A Streetcar Named St. Charles
Yesterday I was driving through Chalmette and making mental note of the progress in the last several months. The drive came shortly after reading this editorial in yesterday's Times Picayune, on the subject of how to deal with other well-meaning Americans who just don't get it. I think it is easy for people to forget what happened here. It's become easier for me to forget. I live Uptown, which was largely spared. However, I also live just south of Broadmoor, and my daily drives take me through Gentilly and Central City. So I'm not that insulated. I've come to the realization that you can't dwell on it every day, or it takes a toll on you.
But it's strange, the things that become "normal." The other day I drove past a work crew erecting shiny new traffic lights at our intersection, and I was so excited I got on the phone to call Mike about it. Every couple days, a building you've driven by every day is just gone, demolished, either a flat pile of sticks or an eerie slab wiped clean. The day after Thanksgiving, we enjoyed a decadent lunch at Commander's Palace, the first time I've been since it reopened, and commemorated the occasion with a tourist-like photo under the sign (taken by the valet parking boy). We wandered upstairs, and through all of the dining rooms, just to get a look at the place: what had changed, and what was the same. And now you can actually get gas on Claiborne. This seems like a given, seeing as it's right by the I-10 exit, but really the gas stations there were closed for a year. Gas on Claiborne is a recent thing, in the last couple of months.
Taco Bell. This one is poignant for me. I admit to strange and unhealthy cravings for Taco Bell. I would live on chalupas if I thought the grease and cheese and mystery chicken wouldn't make me gravely ill. What used to be the Taco Bell on Claiborne-- and, in fact, the only Taco Bell in the Metro area not counting the one on Chartres street that closed-- has reopened, but it's not Taco Bell anymore. It's some dubious fast food restaurant that, from the neon signs in the window, somehow serves Chinese food and po-boys. Heartbreakingly, it still looks exactly like a Taco Bell. Oh, Taco Bell, where art thou? The one just over the border into Jefferson Parish is also gone. I drove by the dead one in Chalmette yesterday. The Taco Bell people seem to have up and pulled out of New Orleans. I have been to the one in Algiers, and the one in Belle Chasse. But if anyone knows of a Taco Bell on the east bank, you need to let me know ASAP.
Even with the flurry of demolishings and reopenings, it still seems like there's something missing. It occurs to me that I think it's the streetcars. My first apartment in New Orleans was two blocks off St. Charles, and my second apartment (fated to live in infamy for having the roof come off and the ceiling cave in twice in one summer) was four blocks away. You could sit on the porch and hear this strange muted roar, this clicking and clattering punctuated by the occasional ringing of a bell. The St. Charles streetcars are old green monsters from another era, and they are loud. Or, they were. They are gone now.
But I remember when I used to take the streetcar to work in the CBD. I used to wait under the yellow sign, sweltering in the heat, with my dollar and a quarter. I used to sit on the wooden seat and lean out the open windows, watching the mammoth columned houses slide by. Everything sort of slides by on the streetcar. You don't ride the streetcar to get places fast. You don't ride if you want climate control, either. There is no AC on the streetcar, and the windows are almost always open. The one time I've gone running on the neutral ground on St. Charles, I still kept looking over my shoulder, out of habit, waiting for the streetcar to roar up and scare the shit out of me. I expected it, but it wasn't there. Just an empty dirt-filled median, with wires dangling down here and there. If there were streetcars on St. Charles right now, they would be rumbling along with greens garlands and red bows affixed to their fronts. The streetcars were always decorated for Christmas. I miss them.
RTA's goal is to have the streetcars in operation by late 2007. I hope this happens. I hear they are supposed to be running them from Canal to Lee Circle starting this month. The restaurant where I work is close to Lee Circle. I think they've been testing the line, because sometimes a streetcar will go by, one of the green ones, pushed or pulled by an RTA truck. We all stop what we're doing and point out the window. "Streetcar!" I think they ought to publish it in the paper, next fall, when the first post-Katrina streetcar will make its run down St. Charles. I would get up for it. Even if it was at 5 AM. I would get up and walk the seven blocks down Octavia Street to St. Charles Avenue and wait for it. I would wait for it under the oak trees.
You ask me, when will New Orleans be back?
When the green streetcars roll down St. Charles Avenue, and not before.
5 comments:
Good post!!
Memories of all my visits to New Orleans include many streetcar rides... cheap, easy, old-fashionedy feeling.
I've never been to New Orleans and I've also never been in a street car (I don't think). It's sad how quickly everyone forgets things...that's why it's good people like you remind us :D
That was beautifully put. You should work on this a little bit, put in some recreated scenes past and present--i.e. riding the street car, their ominous/sad silence--and see if you can get this published in either a New Orleans oriented magazine or a travel mag... Travel writing is one of my specialties (both reading wise and writing wise) and I'd be wiling to take a look at it before you sent it out if you were interested. It's really quiet touching.
I saw on the Ellen show that she came down there to turn the lights on in the square...
It looked really pretty, I hope that it's the start of a lot more good things coming back to New Orleans.
Ellen was at Mike's graduation! I didn't know she was originally from here, but apparently she is. She was a surprise speaker at Tulane's commencement.
Haven't much thought about travel writing... I have a post-Katrina short story (well, more like a vignette) but I was holding onto it because I can't figure out if it's tacky to write about Katrina at this point.
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