Wild Life.
New Orleans is surrounded by water but we never see it because of the levees. We live in a big bowl. All the water we see either comes from the sky or burbles up from below.
Q: What's white and yellow and sleeps six? A: A Sewerage and Water Board truck. That joke never gets old. Something can be funny and true at the same time.
Prior to being surveyed, subdivided, paved, and developed, a chain of three ponds existed in this part of backatown. Look at an elevation map of New Orleans. Broadmoor is, on average, four feet below sea level. The next dip in elevation is in Gert Town, at three feet, eight inches. Then there is Hollygrove, where the deepest point is three feet, five inches. Only geographers care.
Your senses deceive you. You only think New Orleans is perfectly flat. The land does go up and down, but it is so gradual that you don't notice. Put a layer of water on top of the city and you will see the difference. Don't step in any puddles in New Orleans. They are deeper than you think.
You just pronounced Hollygrove like you don't live in New Orleans. Some people who live here do, too. They never visit. They live by the river. Hollygrove isn't for the Cadillac set.
In the neighborhoods that surround Hollygrove: Dixon, Leonidas, Marlyville, Fontainebleau, Gert Town, Broadmoor, Central City, BW Cooper, they all say it like they mean it. Grow, Holly, grow.
Jazz began somewhere in New Orleans. It began everywhere in New Orleans. Buddy Bolden gets most of the credit.
Stand outside a church on a Sunday afternoon in Gert Town, especially, but also in Hollygrove, and you will hear the choir, and an electric organ accompanied by a drum kit. Teenage boys usually play the drums. Music directors at Baptist churches like to turn up the volume so God can hear them. Gert Town is not that far from Heaven. Five would suffice. There are two audiologist offices on Carrollton Avenue.
With its layers, New Orleans is an onion of a city. Its fullness is made up of layers. Peel one off and you'll cry at the next. Onions are a third of the trinity.
Misinformed armchair historians will tell you that Johnson Park and Lincoln Park were in Gert Town. They were not. This is why you are reading this --to get the facts. These two black amusement parks were located behind the old Sealtest Dairy that is now a U.S. Post Office. There are terracotta cows' heads cemented in the wall. The parks were in Hollygrove, lakeside of South Carrollton Avenue.
Located in the American half of New Orleans, Johnson and Lincoln Parks were still conveniently located near Creole neighborhoods. While Hollygrove isn't centrally located, it is next to Gert Town. All paths converge on Gert Town. A streetcar used to run from the Riverbend to City Park. That was very convenient.
[Ed. Note: When I’m good, I’m very good. You should see what’s behind the paywall.]