So a few weeks back my buddy ask me if I wanted to do a
dudes trip to Gatlinburg, and I'm thinking hell yea anything to get out of this
damn place for a few days. So I'm waiting and waiting for the trip, well about
a week before we're going to go, the folks at work tell us all about how we're
going to get a week off for spring break unpaid furlough time (which turned out
to be illegal and we got payed for it... SCORE!!!) So I'm thinking it's not
very often I get myself a week off. I call my buddy up and I tell him if we're
going to do something we better make it count since I get a weeks’ vacation. He
brings up Sarasota, and I'm thinking nah that's more of a Christmas trip...
then we talk about Savanna, better but I'm just not feeling it, then it hits me
why fuck around... let’s go to New Orleans, it'll be a good time no question of
that and I've never been. So we agree on the big easy.
About three days go by and I start thinking why not take the
girls, I'm sure they would enjoy it to, plus kind of keep me out of trouble. I
invite them and they start bringing up all these valid points on how we have 2
days and I still haven't booked a hotel or anything... I'm a slacker and we all
know I'm a slacker, I'd rather trust in god and luck rather than plan ahead.
But since it's like a 15 hour drive an all, I ended up spending half a day at
work picking out the perfect little 150 year old bed and breakfast right off of
Bourbon Street, no uber for this guy...
Ol girl and myself packed our stuff, she had maybe one back
and I had a literal shit ton of camera equipment because I was planning to do a
couple of photo shoots while I was there. Then we headed west to meet up with
my buddy and his ol lady.
On a side note I had been talking to this new girl for
several weeks, seemed like a sweet girl, we had been taking it super slow and
it was actually pretty nice, a little out of the ordinary for me though, not
that I was complaining. I thought I might invite her to New Orleans because she
needed a trip as bad as I did.
We make it to my buddies house about the time the University
Of Cincinnati is getting their ass kicked in the championships, and his little
dog is going nuts because I just walked in the door, FYI she loves me... we sit
there and finish out the game, then we start rolling south.
I've always loved a good late night road trip the women are
asleep and me and my buddy are reminiscing about times lost but not forgotten,
those stupid ass things we did and those stupid ass things we dream of doing. It’s
a special kind of moment between bro's that lasted hours into the night.
We start to fade and we figure it’s as good as time as any
for the girls to take over just south of Birmingham, we hop in back and look
like a couple of jalopies with our heads doddling, Next thing I know we're at
some shitty ass gas state just north of lake Pontchartrain, which immediately
breaths life back into me because I know we're within an hour or so of getting
out of that cramped ass car. The girls start taking selfies with the gas
station and someone had taken a deuce at the gas pump, I mean who does that...
We roll into the outskirts of New Orleans and you can kind
of tell that a lot of things just never were the same after Katrina came
though, abandoned 10 story buildings which was kind of unnerving to me for some
reason, lots of homeless folks as well. I guess it was where I'm just not use
to that short of thing, there's only one homeless lady where I'm from and she
could have a place easily she just won't take it, everyone and their mom has
tried to help her.
I didn't pack pants and it was only like 50 something when
we made it too the place we we're staying, and I'm thinking, here we go... of
course it’s cold as shit but I'm made for cold weather so fuck it. I roll in
the place to check in and the lady says our room will be ready in an hour so we
all go wonder around bourbon street for a little bit. We've been there maybe 45
minutes when the girl I took spent every penny she brought for the week on a
few post cards and some other little trinket, needless to say that was a big
red flag, I mean everyone knows you don't spend every penny in the first place
you walk into on souvenirs... I got a phone call saying that our room was ready
and that we had been up graded, I thought that sounded pretty nice. We all continued
lumbering towards the river in search of food and we found this place that had
Muffilettas, we walked in and the girls ask us what was on the menu, and we responded
with "half or double?" I don't think they understood that they only
sold one thing... we got our sandwiches and walked back to our hotel and we
found out we had been up graded to the louis Armstrong sweet, it was a large
two room apartment with a balcony overlooking the street and a large painting
of louis Armstrong hanging on the wall next to one of the giant beds. We sit
there enjoying our sandwiches and I took a nap so I don't know what anyone else
did after that.
The first night we basically went to bourbon street and
found food and booze, we ate at this little place called nola and it was packed
up front so we got a room in back right next to the kitchen, and we we're the
only ones there, we we're basically VIP's we could hear the cooks and the drifting
smell of amazing food was first hand right off the stove. We got about a shit
ton of food and we all split it between us. My hands down favorite thing on the
planet at the moment was the Boudden balls, I have no clue what they actually
are but there was some rice and what I assumed was sausage in them, I mean you
could put a 55 gallon drum of them in front of me and I'd could mow though
about 3 quarters of them before I even noticed... so we got ourselves stuffed
and then we kept walking on bourbon street. There were a ton of people out, I
got to see a parade which looked like a kick ass thing to do, they had a band
and they were all wearing suits dancing wildly in the night it looked like my
kind of crew. We had a couple hand grenades because well we were on Bourbon
Street... and then we walked back and called it a night.
I got up the next morning with a fresh new outlook on life,
it was time to drag my camera a long, me and my ol lady (for the moment) ended
up wondering around on the streets and we wondered up on like a district of
antique stores with some of the coolest shit in them, thank god I was on a
budget because I could have bought a ton of old camera equipment, hats, just
net shit in general. I didn't have room in the car anyway... one of the shops
had like a 50's Chevy hood ornament across the top of the building and it was
painted pink, I'm guessing it was some sort of old garage or something, that
place really stuck out to me, it smelled of mold, grease, and dirty basement,
it smelled like a place I'd like to hang out and get in trouble... we kept moving
from shop to shop and made our way to the French market before too long there
were bands playing and all kind of little touristy trinkets to buy, I kept
moving personally... then we walked up the river for a bit and just relaxed
where I saw a huge ass on a statue, I immediately took a pic of it and sent it
to my buddy's ol lady. We walked and walked and walked some more and eventually
made our way to the aquarium. Lots of kids’, lots of sea horse pictures, that
was mainly for her though... I mean I could do that back home. We meandered our
way back to Bourbon Street and back to Nola once again for a feast of boudden
balls and whatever she got. We ended up back at the room for some pre gaming
drinks, we discovered "the raisin" it was like this apple rum and
cranberry juice, I mean hands fucking down it tasted like a raisin, and then we
stumbled back outside to experience Bourbon Street in all its glory.
My buddy bought 2 fish bowls to share and my ol girl was too
spoiled to enjoy such a shitty concoction of cheap booze and koolade but I sure
wasn't. We’re bee boppin around strolling in and out of bars trying to avoid
the homeless and still have a good time. I post up outside of this bar where
their having like a dueling pianos thing going on and it was amazing, they
we're doing this rendition of The Dixie Cups - Chapel of love, with his own
dirty perverse words of course and it was pretty amazing. So my buddy sees this
trashy ass strip club the girls can go to, 2 bucks to get in... So I'm thinking
hells yea I could use a break, we give the girls their two bucks a piece and
they go on their Mary little way.
So me and my buddy plan to go back to the room rest up a
little get some more "free" drinks, so I ask Siri for a route, and I
mean we get ass hole lost in some shady as shit areas. we're walking down
basically the skid row of New Orleans and I feel like we walked 17 damn miles
out of the way, and I started thinking did I fucking use the trip thing for the
car rather than walking, I checked and it said walking but either way it was
bull shit... so after an hour of walking we had just walked in to the room when
we both get text "where are you..." and it's the moment you look at
each other and it's like in unison "we didn't see this" so we kick
back have a few drinks take a deuce. 45 minutes later we have several text
messages between us, and I start feeling guilty because I really didn't want
them walking back on their own though like skid row. So we met up at Nola
again, didn't eat this time though... and we made our way back to the room.
We hang out for a couple hours and I feel like after the strip
club someone flipped a switch in the girl I was with, we just kind of went off
the deep end, became a damn bully, and got rude, it was super strange to be
honest, ungrateful for everything. I'm a pretty easy going guy, but if there's
one thing I can't stand in this world, it's someone who is ungrateful and has
no respect for people. I mean it's not hard to be nice, I do it every day, just
put a little effort out... Me and her go to bed and I'm lying there kind of
feeling it, so I start kissing her shoulders and her back, giving her a rub
down, she lies on her back and I get on top of her about to do my thing, and I
look at her and I start thinking "I don't want this" and like a real
jack ass I climb off roll over and go back to sleep.
Tomorrow is a new day, ol girl had already gotten out of bed
and rolled down stairs to get weird with the lady that ran the place. I'm just
kind of lying there enjoying the rest. Someone knocks on the door and it's my
buddy and he's like "soooo dude did you do the wild thing last night"
and I tell him how I was about to but backed out and he's says "good for
you dude, good for you, I feel like you dodged a bullet there... so what happen
to her after the strip club last night???" so I guess I wasn't the only one
who noticed the bat shit craziness.
We all kind of get up and going sometime after noon and I
bring my camera along, we start meandering through the streets taking photos of
life in New Orleans, I'm in hog heaven because that's the only reason I came
there any way was to take some photographs, and eat a shit ton of food. So many
astatically pleasing thing to see from the building materials to the artists whose
works lined the streets. New Orleans was a town that pleasured the senses,
everything was beautifully constructed, the smells of food lofted though the
air, and you could hear a new brass band every 50 feet or so. It was such a
weird and wonderful experience.
For dinner we ended up eating at the little Italian place
called frank's, we got a couple sea food dishes, 5 lbs. of craw daddies, I
ended up with some sort of ham, cheese, and pot roast dish. We had the absolute
sweetest waitress that I think I've ever met, just so easy going, and soooo
sweet, just the kind of person that makes your blood pressure go down to be
around. so they gave me this au jus with my sandwich and it was hands down the
best au jus I've ever had, I actually ask for a cup to just kind of sip on (she
brought me a dipping cut but I could have so went for a big gulp full of this
heart attack juice). There was a super bold pigeon there that I thought was
just going to crawl up my shirt and eat all the crumbs, and I was kind of
hoping he would to be completely honest. I'm not gonna lie, I've never eaten a craw
daddy but I was absolutely terrible at it, I mean I was a train wreck, I maybe
at 1 to everyone else's 10...
So we we're out on our journey again, we ended up back on
bourbon street again getting all hammered down. we went to this little bar on
the corner, it only had a couple of people in it and there was a live band
playing like some throw back Stevi Nicks stuff, I'm being a little shutter bug
taking pic after pic after pic, and one of the security guys comes up to me and
says "if you want some advice I'd put that away..." so I got a little
wound up after that, I really didn't want my camera stolen, but then I was also
thinking me and my buddy aren't small dudes so maybe I wish they would try some
shit like that, things would get real weird real quick... so I'm like
"fuck it" and we keep rolling down bourbon street, where we found
this band (B Street Benny), loved them, they knew how to play, what sounded
good, and just when to play what, Not gonna lie when they played
"shout" at like 3am it was just what I need to get back in action. We
for the most part closed the place down that night.
so we woke up and it was our last full day so we had to make
it count we rolled out of the room like at noon and stumbled our way through
town again, with blistered up feet and tired ass legs, we had a few things left
on the list that we're must do's before we left. We wondered down to Jackson Park
and experienced that for a while, loved all the old trees draping over the
park, and there was this one tree with a ton of beads hanging in it that really
just called my name, I looked at it for like 30 minutes. we ended up at the carrousel
bar although there wasn't room to sit down and have a beer... what a shame...
we found some new places we hadn’t saw before, like sort of an Irish area, we circled
back around and ended up at the oldest bar in New Orleans, it had no light and
lots of candles sitting around, it was super dark and I loved it, I feel like a
bar should feel like that bar when you go in, even though I wasn't about to
piss, I was kind of scared I might have to and then the whole no lights thing I
was kind of thinking "fuck that..." that's a good way to get yourself
all nasty pretty quick...
we make it back to the room and I just hit the porch
thinking about how I have to be packed up and ready in the morning, but feeling
confident that I had done most of the things that I wanted to do, and then it
hits me we didn't visit a grave yard, I mean it was pretty high on my list of
things to do and I forgot... so I looked up the Marie Laveau was in and it was literary
maybe a quarter mile from where we were staying and I was all like "What
the fuck..."
Everyone's awake early the next morning because we have to
leave, my "ol lady" woke up extra early in order to go cry with the
lady that rain the place, weird... whatever... I go sit on the porch for a
minute and of course it's 75 and sunny with a slight amazing breeze. We throw
all our shit in the car and start rolling north, my "ol lady" has
about a 15 hour pouting session, until we get to my buddies house, where I part
ways with him and his ol lady. It's like someone flips a damn switch on ol
girl, she became super sweet, and actually pleasant to be around again so that
got kind of weird.
I drop her off, which was actually the last time I've saw
her or even said a world too her for that matter. it's 3Am and I give my Mother
a call just to let her know I made it because she seems to like that kind of
thing, and I'm thinking the whole way home how nice it's going to be just to
lie down on my couch for maybe 10 minutes and that's when she informs me that
my father had had a heart attack about 12 hours prior to me getting home...
