Big Man leaned across the restaurant table to the transplants from Tennessee, his eyes alight with merriment. "I'm serious," he said, "Unless you're in your car with the windows rolled up, or in your own home, there's absolutely no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans." Our guests were already agape since a few minutes before, our waitress had "butted in" to the table's discussion of the exact boundaries of the Irish Channel, and given us the benefit of her opinion and experience. The good folks from Tennessee had never before experienced such a thing.
It happened to us again on Sunday, during the Satchmo Festival. We had taken refuge inside Coop's on Decatur for a seat, a restroom, and air-conditioning (drat the heat!), and had stayed to eat from their excellent fare. (You gotta love those lamb ribs! Man, I could eat like 5 orders!) We were seated at the long table that faces the entrance, and since there were only two of us, another couple was already seated at the other end. It didn't take more than a minute for us to be in conversation with the people at that end of the table, after the male half of the couple overheard part of our conversation and joined right in. When they were finished and left, and as the place got more crowded, more people were seated at that end, and the whole thing started up again.
I do not know of any other city where this is true, that strangers so readily talk to each other, where "eavesdropping" in order to join a conversation already in progress is so widely accepted, where at any moment in public you have to be ready to respond to the remarks of someone who, up to now, you didn't know at all. Big Man says you're likely to get comments from passersby while you are making groceries ("Oh, that's good stuff, we use it at my house" or "Honey, don't buy dat, it's a rip-off) and if your car windows are rolled down, somebody is apt to comment if they can overhear any part of your conversation, or even if they can just hear your radio.
This is SO characteristic of New Orleans. One time, the year after Katrina, my sister L accompanied a friend to Manhattan for a buying trip for furniture and decorating fabrics to rebuild the friend's flooded family home. I joined them just for the day from where I was living in suburban Philadelphia. At the end of our day-long "forced march" -- my sister does not believe in taking the subway, a bus, or, God forbid, a taxi, when you can just as well walk and "see more" -- we ate dinner at a little Spanish restaurant in Greenwich Village. While we were there, it began pouring rain, trapping us inside with the staff and the few customers from the neighborhood. The three of us were talking about New Orleans and the recovery process, and my sister noticed a man seated near us who seemed (to her) to be listening to us, and she began including him in our conversation. He was at first uncomfortable, but soon warmed to our Big Easy style. L ascertained that the man was from the neighborhood, and ate in this little restaurant several times a week. Spotting the only other customer in the place besides us and our new friend, L asked, "Do you know that guy?" Looking over, the man said, "I don't know him, but I've seen him in here before." "That's ridiculous," declared my sister, and she marched over to where the second man was seated, and introduced herself to him. "We're from New Orleans," she said, as if that explained everything, "and we can't stand to see people eating alone." She then introduced the two men to each other, and admonished them not to be strangers to each other. "Y'all see each other in here all the time," she chided them, "you don't have to be strangers."
I still get a little teary thinking about that incident, how three women from New Orleans, in the immediate wake of the Worst Thing That Could Happen, could still represent the spirit of our beloved city so well, introducing these New Yorkers to each other. I often think about those two men and wonder if they ever sat together after that, or if at least they nodded in a mildly friendly way to each other, remembering those crazy women from the Big Easy and how they spoke so easily to strangers.
There is no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans because we're all just dying to get in your business, to contradict, to embellish, to share a clue about a restaurant, grocery store, or music club you haven't heard of, to give you directions, to offer unsolicited advice, to become your new best friend. We talk to people in elevators -- now how crazy is that? (A young adult parishioner of mine said she was so glad to home, where, she said, no one would think she was a bag lady if she greeted them on the street or in an elevator.) We don't know why Yankees think you can't say "good mornin'" on the street or "hey y'all" on elevators; we feel sorry for their self-imposed isolation.
Us, well, we've never met a stranger. There's just folks you haven't spoken to yet.
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