Every Day is a Parade. Chapter 495.
A parade just went by my house. It was the Family Ties Social Aid and Pleasure Club. It was a short parade, only about two thousand or so people. Family Ties has only been around since 2002AD so they do not have the same following as some of the older clubs.
When the Money Wasters roll down our street, that lasts for about an hour. The crowd is uncountable, everyone having a good time.
Share these essays with a friend. They will thank you for it. Everyone could use a little more New Orleans in their life.
I love talking about things that only people who live in New Orleans understand. Today is Chapter 495. I stopped trying to explain everything after about Chapter 102. Long time readers have picked up the concepts of what it is like to live here by now and people who live here are already hip to the lingo. Get yourself into a New Orleans state of mind and then everything here makes sense. Until we figure things out, we wander around lost.
I walked Mrs. King’s dog on North Rocheblave Street this morning.
Rocheblave Street is named after the lover of a colonial governor’s wife. The governor was Dorgenois. Dorgenois Street is the next street lakeside from Rocheblave. They are very different streets, the way Rocheblave and Dorgenois were very different men, similar but different. Ask Mrs. Dorgenois. Everyone who lives in New Orleans gets woven into the city’s history, whether their story is remembered or not. I live in the same house as the lady who won second place in the Miss Prettiest Legs contest at Maison Blanche in 1923.
A carrier pigeon landed on the chair next to me. I read the note tied to its leg. “I drove past Ralph’s-on-the-Park and didn’t see your Vespa. Where y’at?” That is Yatspeak. People from da Parish really do talk like dat. The note was from a wannabe Yat.
I was not at Ralph’s on the Park even though today is Sunday. My routine is changing. The Army Corps of Engineers has built levees along the banks of the Mississippi River to keep the river on course. The levee may keep the river in place but life in New Orleans runs in rivulets around islands in the swamp, neighborhood after neighborhood. The future is impossible to predict.
I will tell you what happened next after a moment of silence.