To miss New Orleans

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail.
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin’ trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

CHORUS:
Good morning America how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your native son,
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Arlo Guthrie, “The City of New Orleans”

I don’t know how many times I’ve repeated parts of those lyrics to Arlo Guthrie’s 1971 song, “The City of New Orleans” and sung them in my head as I listened to the radio. My clearest memory of that song, was, of course, in New Orleans. It was right after finishing work on a boat on the Mississippi River in the summer of that year, before starting my junior year of college. It was a blistering, sweltering, humid New Orleans afternoon, and I was glad to be off from a grimy day’s work chipping and painting. The window in my car was down, and a semblance of cooler air was streaming in. And that song was playing on my car radio. I never forgot it.

Whenever I get sort of homesick for New Orleans, or at least start to miss it a little, I think of that song and “Walkin’ to New Orleans” by the great, and inimitable, Fats Domino:

This time I’m walkin’ to New Orleans.
I’m walking to New Orleans.
I’m gonna need two pair of shoes,
When I get through walking those blues,
When I get back to New Orleans.
I’ve got my suitcase in my hand.
Now ain’t that a shame?
I’m leavin’ here today.
Yes, I’m going back home to stay.
Yes, I’m walking to New Orleans.

Now that song I remember from way back to when I was nine years old and my father, brother and I went swimming during summer vacations at Second Mill Pond in Sumter. There was a bandstand of sorts, with a jukebox on it next to the water’s edge, and I can just hear the music coming out of it now. “Blueberry Hill” would also play on that jukebox. I’ve loved old Fats Domino ever since I heard his records on the jukebox at the millpond. Those were wonderful, summer-drenched times of carefree youth that I never wanted to see end. Out of school. Swimming every day. Big Southern dinners at midday. Part of what I consider my all-too-brief childhood.

I do miss New Orleans, more than I care to admit. When you are born and raised in a place, it can’t help but be home, at least home in the sense of where you grew up, not necessarily where your family roots are. My roots are in South Carolina which is why I’m here today.

I did a little research, looking up what some other songwriters have written about New Orleans in songs that have New Orleans in the title. Joan Jett, J.J. Cale, Tom Waits, Vince Gill, Dire Straits, the Dave Lewis Band, Bon Jovi — they all sang about New Orleans. But what a collection of cliches and sterotypes, except for Dire Strait’s “Planet of New Orleans.” It’s hard to believe they knew anything much about New Orleans, other than what casual visitors know. For example, Have you ever been down to New Orleans? Lord, Lord them crazy queens, Crying the blues is what they do down there.Boy, is that awful. What do you do in New Orleans, according to these troubadors? Why, you drink booze on Bourbon Street, eat gumbo, and stay out in the French Quarter all night. There are Cajun queens and “dancing in the streets of New Orleans.” Well, okay. Everyone’s got their own take on the place. Who am I to say? I don’t even live there anymore.

I’m going to get back there, though, before too much longer, for a visit. I’ll take the streetcar up St. Charles to Carrollton. I’ll walk down Decatur Street in the Quarter and to to the Moon Walk where I’ll look out over the Mississippi to the other bank and old Algiers where I went to high school. I’ll probably get an oyster po-boy and drive to the lakefront and come back down Elysian Fields Avenue, stopping at a McKenzie’s Pastry Shop for a butterfly roll (cinnamon with raisin roll). In the meantime, I can read the five-part series in the local paper on the Intenet titled, “Home wreckers: How the Formosan termite is devastating New Orleans.” The city has survived yelow fever, floods, buck moth caterpillar invasions, and hurricanes, and I guesss it’s survive this latest plague, too. It’s a resilient place, and it’ll be around for a long time.

(Written in the summer of 1998)

Postscript: August 28, 2001 — I still haven’t made it back to New Orleans, and don’t know when I will.

I think the city is waiting for you… i was there not long ago and she seemed patient. {smile} My favorite of course, because of the words and not the meaning… “There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun…” I always want to go back and write about my youthful adventures when I have read here.

Willo2

August 28, 2001

Sounds like it’s about time for you to go……..

*tries to think of songs about rock hill, gets distracted, leaves note without interesting content resultingly*

WebWoman

August 29, 2001

I can sing every word of that song, but never saw it written down. “Kankakee” I always thought was “ten to three” !!! One day I’ll come to the USA & go to New Orleans to hear the music.

The city changes and yet, it stays the same! The truest words to describe this city is simply “It is New Orleans!” Thank you, my friend, for this entry, for all of your entries, and all of your caring and lovely notes. New Orleans will always be a part of you…it has that way about it. I do love to read about your beautiful Folly Beach and South Carolina. We all have our places! [Freewind]A119

Let me know when. I’ll meet you there! Gypsy Song

My husband has been. Alone, on business. He left his travelling companions (Stuffed shirts, I imagine) and ventured toward that old town hall where they have jazz most nights…do you know it? What’s it called? Anyway, He loved it. And You’re right about home.

I’ve never been to New Orleans, but that song has some of the strongest memories for me. I learned to play acoustic guitar as a child and took my guitar with me everywhere, including summer camp. That song was one that EVERYONE loved and knew and we sang it daily.

You may not have physically made the trip to New Orleans, but you travel in a different way, Oswego. Wherever you want to go you can recall an image so clearly that it is almost like being there.

No wonder you long to see your New Orleans again.. You have talked abt it many times. You have to make a decision to go, and then you go..

KeepSmiling

August 29, 2001

You forgot “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?” I think that song describes N.O. much better than the songs you mentioned. About the Miss.Rr., & magnolia blossoms, etc. I always get nostalgic when I hear it even tho. my experiences w/N.O.have been current ones as I visit my daughter who lives there. Rosemary Clooney does a beautiful job on the song…

i miss it too….maybe one day ill go back as well..but for now there is such a lot to do everywhere else

I was nine when we visited New Orleans, staying with my other’s mother’s sister, there to see my dad on one of his extended aways for his job. We were there for Mardi Gras when Bob Hope was the Parade Marshall. What do I remember of New Orleans outside the house with many rooms? People….all over, everywhere you went, crowds of them, crowded, frenzied humanity…….

and I was a shy little girl still afraid of strangers, so shy the extended family was going to leave me in a nearby apartment belonging to my “big brother”‘s friend, but no way was I going to stay unprotected in a strange man’s place even if he wasn’t going to be there. I preferred to face the gauntlet of the teeming crowds…..

and ended up just as ruthless in pushing to the front and grabbing for the junk jewelery. Well, that’s how the natives lost Manhattan! I remember walking in the French Quarter in the afternoon sunlight with “doughnuts”, which to us were just powdered fry bread, and I wished my grandfather had been with us to see such a thing. A man sat drawing caricatures. We toured the old buildings and…. [

I remember seeing the shadows getting longer as I followed my dad up narrow worn stairs, my mother behind me. All the adults went to a restaurant (“Top of the World”), leaving my brother and me to the care of “big brother” back at home base. It was later that I found out about the haunted house there. I’ve always wanted to go back, too. Now you’ve stirred the memories.

I remember hearing the song about “There is a house in New Orleans….” upon our return, and I thought it was about the restaurant (“rising”). Somewhere in my packrat piles is still a doubloon (???) or two. Will that get me passage back to New Orleans? 🙂

There’s a magazine which you should buy this month. It’s called Country Home Buy it only for R.Scott Brunner’s essay called “How to rear a Southerner.” After all, as Brunner’s mother used to say, “Cattle are raised, People are reared.” Brunner’s done something incredible here, and I’m not sure quite how. He’s borrowed an essence of one of my favorite writers. The voice is familiar,

the name, less so. I think you’d enjoy it. Check it out. Might even be on the web. According to the magazine, Brunner’s book, Due South: Dispatches from Down Home Is available from Villard Books. Seems to me like a must read for anyone who thinks that “Coke is a synonym for any soft drink–as in ‘You wanna coke?’ Soda is something you bake with…” The author says that while his [Jud

new daughter will know most of her southern tradition instinctively, a northern friend may just somehow be educated in all ways southern. “I’m a believer in lost causes–” He says in his essay. “Especially where Yankees are concerned.” It’s a good read. Check it out.

Agree: There can be such a strong bond for places from our pasts, no matter how we analyze it all. I admit, my view of New Orleans may be “sentimentalized” as I have only been a tourist there. My teacher that took us there in high school, did make us aware of the poverty & racial problems. I went back in the 30’s for Jazz Fest~ the Music, the Music the Music of New Orleans~such passion & soul! [Dr

Oops~I meant went back in the 80’s, unless I was also there in the 30’s in a previous life…

Edelweis

September 16, 2002

When I see pictures of New Orleans it remembers me at some areas in Paris! I would like to go and visit NO. J. told me often enough I should go one day. I will! Take good care my friend,