"Let's Get This Gig Going!"

On Saturday, November 24, I attended the funeral of the man who had been, up til a week or so ago, the oldest living jazz musician in the city, Ernest "Doc" Paulin. We had two special family connections to Doc Paulin and his brass band. The first goes back to my first ministry outside New Orleans, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the second is quite recent.

Back in 1993, when I was first called to the church in Chattanooga, my son and I were pretty homesick. We missed our family back home, but we also sorely missed our New Orleans food and holidays and traditions and especially our music. When we learned that the National Folk Festival was to be held in Chattanooga for the next two years, we were excited -- but we were even more elated to find out that the festival would be kicked off with a New Orleans-style parade led by the Doc Paulin Brass Band! On that evening, we gathered our secondline umbrellas, our handkerchieves, and our dancing shoes, and drove downtown to be a part of it. We met up with Doc Paulin and his sons and the other musicians in the band, told them we were from home, and let them know we were their secondline! (A couple of the musicians actually recognized me, and said, "Didn't we play your going-away party at a church?" Brass bands in New Orleans being what they are, some musicians from the Paulin band had played with the Treme Brass Band the night of my farewell party.)

Stevie and I swung into action as the band got started, tossing our handkerchieves and lifting our umbrellas, and to our surprise and not a little embarrassment, we were the ONLY secondliners in the parade! Folks in Chattanooga had never heard of secondlining before and watched us in amazement (and possibly disbelief). Our photograph appeared on the front page of the Chattanooga Times, and we were interviewed on local TV. We couldn't have been more surprised -- wasn't secondlining a brass band the most natural thing in the world? (Interestingly, the second year of the National Folk Festival, we two secondliners were joined by a host of people who had picked it up from us the year before. Stevie and I are proud to take credit for teaching Chattanooga this great tradition.)

The second connection to Doc Paulin is through Big Man in our new life in New Orleans post-Katrina. The band Big Man plays with on Bourbon Street (the Blues Club, across from Galatoire's, in case you want to go) is called Category 5, and from the first night he played, Big Man was coming home and talking about this great trombone player in the band called "Doc." In fact, Big Man said, the band had at least two members who went by that appellation, and, this being New Orleans, I didn't think anything of it. Then I finally went down to the club myself and Big Man introduced me to the trombone player, saying, "This is Doc Paulin, who I've been telling you about." And I blurted out, "You're not Doc Paulin, he must be your daddy!"

That's when "young" Doc told me that his dad would celebrate his 100th birthday in a few weeks, and that since he was the oldest son, he was named after his dad, complete with nickname. We talked a bit, and I recalled the Chattanooga story, and wished old Doc a great birthday. A few days after the big celebration birthday, Doc told Big Man that the family didn't expect his dad to live much longer, and sure enough, he passed close to Thanksgiving.

The funeral was held at Holy Ghost Church on Louisiana Avenue. When I arrived, the historic glass horse-drawn funeral carriage was outside, and the visitation and recitation of the rosary was still going on inside. (I haven't been anywhere close to a rosary service in decades and I found the repetition of the prayers meditative and calming.) Crowds of musicians of all ages were coming in, many holding the traditional jazz caps emblazoned with "Doc Paulin Brass Band." There were many extended family members (Doc and his wife had 13 children, so do the math with the kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews and so on), and jazz afficionados. It was a lovely service. The St. Francis de Sales Golden Voices choir sang, there was lots of emotional music, and spoken tributes that made you laugh and tugged at your heart.

Hearing Doc's life story being shared in the eulogy, I realized that even at 100 he was too young to have ever known jazz progenitor Buddy Bolden, who was institutionalized in 1907, never to play again. But Doc did know the men who knew Bolden, who heard him play and who played with him, who were inspired directly by his loud and wild horn. So now with Doc's death, we lose the last of the generation of musicians who were once removed from King Bolden. The oldest among us now is too young to have known anyone who knew Bolden or who played with him. It was a melancholy thought.

Other sharing made us laugh. Doc was punctilious to a fault, and demanded discipline of all the younger musicians who played with him. Being neat, well-dressed, and on time was almost a religion for him. Going on a Doc Paulin gig meant showing up at his HOUSE, so he could look you over first and make changes and improvements when necessary. Doc also couldn't abide fooling around on a stage, wasting time. He was a consummate professional. His perennial expression was, "Let's get this gig going!"

At one point near the close of the service, all the musicians present were invited to join in a rendition of "I'll Fly Away." The music was heart-felt and powerful -- so powerful, in fact, that the 4th Station of the Cross was jarred loose from the wall and crashed to the floor, shattering it into pieces. Hardly anyone noticed, and the improvised band played on.

Toward the end of his life, suffering the ravages of Alzheimer's, being unable to play his beloved cornet for 4 years (his last gig was at age 96!), he began to wish for it to be all over. In those last weeks, he was heard to tell his daughter, "Let's get this body in the ground!" And on Saturday, that's what they did.

The Return of the St. Charles Streetcar!

All of us New Orleanians treasure and savor each new small sign of our recovery and our return, as my son's parain says, to abnormal. The College Inn is reopening (in a new building) Tuesdays through Saturdays -- yay! Two young guys are working on renovating Charlie's Steakhouse and will bring it back better than ever -- yeah you right! The City Park Carousel will reopen -- hurrah!

Every little bit of our culture and tradition coming back to us is like getting pieces of ourselves back. We trade news with each other, and give the thumbs up. The happiness is shared, and gives us hope and strength for what we know is a very long haul indeed.

On Saturday, November 10, Big Man and I hustled to get from the Marigny, where the New Orleans Book Fair was held, to be at the Grand Reopening of the St. Charles Streetcar at the corner of Napoleon and St. Charles Avenues. (By the way, the Book Fair was terrific, with perhaps seven-eighths of the city's char-ack-ter population in attendance. After about the 5th booth, Big Man says to me, "I've never been to a Book Fair anywhere in the country where there were so many books about the city where the fair was held." We are pretty self-referential, but we just think it's normal. We think, who wouldn't want to write a book about New Orleans?)

By the time we arrived, a fair-sized mixed crowd had gathered at the starting point of the streetcar's reduced line. (The rest of the line, from Napoleon uptown to Riverbend and Carrollton, will open, they say, in 2008, after more work is done on the tracks and the electric wires.) The folks formed around the temporary speaker's platform were a microcosm of the city at her best -- white well-dressed Uptowners (with champagne glasses!), young white people with piercings and wildly colored or dreadlocked hair, some Latino families and singles, some black families and singles, a few Asian-Americans, children, youth, young adults, aging Baby Boomers, wise elders. The parents held their little kids up so they could see better. Many people held handkerchieves which they touched to their eyes; many eyes shone with happy tears, including mine.

There were speakers -- officials from the mayor's office, from RTA, from FEMA, from the City Coucil, even Bill Jefferson -- and the crowd was mostly polite (there was one heckler, over by Fat Harry's, but he was not very audible and was easily ignored). But we really didn't care about the speeches. All we wanted was our streetcars.

In front of the first streetcar -- there were 4 lined up altogether -- stood the Warren Easton High School Marching Band, complete with flag girls. Their uniforms were brilliant in the sun, obviously band-box new. ("Tipitina's Foundation," guessed Big Man.) When the time came to rewire and electrifiy the streetcars, the drum line did a roll, and a cymbal crash, and then we all applauded. The dignitiaries and officials got onto the first streetcar, as the band struck up a marching tune.

The rest of us regular folks pressed up against the next streetcar, including Big Man and I, since I wanted so much to be in the second streetcar in the little "parade." A young mom near me comforted her little girl, "Don't worry, honey, we'll be in this one." We climbed in and the love and nostalgia washed over us all. I was not the only one with tears in my eyes. The old familiar smell of a streetcar -- who knows what it's composed of? who cares? -- filled our nostrils.

Big Man and I got a seat, and he opened the window for me, clack-clack-clack-clack, all the way up. It was a glorious day, all blue sky and sunshine and warm. We could just barely hear the band in front of the streetcar in the lead in front of us and suddenly, we were off! but at a stately, parade pace. The St. Charles streetcar had returned, and we were on it! All of us screamed and cheered and clapped. Cars going by us blew their horns and the drivers and passengers grinned and waved, and we waved back. Our streetcar driver hit the bell, ding! ding! ding! Oh, that beloved sound!

We rattled down St. Charles, bodies moving in the old sweet rhythm, rocking back and forth. We were all so happy. At nearly every block along the way, there were little crowds of people waiting for the streetcar. They didn't want to ride, they just wanted to see and celebrate. At one swank St. Charles mansion, men in pressed khakis and women in dresses came onto the veranda and toasted the streetcar; we cheered. At another stop, a crowd of people held up home-made signs: "Boo Buses! Yay Streetcar!" "Katrina 0 -- Streetcars 1" and even "We Love RTA." We roared our approval and agreement. At another, the gathered group pelted the streetcar with beads. We cheered them too.

A woman stood up in the front of our streetcar and said, "Let's celebrate the return of the streetcar in real New Orleans style!" and she began to sing "The Saints." Everyone aboard joined in with gusto and cheered after. Cars on St. Charles paced us, the drivers waving. A woman came out onto her porch, holding an infant, who she held up to "see" us go by. An elderly couple sat on lawn chairs in their front yard to watch us. People came running out of banks and bars on St. Charles to cheer as the streetcars went by. Buildings like The Columns Hotel and the Tourist Commission were draped with banners, welcoming the return of the streetcar. Folks on the sidewalk held up their cell phones to take pictures, and all the TV stations -- NBC, CBS, ABC, WYES, FOX, and even Telemundo -- shot streetcar footage as we went by. It was a tremendous feeling.

As we passed Felicity Street, Big Man and I got up from our seat and walked to the front, having first made sure to pull the line to alert the driver that ours was the next stop. (I think we may have been the only people to disembark that day, but we had planned on purpose to do this, having preparked our car at my sister's, where I would pick it up that night after a party.) As we walked past a RTA official, I smiled and said, "Just using it for transportation, y'know" and she smiled back. We alit at Euterpe and walked the 6 blocks home from there, still on a high from the ride and the day. A day to remember and treasure.

The St. Charles streetcar is back!

All Saints on Halloween

Since I had to leave early the next morning for a conference in Cleveland, Big Man and I decided to honor our beloved dead (or, this being MY hometown and not his, honor MY beloved dead) on Halloween instead of All Saints. To prepare for the traditional cemetery visits, we went first to a local grocery store and got 2 beautiful chrysanthemum pots in bright orange.

Of course, we had to go inside the store to make the purchase; back in the day, stores would be so busy with the All Saints chrysanthemum traffic that many stores would set up canopies and tents in the parking lot, so you wouldn't have to go inside the store, or even leave your car. You would just pull up, point to what pot or arrangement you wanted, pay the clerk, and drive to the cemetery.

This was the first time for me to be inside St. Vincent de Paul in the Upper Ninth Ward, my father's family cemetery, since the storm. I was nervous about it -- I had such lovely memories of doing All Saints with my father and my son for years. And then, after my dad died, there was that never-to-be-forgotten All Saints when Stevie and I went to the cemetery for the first time without "Pop-Pop" and we both had the strongest physical feeling of his presence. I remember that as we were driving away, I asked my son, "Lemme ask you, did anything strange happen back there?" and he came back with "You mean when Pop-Pop came?" Yeah, that was what I meant.

We drove through the devastated neighborhoods around the cemetery, the places where my father and uncles had grown up, the neighborhood where we used to visit my grandparents when I was a girl. Things were a mess, with here and there a home being worked on or one finished and looking spiffy, but mostly it was abandoned and falling-down houses and businesses and some FEMA trailers. It was so sad.

When we arrived at St. Vincent, I saw that the gate that we had always used before, a side entrance, was padlocked, so we went around to the front gate. I led Big Man down the rows to our family vault. We've never been well-off, so the family tomb is what is called an "oven vault" at the top level across from the cemetery wall -- which turns out to have been a kind of blessing, since almost all the graves below that level were damaged by the pitiless flood waters. Row after row showed shattered marble face plates lying face down on the concrete. In one corner, cemetery workers had piled pieces of broken stones and ornaments. (For later sorting and replacement? One could only hope.)

So there it was, as always high above my head. I told Big Man how each year we would have to fetch the cemetery ladder in order to reach the shelf in front of the family vault, how we would carefully sweep it off and place the flowers, how one year my son had brought a special rock form his collection to place there and which we found, safe and sound, on a visit 3 years later. I looked for that darn ladder but of course it was no longer in the spot it used to be. Big Man is tall enough, however, so he did the honors, and held me close as we stepped back to look at it. I couldn't help it, I introduced my father to Big Man and said how happy I was to be home, and Big Man promised Barney that he would take good care of me.

Walking back to the car, I was down-hearted at all the damage in the cemetery. We don't have money in New Orleans to fix schools and libraries and hospitals and the historic famous cemeteries -- where will funds come from to repair poor old St. Vincent de Paul in this working-class neighborhood? It doesn't seem likely.

From there, we drove to the end of Canal Street to the Egyptian Revival gates of the cemetery where the founding father of the church I serve is buried. I couldn't forget our old parson! The second pot of chrysanthemums was for him. His tomb is part of a volunteer fire company, since he was their chaplain, and I placed the pot near his name. I told Big Man some of the stories about him -- how when he was first called to the church in the 1830's they asked him to preach without notes, and he freaked out; how his preaching was so famous folks said you couldn't visit New Orleans without hearing him; how he had been the church's longest serving minister. We wandered around the beautiful cemetery, and found quite by accident a Chinese Society tomb from the late 1890s, a weird and wonderful amalgamation of Chinese and New Orleans styling.

As we left, we noticed a herbal-shop cum voodoo shop cum coffee shop across Canal -- this proved irresistable and we went over and had great coffee while browsig their selections of incense, High John the Conqueror root, home-made candy, and local folk art. I asked for the restroom, and was directed down a long gallery that fronted onto another cemetery. The ladies room was painted shocking pink, had more folk art inside, and I couldn't get the door unlocked when I was done. I had a moment of panic about being trapped in a restroom by a cemetery for who knows how long, but eventually the door came loose.

All in all, a good day. it is good to keep up the old customs and traditions, even if you have to fudge a bit by one day.

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.