This One Is Different

In New Orleans on business, we went to the French Quarter to dine on "expense-accounted gruel." (Excerpted from Jethro Tull's "Cross-Eyed Mary" 1971). Afterward, for health reasons, we took a walk onto Bourbon Street. Recalling my very first trip to New Orleans, when I was nineteen, I looked for the Velvet Swing, whose memorable feature was a trapeze swing above its door on which a young underdressed woman swung, pointing her legs skyward each time the swing cleared the top of the door and swung out toward the street. It wasn't there. Of my three visits to New Orleans in the forty years since, this one seems different.

As we trudged past the bars with "hawkers" in the street waving us in at every other doorway, I began to feel silly about my being overdressed. Gallatoire's, our dining choice for this evening, was a "jacket-required" establishment—at least for gentlemen. Amid a throng of younger people who were dressed as casually as one can while still being dressed, I walked along with my gray hair, a navy wool blazer, tasseled loafers and buttoned-down shirt. On my first visit, it was bell-bottomed jeans, a parson's shirt, and sandals. My point of view in the 1960's was expressed by my attire during that visit, but this visit's different.

People from all walks of life strolled along the street, gazing with wonder, grinning at oddities, listening to the assortment of street musicians. Most drum, pick or blow familiar tunes. This guitar man strums, this drummer drums, another plays a sitar with his thumbs. While most play songs I've heard before, I hear a coronet, just blowing away. And I know this one is different.

Some are panhandlers. There is even a young man with an empty plastic beer glass approaching people with full glasses, just asking for a pour. I've seen all sorts of beggars, but this one is different.

It's nine o'clock on a Tuesday. We find ourselves walking for just a moment behind a young teenaged woman, clad in worn-out, dirty jeans and a scoop tee shirt. A five year old little girl (I know what five looks like these days, my granddaughter is just that age) clings to her hand, sucking on a sucker, gazing all around. A co-worker turns to me and says, "That little girl just doesn't have a chance, does she?" I sigh, and surmise the young mother "just had to go out," and had nowhere to drop her, so she brought her along. As my co-worker turned, shaking his head, I said, "Some people overcome it, maybe this one is different."