when the voices and madness got to be too much. It was hard for him to keep a job because his madness could often drive him over the top when he worked at local bars getting paid under the table. Most of the time, the Jamie show was amusing if a bit more manic than one could stand if one did not have at least a couple of drinks under one’s belt.

Jamie adored my son Jimmy and looked up to him as an older brother, family and mentor. Madness mentoring madness! Only in New Orleans - well only in the French Quarter.


Many a morning I would wake up to see Jamie passed out on the floor and waking him up was impossible so I learned to step over him as I went about my day.


Jamie was first institutionalized at the age of fifteen for psychiatric treatment and at 18 was recognized as mentally disabled and released from the hospital armed with delusions, a monthly check and a prescription for anti-psychotics. His mother, always loving but unable to cope with his madness had come to peace with his illness, and maintained a toll-free telephone number so he could check in with her so she knew he was alive and so he could talk to her when the madness became to much for him to handle.


Jamie was intelligent and creative. Many years of prescription meds and self-medication had not damaged his will to express himself. In many ways Jamie, like many of the Goths, I met in the Quarter was a living performance art. Their lives are their art. They express their pain in ways that others can see and often fear. The self-mutilation, tattoos, and piercings, dressing in ways that no one expects except that there will usually be black painted nails and torn and worn clothes.


I remember one time he was sitting on the floor talking with me, when he brought out his portfolio. Jamie created cartoons and made a monthly magazine that he printed at Kinko’s. It was a black and white chronicle of his pain and observations. Visions of madness and the irony of life perceived by a mad man that had the soul of that fifteen year old boy that first entered the institution painted a story of the suffering of many of his contemporaries. His joy in creating his comics could not be denied but more important than the creating was his distribution of his art. Like all creatives Jamie felt the drive to be recognized and to appear bigger than life… Jamie’s life was the Jamie show.


The last time I saw Jamie he was wearing smeared bright red lipstick, torn red fishnet stockings with his army boots, and black shorts and black torn t-shirt. He was hanging at Jackson Square with some other Goths trying to scam some money for something to eat or at least a drink. He was now living in an abandoned house with his friends. He was homeless. He was intensely and passionately manic. He was still deeply into hope. He was still the Jamie Show.

Emily

I have to admit that I had never been to an art gallery opening before so when Jimmy, my son, suggested that we go to his friend’s gallery for some free champagne and to see the folks who were acting uptown while downtown I agreed.



He put on his black suit and tied back his hair. His nails were painted black and rings lined his fingers. His earrings needed polished but he was styling. I found a black skirt and a black top and off we went. I must say I felt out of place. I wandered around the place, accepted and vodka and tonic and found a seat on a very expensive divan and had my first look at the creatives of New Orleans.



One woman walked in dressed in red with a hat that would make every woman in the Red Hat Society jealous. She waved her gloved hands and looked like it was her time to be courted so she would spend her money on the featured artist. I was both appalled and attracted to her at the same time. Her face was like a painted caricature and she had more bling-bling jewelry as tacky as a rhinestone collar on a Chihuahua. It had to be worth more than I had made in ten years. Funny, I don’t even remember her name but I remember her southern decadence and neuvo riche style.


The curator, owner of the gallery was blond and over-the-top as she polished up the buyers and created the buzz around the artist. You could tell she was a Leo and she was queen of her artistic domain. Alexandria, a southern belle and dreamer, I would learn had Cancer and was maintaining her business while trying to heal. Jimmy would often come and fix her hair for her and add her hair piece so her Leo ego would not feel compromised. Maxine liked to keep young men around to do work and wait on her but I never thought she was sexually interested in them - maybe because of her age or maybe because of her passion for her divorced husband an art dealer in Europe.


All of a sudden I heard this voice. “You look just like me.” I looked at this amazing woman with blond hair dressed in black with an accent that sounded all too familiar. This was my first meeting with Emily Adams. We sat and talked for hours as others did their gallery schmooze. Turned out Emily’s family was from Ironton, Ohio about an hour from Athens, Ohio where I had lived before I came to New Orleans. A friendship was forming that lasts till today, although, I have no idea where she is after the blowing forces of Katrina.


Emily lived in on Jackson Square in the Pontalba Apartments. Alexandra had lived there until some politician’s daughter wanted her apartment and she did not have her lease renewed. The Pontalba Apartments were exquisitely beautiful. They were finished in 1850 and the architect the rich Baroness de Pontalba. The oldest apartments in the United States and, probably, the first designed and built by a woman. The Baroness ordered cast iron to be made in New York and shipped down the Mississippi. Her maiden name and her last name began with an "A" and a "P" which are winded in the railing which can still be found on the buildings. The beautiful row houses were intended to serve as both very nice residences and fine retail establishments, which they did until August 29, 2005 when Katrina shook up the old city.


Emily was an interior designer and was, like our mutual friend Susan, a woman who had one foot uptown and one foot downtown. Emily and I would often sit on the balcony of her apartment, drinking chilled white wine and watching the gypsies and artists plying their trade on Jackson Square. Emily’s spirituality was amazing. She had studied Buddhism for years and was also an amazing channeler. It would sometimes freak people out when she would all of a sudden start speaking in tongues. Emily knew colors, she knew design, she knew antiques, and she knew people. She knew how to party but she often did not know when to stop.


I remember sitting in the Blacksmith Shop over on Bourbon Street. Emily and I were chatting up with the folks, when Emily ordered a Jack Daniels. I knew it was time to leave or experience some hell on the streets of the Quarter. Emily could really get mean. People who have lived with her knew to go to the back of the apartment and lock a door and not come out till morning when Emily was into her drinking. The cops around the Quarter would watch out for her and she always made it home except for one night when she was standing outside my bar, Sin City on St. Phillips Street. Emily was attacked by a street kid and knifed and robbed. I did not hear until a few days later after she had returned from the hospital that she almost died.


Emily, like all veterans of the French Quarter knows how to survive. Fortunately she knows how to survive both uptown and downtown. I never quite got the knack of southern society but she had it down with style and glamour. I don’t know there is something about pretentious rich folks that get on my nerves. Maybe I just haven’t hung around them very much. People like Susan, Emily, and Alexandra were all right but the others gave me a sense of being in the presence of Queen Elizabeth on crack and with a southern accent.


I do thank Emily for sharing some important information with me. Noni Juice is the best hangover cure in the world and when you live in New Orleans you appreciate such knowledge.



I hope Emily was able to save her beautiful horse and is safe somewhere probably in Texas.

Charity in the Quarters

I first met Dr. Fred when he was a resident at Charity Hospital. He was a typical play child of the Quarter when he wasn’t working. He could create more chaos and indulge in more pleasure than the average Quarter Rat. Yet, he would disappear sometimes and be working at Charity Hospital. But his charity did not stop at the hospital.


There is many a poor person in the Vieux Carré, which literally means old city. Sure there are plenty of tourists with their American Express Gold Cards and insurance to cover any accidents when they are whooping it up in the Big Easy, but the folks who live and exist in the quarter, the service people, the dancers and bar tenders, the tour guides, the homeless wouldn’t know Blue Cross if it hit them in the face in front of St. Louis Cathedral. Many survive at less the poverty level doing everything from selling paintings to tourists, doing performance art, leading tourists through the mysteries and histories of New Orleans and cooking and cleaning and driving horse-drawn carriages and more.


I think the French Quarter is the only place that I can remember a doctor coming to my house because I was ill. It is the only place I can remember a doctor coming to the house when my granddaughter was running a high fever and her mother didn’t know what to do and didn’t have money for cab fare to the hospital emergency room. That was Doctor Fred. When my husband’s blood pressure shot through the roof, Dr. Fred showed up with samples to keep him alive when we were broke.


When I listened to the stories of the horror at Charity Hospital during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, I thought of Doctor Fred. I wondered if he were there or if he had gone elsewhere or if he were up in the attic of some house with waters rising waiting to be rescued. I don’t know. I just know that when time has passed and many folks get back to a semi-normal life, Dr. Fred will be whooping it up and creating chaos and fun and perhaps a bit of debauchery (no a lot of debauchery), but he will still be proving that charity begins in your own neighborhood where folks will still not have insurance, still will not be able to afford medication, and some will still be experiencing that old-fashioned concept of a house call from a friend who is also a doctor.