I swear to God...

these expressions and sayings and remarks were actually overheard on the streets, in the restaurants, and in the offices of the city of New Orleans. You can't make this stuff up, or at least I couldn't. I'm not that clever. New Orleanians have wonderfully expressive and memorable ways of getting their point across, or expounding on their grandiose ideas, or strange and delightful ways of pronouncing ordinary words. The city is flooded with natural poets and born raconteurs. This is just a sampling.

Big Man and I ate a delicious lunch one recent Saturday at Deanie's, a favorite Bucktown seafood restaurant, the kind swarming with locals. We overheard two great comments while there. A woman at a nearby table was telling her friends about finally ending a dysfunctional relationship, and she declaimed a little loudly, "...And so, I walked in there, and told him, 'The party's over, the show is closed, and the monkey's dead.'" He had to have gotten the message.

At another table, a diner inquired of his waitress if the dish in question is spicy enough, and she replied, "Me, I like my food spicy. If I'm not sweatin' and don't lose my tastebuds for a little bit, it idn't hot enough." Now, that's a New Orleanian's idea of spicy!

Big Man and I ran into a musican acquaintance of his while waiting in line at the drugstore. This woman, who is white, told us, "I played in this club in the 7th Ward last night, and around 2 a.m. they were callin' me 'White Chocolate.'" She grinned as if to say, "See?" and we laughed back. The 7th Ward is big Creole territory. It was a compliment, and we were suitably impressed.

A parishioner of mine heard from a friend who is doing relief work in poor neighborhoods in the city, helping people fill out the myriad forms they need to submit for Road Home, insurance, and so on. An older black lady came in, and he dutifully took down her information -- name, social security number. Then he asked, "Could I have your address please, ma'am?" She relied, "I live at Genitalia Street." Her interlocutor was dumbstruck. "Pardon me?" and she repeated her impossible address. There's some crazy street names in New Orleans, but still... "Could you spell that for me, please?" he asked in desperation, and she went, "G-E-N-E-R-A-L T-A-Y-L-O-R Street." Oohhh, of course, Genitalia Street, no problem.

Big Man and I went shopping at Terranova's on Esplanade, in our eternal quest for good homemade sausage. When we were done, I took us down a little-known street and drove all the way down to the racetrack, where the street ended, and turned down a small street marked "private" where the little shotguns used to be home to racetrack jockeys (and maybe they still are, I don't know). We turned onto another one-way street and headed back toward Esplanade. I stopped the car in the middle of the street so Big Man could feast his eyes on a hidden wonder of New Orleans -- the old Luling Plantation house, now called the Luling Mansion. It is a giant pile of a place, its front door facing the yard and not the street (when it was built, there was no street), its plaster walls innocent of paint for who knows how long. It is gorgeous in its semi-decay, its decadent elegance. Big Man was amazed, and was hanging out the window of the van to get an even better look at it. A group of young people walked by on the sidewalk, their faces agape with wonder, and one young man turned to us and exclaimed, "I've lived here my whole life and didn't know this was here!" He was just as amazed as if the Luling Mansion were some kind of Mid-City Brigadoon, disappearing and appearing at will.

Just the other day, Big Man and I were walking in the French Quarter, heading to the Louisiana Music Factory to get some new music books, and we passed a man and a woman standing on the street talking. As we went by, we overheard the woman say, "...So, I've been going around, trying to get a million dollar donation from each one." We did not learn who or what "each one" meant, and we hoped she was having good luck with that.