There is a House Way Down in New Orleans

 

Kids, I've been so bad about writing in here. This past month, I've been killing myself trying to get everything planted in my gardens, and I'm STILL not done yet. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm still trying to write about our vacation two weeks ago. On the second day, we made it to New Orleans at around 1:30. We stayed at a VRBO in the Bywater area. It was perfect for me. It's kind of the artsy/ hipster area. There are dive bars, a larger gay population, and murals painted everywhere. The houses themselves were works of art

The house where we stayed was incredible. It was old and full of character. It had a parking spot, and a great outdoor area.

We all have said that we want to go back to New Orleans sooner rather than later. I really wish that we had had a couple more days to explore our neighborhood better, but I guess we'll just have to plan to do that the next time we head down.

Okay, so we got all settled in our place and then walked to a cute little brew pub for lunch. It was a late lunch. I think we ate at around 3 or so. Which is important later on in the post.

We stopped to take photos on our walk home. Check out this house!  Power to the people! But also, I don't think even John would be okay with me painting our whole house like that, and he's pretty damn cool about the kind of shit I propose to do to our house.

Since we didn't know the city at all, we took an Uber to the French Quarter about an hour before our Voodoo/Ghosts/Vampire tour was supposed to start so we could wander around Bourbon Street a bit. It was a crazy zoo, but a very fun place to people watch. The kids all got drinks, and then we headed to meet our tour.

It was Friday the 13th, PLUS it was dark and stormy, so it was perfect for a creepy ghost tour.

The Oldest giving me the stink-eye for taking pictures.

Taylor was our tour guide. We knew we were going to love him when he came walking up wearing a Cramps t-shirt. He really knew his shit too. 

The next night we were walking past him, and Stinky yelled to the people on the tour, "Hey! Taylor is the BEST tour guide. Be sure you tip him well."

He turned around us and saw us. Then he yelled at John, "I remember you, Silver Fox! Making you laugh last night was even better than the $80 your kids tipped me."

I asked Stinky if she really tipped him $80, and she said, "No. It was probably closer to $30, but he's smart, so he exaggerated it to give today's tour the right idea."

While we were on the tour, we got to see a couple of Second Line processions. Usually, they are for funerals and weddings, but this was graduation weekend, so they were doing them for the graduating seniors. A Second Line procession is basically a little parade specific to a certain event. Most the processions we saw were for weddings. I love watching them. I still haven't seen one for a funeral, but the wedding ones, are great fun.

So, as our little tour went on, we heard a lot about all kinds of evil people, voodoo curses and beliefs, and then they got to the Kathy Bates from American Horror Story house (otherwise know as Nicholas Cage's former home). As we walked, I started feeling worse and worse, by the time we got to the American Horror Story home, I was downright peaked. I think it was a migraine, but John thinks it was because I was hungry. I did say I was starting to get hungry, but when I'm REALLY hungry I get cranky and hard to take. This was me seeing stars, and starting to pass-out.

I told John I had to sit down, but this is New Orleans. There are no benches, and who knows how much puke and urine are covering the sidewalks on any given night. The Oldest's boyfriend came to rescue. He took off his sandals, so I could sit on them. I sure hope he was up to date on his tetanus shot after standing barefoot in those streets.

Anyway, Stinky called us an Uber, and the kids went back to the tour. They said it was almost over, so we didn't miss much. I felt better after I got home and could lid down. Again, I'm pretty sure it was a migraine without the pain part. They have made me throw up and pass-out in the past. I had only had two beers, so it wasn't too much alcohol, and storm fronts can give me migraines, so that's my guess. Although, The Oldest's boyfriend thinks it was the ghosts of the tortured slaves at the Lalaurie House haunting me that made me feel faint. It WAS Friday the 13th, so you never know.

Most of My Heroes Don't Appear on No Stamps

Oh, man. It's been forever since I've written. As usual, I have a great excuse - May is a ridiculously busy month for me and general, and THIS May was my Oldest's 30th birthday, and she wanted to go to New Orleans with the family to celebrate it, and how the hell does any sane person say no to that? Yeah, I don't know either.

So, anyway, the whole first part of the month, I went crazy trying (and failing) to get everything planted in the garden before we left for New Orleans, then we went on the amazing trip, and then the last week I've been recovering, and STILL trying to get everything planted in the garden. So, now I am finally getting around to writing in the blog. I will start with the first day of The Oldest's 30th birthday trip.

We left Iowa City at 5:30 in the morning on Thursday, May 12th. We stopped in Cape Girardeau, Missouri for lunch, and then wandered down to the Mississippi River, where they had cool murals. We skipped rocks for a few minutes before we got back in the car to drive to Memphis, Tennessee, where I had never been before.

I know a lot of people like to go to Graceland when they visit Memphis, but we only had an afternoon, and we were WAY more into seeing the Civil Rights Museum. If you've never been there, I highly recommend it. It is powerful and heartbreaking and so well done. It is housed in the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr was shot. 

It covers the history of Black oppression in the United States, beginning with the first slaves who were stolen from their homelands and forced to live in violence and bondage here in the U S of A. It then talks about Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. Everything is so haunting and terrifying during slavery, and then when they get to the parts with the KKK.Why are people so messed up?

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It moves on to Rosa Parks, and the Civil Rights movement, and how many people fighting for the rights of African Americans were brutalized, murdered and jailed

 

The museum then talks about Martin Luther King's role, and how he was murdered at that very hotel.

The second part of the museum is across the street. It's the boarding house where the killer shot and killed Martin Luther King from a bathroom window. That part of the museum mostly dealt with the aftermath of MLK's murder and the conspiracy around his killer or killers. We were all very quiet at the end of our museum tour. There was so much to reflect on. A good museum will do that to you.

After we were done at the Civil Rights Museum, we went to our airbnb and tried to figure out where to eat. We are a family of women who get very HANGRY, so finding food is extremely important for us...And especially for poor John, who has to deal with us.

I found a BBQ place that looked amazing and had chicken and seafood, but when we got there, it was in a pretty depressed area of town.  I figured that's usually where the best BBQ is, right? We entered the joint, and there was one guy behind the counter and a bunch of his friends hanging out in front of the counter. They were all very nice, and the guy behind the counter said, "Sorry, but we're out of a lot of our BBQ". Then the menu posted had a lot of stuff crossed off, so we decided to eat somewhere else. I'm sure after we left they were all wondering how the hell these Wypipo ended up in that neighborhood.

We headed to Beale Street, and BB King's place had a $10 cover charge with only the shortest little wait for a table. We were all in. 

We had an amazing meal and fun drinks. Two different bands played while we were there, and they were both really good. Although, if I can go a while without hearing "Tennessee Whiskey", that would be more than fine.

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After we ate, we wandered around Beale Street for a while. It was pretty early on a Thursday night, so not much was happening. The Youngest wanted to check out the Coyote Ugly bar, but it was almost empty. The poor woman paid to dance on the bar looked almost as bored as I was.

 

We finally had enough and went back to our AirBnB. The Oldest had to go back out and pick up her boyfriend from the air port, but not before she got to tease her sister. Our place only had two bedrooms, so I figured The Youngest would sleep on the couch, but she found an air mattress in a GIGANTIC closet and decided to sleep there. Poor little Harriet Potter, forced to sleep in a cupboard under the staircase...

We all went to bed pretty early, so we could get up as early as possible and head to New Orleans on Friday the 13th. What could go wrong?

In a World of Simians, I'm Waiting for My Thumbs, On the Planet of the Apes, This Song is Sung

 

I haven't been great about writing lately, so I am cheating by putting up a post that I wrote on my original blog in 2005. It's about nicknames we give people:

Zira - Planet of the Apes

A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine about a neighbor who I thought was kind of annoying. I never mentioned his name but because this is Iowa City, she figured out who he was and told me that she and her friends used to call him Senor Scratchy Patches because of what she described as "an unfortunately placed skin condition that he felt at liberty to touch". Gross...but that's what makes it funny.

Ever since then I've been thinking about nicknames and remembering monikers that were given to different cutomers at all the various bars and restaurants I've worked. When you wait on people, you don't always remember their names and nicknames really help reference people. Sometimes the monikers are based on their order - like there has been a mocha man at almost every coffee shop I've ever worked at and when I worked at The Mill there was that jesus freak guy we always called the chicken man. Then sometimes the nicknames are just mean and those are usually reserved for customers who are annoying and/or rude and people who don't tip well.

One of my favorites was from when I worked as a bartender at Macy's in San Francisco in 1986. There was a woman who we always called Zira-Planet-of-the-Apes. She was never just plain Zira, it was always the whole, long name. I thought she looked more like a combination of Zira and Ruth Gordon but it would have been way too long to say, Zira-Planet-of-the-Apes-Ruth-Gordon. I have no idea what her real name was. She would come in every Monday and be horrible and never tip the waiter but she would put tons of money in the jar for the pianist to play "New York, New York" at least 6 times a night. She always ordered a VERY dry vodka Martini. Which meant she didn't want vermouth. Which meant what she really wanted was vodka with an olive but she was too pretentious to order that. So, instead the waiters would come up to the bar and sing, "Zira-Planet-of-the-Apes" and I would know exactly what to make. It was way more fun than giving me the order the regular way.

But while I was laughing at all the nicknames I've always labeled other people with, I did have to stop and wonder what nicknames people may have for me. It's not like I can stop one of the guys at the Co-op and ask them if they have another name they call me. I'm sure they wouldn't tell me if they did and would I want to know? If it was bad enough, I'd have to start going to the Coralville Co-op and never be dumb enough to ask a question I didn't want to know the answer to again.