Savory and spicy Creole food, the staple of any dinner table, is enjoyed in someone's home or presented at the most imposing of restaurant tables known the world over. Crawfish, shrimp and oysters, to name a few, are accompanied by the ubiquitous hot sauces as champagne would to caviar. Gumbo is heaped with almost every ingredient and served over the ever present rice.
Gated gardens lilt with flowers that manage to survive the constant humidity. A stone walk or cobble stone path is a division of beauty on either side. Smells permeate the air and faint sounds of jazz fill the air, coming from the direction of The Quarter.
The French Quarter was lived and written by Williams. Here A Streetcar Named Desire was Tennessee's brain child and transport as he wrote of Blanche and her fragile need for the kindness of strangers. Bourbon Street, the main thoroughfare of Mardi Gras, is traveled by thousands, be it parades or just tourist looking for some form of entertainment or escape from reality.
The cemeteries, synonymous of this city, are the cities within the city. Angels stand guard over the dearly departed on massive marble vaults that house the earthly remains of someone who once may have sipped a julep on a wide porch overlooking the waters of the Mississippi. But, alas, now they are frozen in time as they rest from their labors. The fevers, old age, or untimeliness could have been their end. Now the stone likenesses of Gabriel and Calvary's cross keep them company among the rows of sealed vaults bearing the remains of someone special to another.
For 300 years this lady, the notary's seal of the Louisiana Purchase, has graced this part of our country. She is beauty, mystery, sadness, history and vitality. She is southern through and through, not just her region, but her traditions and her existence.
June 8, 1999
Mark Edward Rogers
