Ribbon of Highway Route 2 - The Grand Detour -Jazzfest

RIBBON OF HIGHWAY

ROUTE 2

 

The Grand Detour, Phase One

The City of New Orleans

May 1 to May 5, 2013

 

 

SUCCESS

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people

And the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics

And endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better,

Whether by a healthy child,

A garden path,

Or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life

Has breathed easier

Because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.

            Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

It’s been over 4 months now that my motorcycles have been parked in the pole barn for the winter, and I am really getting the itch to get back in the saddle. However, with a combination of trips to Vieques and a planned trip to Europe, coupled with a record breaking cold spring that just lingers on and on, and on, it just isn’t happening.

 

No matter, I travel even if it’s not on one of my bikes. My old college roommate – actually we mostly lived near each other, rather than with each other, we met when we moved into small rooms in a condemned house, with a shared bathroom across the hall, or in his case, down the stairs, after our respective roommates had expelled us for too much partying and interference with their academic endeavors. We actually lived together in the same apartment for less than a semester because the third roommate, a rather extremely large tackle from the Michigan football team who was to share the house we had rented chose to go more upscale at the last minute and left us hanging. The two of us could not afford the rent, so Al moved in with his girlfriend and I found another rooming house. I have fond memories of that place, not the least of which was when Al’s girlfriend jumped in the shower with me to give me a kiss good bye when they were about to leave for Detroit, leaving both me and Al speechless, me grinning in the shower and Al with his mouth catching flies in the hallway. Oh well, those were the days.

 

In any event, a few years ago my old sort-of college roommate but certainly oldest friend Al convinced me that I had to join him and his high school and college buddies at Jazzfest in New Orleans. Not a tough sell because I love the French Quarter, the azaleas would be in bloom in late April before the heat and humidity becomes oppressive, and who doesn’t like live music, Louisiana cooking and partying for 4 days straight?

 

After the first sojurn it has become an annual thing. Instead of flying down this year, I rode the City of New Orleans overnight train from Chicago. Remember Arlo Guthrie singing Steve Goodman’s song of the same name, “It’ll be gone 5 hundred miles when the day is done?” If you don’t remember, find it and give it a listen, great song. The perfect way to start off Jazzfest. Get on board at Chicago’s Union Station, have dinner somewhere on the rails in Illinois, sleep to the rocking of the rails in my own compartment, wake up to breakfast in Mississippi, and arrive downtown in the Crescent City in time for lunch, all for less than a crowded airplane ride, parking and taxi from the airport, with breakfast and dinner included. Good deal! You do have to plan ahead as the sleeping compartments book up, especially around events like Jazzfest.

 

Problem: Indiana University scheduled the final exam for the class I teach the night the train left, and I could not monitor the exam and still catch the City of New Orleans. Solution: I gave out a take home final the week before, stayed just long enough to collect them and took off for Chicago. The train ride would give me the time to grade them and get the grades posted before arriving for Jazzfest. As I’m collecting the finals, I overhear two of my students discussing the last election. One says, “I didn’t recognize anybody on the ballot except my Congressperson, so I just voted for the ones with the names I liked the best.”  The other happily responded, “Oh, I didn’t know anything about most of the people I voted for, either.” “Oh my God,” I think, “These are college students. One of them is in her late thirties!” I say to them as I collect their papers, “Thank you for cancelling out my vote.” They did not understand the sarcasm. Oh, well. With that uplifting thought to end the semester, I buy a bottle of hootch for the long ride, and still arrive at Union Station in plenty of time. I am pleasantly surprised by an upscale waiting room with drinks and snacks reserved for people who book sleeping compartments. A few minutes before departure, everybody is ushered out the train tracks, shown their railroad cars, and settled into their compartments. I splurged and bought a big roomette, with a couch that folds down to become my bed, a reading chair, and my own private wet bath with shower. Not luxe, but very cool nonetheless, and tons more comfortable than eating my knees and fighting some guy for the armrest in a cramped airplane seat.

                  

I settle in, pour myself a drink and watch the industrial back yard of Chicago pass in the brown half light as the sun sets. They announce over the loudspeaker that no smoking is allowed anywhere on the train, and politely but firmly, that if you are caught smoking, the next stop will be your final destination! There will be smoke breaks at a couple of stops, I can’t remember where, it’s not important to me. I open my computer and discover no Internet wifi. Really, today? Come on Amtrak, you can do better than that! After 30 minutes or so, dinner is announced in the dining car, so I make my way back along swaying corridors and across rattling platforms between the cars to put my name in for seating. Unless you are in a group of 4, you get seated with other passengers on an as available basis, which is great because you are thrown in with complete strangers and forced to strike up a conversation, like the breakfast table at a bed and breakfast. The waitresses have all flunked out of the Ed Debevic School of Social Graces, but they are still fun in their own way. The food, well, not so much. The days of elegant freshly prepared meals on white linen with fresh flowers are long gone, it’s all microwave heat-em-ups. But, you can order spirits and wine and beer, and you quickly become friends with your fellow travelers as you share your stories. A black couple about my age heading to Greenville, Mississippi to attend a Jackson State college reunion. Years ago I drove through Greenville when I was moving to Baton Rouge. I was struck how the large plantation house there was so isolated and remote that I could immediately understand why Southern plantation owners were deathly afraid of a slave uprising inspired by the Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti. That was one of the first and maybe only successful slave uprisings, starting with a brutal slaughter of whites, followed by a war against an invading French army sent to put down the rebellion, and then a bloody struggle between rival black factions. Times change. No worries about a slave rebellion in Greenville today. Just a college reunion of slave descendants, sharing dinner on a train with a descendant of a family that fought for the Confederacy. This is good. At a neighboring table, a group of 3 couples heading down for their 5^th or 8th, I don’t remember but it was a lot of them, Jazzfest, already way into partying hearty, the girls wearing skin tight pants and spike heels. A quiet widow traveling alone to see her daughter in Memphis. An a American pot pourri.

When I get back to my compartment, a very gregarious porter is finishing making up my bed. Waiting for him to finish, we start up a conversation. He is formerly a Louisiana high school teacher, now a porter on Amtrak while he does research for a PHD thesis on the origins of the Basques. No surprise, he is a Basque. He tells me that modern DNA research has shown that many of us are Basques, descendants of a distinct ethnic group today and for centuries primarily centered in the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain. Nobody knows the origins of the Basques, but the consensus of speculation is somewhere in Eastern Europe. Their language is entirely unique, unrelated to any Romance language, although they can trace its existence back thousands of years. My porter proudly tells me that the Basques were the sailors and explorers of Europe, their DNA is scattered all across the Atlantic Basin, most of the sailors with Columbus were Basques, and the Acadian French, our Cajuns, have Basque blood in them. Actually, he says they are Basques, but he also contends the Irish are Basques, as are the French in Brittany. I have no trouble believing there is Basque DNA in all these various peoples, but balk at believing they are all Basque, chalking that up to a believer’s hyperbole. But what do I know? Apparently the DNA data bank compiled by the Mormons in Salt Lake City for genealogical research is the most sophisticated in the world, and you can send them a sample of yourself and they will provide you in detail your genealogical footprint. Fascinating. I think I might try it. I’d like to confirm some of the things that my own research as uncovered.

 

When he is done, I settle back for another cocktail and then read myself to sleep to the rocking of the rails. When I awake, the world has changed. This ain’t Chicago, Toto. It’s Delta country. Remote. Mile after mile of mist rising over empty green fields puddled from the rains and flanked by thick green woods, interrupted every 15 or 20 miles by a non-descript tiny country town with small single story houses with small front stoops and maybe a two pump gas station.  Pick ups, no Mercedes, in the road. No sign of urbanity, hardly of 20^th century civilization. It has an eerie other-worldly feel.

 

At the breakfast table I’m seated with a non-communicative couple from Rockford, and an itinerant young woman named Ronda who it turns out is also heading to Jazzfest. She is the living embodiment of all who wander are not lost, prototypically poor in possessions and rich in soul, she is a classical violinist withy no money determined to see the world, playing on big cruise ships plying waters in South America and Europe, now unemployed and looking for a gig with an orchestra. In the interim, she is traveling on a shoestring to Jazzfest after a visit with her parents in of all places, South Bend! Her family are farmers, not strictly Amish but close to it. She is the rebellious black sheep broken away from their suffocating rules. They heartily disapprove of everything their only daughter does, so visits are few and far between. This visit was to try to mend some of that relationship. I gather it didn’t go all that well.

 

As we pass by some dilapidated feed and grain stores, I observe how what were once vital country focal points for local farmers are now struggling. This touches a hot button in Ronda. She really launches into Monsanto. According to her, farmers are being forced to use Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds because the seeds for older traditional, local varieties are no longer available. And if you can find them and try to use them, the new pesticides like Round Up kill them off, only allowing the genetically modified strains developed by the herbicide manufacturers to survive. This rings true, as I know for a fact that traditional natural seed varieties are increasingly hard to find, and the news is been carrying a story about a farmer that was successfully sued by Monsanto for tilling fields with corn seeds taken from his last season’s field crop instead buying new seed from Monsanto. I have also been told another friend that the widespread use of Round Up has been linked to the alarming loss of honey bee colonies. The corn crop that has been sprayed by Round Up supposedly gives off some sort of vapor that affects bees flying across the huge fields of corn to gather honey. They find the pollen, but the vapor somehow disorients them so that they cannot distinguish smells and they cannot find their way back to the hive. Instead, they buzz aimlessly until they die, and the hive collapses. I don’t know if this is all accurate, but Ronda is passionately convinced, and very convincing, and has the credibility of coming from a farming family, black sheep or not.  I am no natural foods granola fanatic, I spray my fruit occasionally (gasp!) to protect against Japanese beetles and disease like black rot, but what my friends say is entirely plausible. When you consider that genetically engineered seeds combined with pesticides and patents are a highway for big corporations to gain a stranglehold on our entire food supply, it is a disturbing thought. Am I an alarmist? I don’t think so. The agricultural miracle of science has obviously been a huge boon to humanity, freeing much of the world from famine and breaking shackles that tie people to the land by permitting food production for all by fewer farmers. The manipulation of nature to develop better seed and livestock by grafting and breeding and culling has been going on for centuries. Nonetheless, this feels like we are going too far too fast. I share some of the nervousness about laboratory-developed seeds that is entirely prevalent in Europe. The long term consequences are potentially too severe when we really don’t know what the consequences may be. It just doesn’t feel good. Meanwhile, I eat my corn flakes - almost certainly made from genetically modified corn, and maybe covered in milk from hormone injected cattle.

 

God grant me the ability to worry only about the things I can do something about and not those I can do nothing about, and the wisdom to know the difference…

 

I wander to the vista-dome observation car just to take a look and ride there for a while for the last leg in Louisiana,  watching waves slapping on the shore of Lake Ponchartrain from the as we cruise into NOLA.

                              

The skies are grey, and it’s cold! For New Orleans in late April, I mean its super cold. Fifty degrees with a high of sixty-three! It’s been rainy here most of the week. I wander through the quarter seeking first, crawfish and a beer, and second, a sweatshirt! Crawfish and beer? No problem. Sweatshirt? Ha. Lots of tee shirts with I love New Orleans or lewd statements, but not a sweatshirt anywhere.

 

I stroll up my favorite alley, the Cabildo by the cathedral off Jackson Square, thourgh the Quarter to my hotel, the St. Marie until it’s time to rendez-vous with Al to go to Rock n’ Bowl.

 

 

 

 

There is no place like Rock n’ Bowl. A bowling alley at the back, up front a huge U shaped bar across a large hardwood dance floor from a raised bandstand, to one side a walk up window to get Cajun food, and in between a scattering of picnic tables for sitting and eating. Rock n’ Bowl features artists who are playing at Jazzfest, and Thursday night is zydeco night. Tonight there are three bands playing, one right after another. Pretty soon Rock n’ Bowl is mobbed with folks of all ages and colors wearing cowboys boots and hats and women in tight fitting jeans. Laissez les bon temps rouler, cher!

 

I told Ronda about this place on the train when we were comparing notes about Jazzfest, and after a while in she walks, wearing some kind of neon colored “shoes” with places for each toe that she calls Vibrams. Not exactly sympatico with boots, but no matter, she jumps right in and starts tearing up the dance floor. She may be a classical violinist, but she gets this other stuff, too. Ronda spins around with Al a bit but soon she is spending most of her time with bevy of guys who obviously know the Cajun 2 Step and the Cajun Slap Line Dance and all the other zydeco moves. I used consider myself a pretty good ballroom dancer, but this isn’t the fox trot, cha cha or rumba. My feet just can’t get the hang of it, although I try. After a while our friend Marlene and her friend from Detroit show up, and we dance some with them and all stay until the band stops before packing it in. Another Jazzfest, another night at Rock n’ Bowl, its all good!

The next day is Friday, and it’s still winter time cold and rainy, been raining pretty much all week in new Orleans. It’s supposed to be nicer Saturday, sunny and in the 70’s, so I say screw Jazzfest for the day and decide to take in the World War II museum instead.  A good  ex-Marine friend recommended it. Correct that, I don’t think there are any ex-Marines.  I don’t know why the powers that be decided to put the World War II museum in New Orleans, but it’s brilliant. I figured to a few hours there, instead its way after lunch when I leave. The museum is extraordinarily well done, with a lot of stuff detailing how the war started. It makes you realize how easily it could happen again. Scary.  There is also a lot dedicated to sacrifices required at home, from the government’s seizure of precious metals to victory gardens in the back yard in order to eat, to the rationing of virtually everything, and also to the devastation of cities worldwide that resulted. And a big emphasis on D-Day the invasion of Normandy.

 

The museum makes me realize that we Americans today have no concept of what total war - total war for survival – is like, what it requires or entails. Most of us seem to assume that we would have won World War II because we did. Most of us have no clue how close we came to losing the war, not once but many, many times. Victory was never certain, and it was a desperate thing. In1942, the smart money was all on the Axis. Three years later, Germany had no army left. Cities were in ruins. Americans had prevailed, and we were the world’s liberators. Everybody loved us! (Except the communists). That carried into 50's as Americans rebuilt and electrified the world, but just 20 years after victory in World War II, we were embroiled in the debacle of Vietnam, and the world hated us. Americans spat on and ridiculed their own soldiers, calling them baby killers and worse, the same army that had been hailed as liberators a mere generation before. Daily “body counts” threw the media into a frenzy, when the fact is all the casualties in Vietnam didn’t amount to a single D-Day. Hundreds of thousands of casualties in that campaign alone, millions killed in that war. Today, if even two soldiers are killed by an IED in Afghanistan, people go beserk. It’s a tragedy of the worst kind for those killed and maimed and for their families, you cannot and I would never diminish that, but - that’s not even one minute’s worth of casualties on D-Day. We just don’t understand what total war is. It is a lesson we forget at our peril. It’s called hubris. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

 

Today, most people have no appreciation of either world war, which in many ways history will see as two phases of one long bloody conflict. Regardless, that’s all ancient history. The soldiers of 18 who fought in 1943 are now 88. The fiction of star wars and Lord of the Rings and special effect orcs where the good guys always win are much more exciting. Still, I was pleased to see a lot of school kids going through the museum on field trips, many with notepads for some homework assignment, and some talking with veterans posted at desks in the lobby. Maybe some of them they will learn something.

 

The two world wars, including the war to end all wars, for all the blood and sacrifices didn’t solve much of anything, finally. They ended one virulent form of totalitarianism, Nazism, but another strain just as deadly, communism, persists. The wars did change the players on the program, putting the US in the lead role. But our place as the lead dog is not guaranteed by history. We have become the target for the rest of the pack. Our rock-n-roll culture is world dominant, everywhere you go people listen to American music and watch American TV shows and wear blue jeans, and America is still the beacon of personal freedom, but that doesn’t mean the world all likes us. No way, Jose. Islamic fundamentalists hate us precisely for our freedoms, and consider us decadent. The Iranian Ayatollah Khomeni referred to the United States as The Great Satan. Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez and his sidekick Maduro call us the “empire,” not as an affectionate term. Many would like nothing better than the “empire” to be destroyed. Of course, Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire. There is plenty enough hatred around to get a good war going. Ultimately, another world war may be more likely than not, only next time I’m am doubtful that today’s Americans will have the mettle or the cohesiveness necessary to persevere to victory in a world at total war. I’d call that a bad bet. 9/11 only brought us together for a few months, and not Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, the massacre at Sandy Hook or the Boston Marathon bombing came close, in fact those disasters may have divided us more. Sobering. A house divided cannot stand…We desperately need to spend more of our energies bringing ourselves together, and stop the politics of division.

 

On the brighter side, after the museum, on to lunch at Lucy’s Bar for Retired Surfers in the warehouse district! Fantastic! Sassy waitresses, catfish with jalapeno cheese grits and (several) Dixie beer(s)! Doesn’t get any better. Just do it!

Saturday it’s in the low 70’s and sunny. After beignets with chicory coffee in the Quarter, Al and I catch the Canal Street trolley to the end of the line at City Park. From there, it’s a nice mile or so walk to the fair grounds gates through the streets of interesting old New Orleans neighborhoods in a carnival atmosphere. Crowds of with fellow walkers and locals hawking everything from hats to ice water to souvenir tee shirts. People are playing trumpets and trombones and violins on their porches and in their front yards. Once inside the fairgrounds, the ground is wet from all the rain, and in places it’s really muddy from the tramping of so many feet, but there are plywood ramps placed to keep you above it in the worst places and you can pick your way around most of the mudholes. The sun promises to dry it out pretty quickly. The biggest problem is trying to find a dry spot to sit on the grass, but that’s almost an even trade for the cool weather, and if you don’t mind missing whatever artist is playing, you can stick to the shows inside the tents and theatres if you want, so it’s not so bad.

 

Nuts to the mud, we’re here for the music. What can I say? Jazzfest is maybe 20% jazz, the rest is gospel, country with a dash of Louisiana hot sauce, true zydeco, pop, blues, rock and roll. There’s greats-but-nearly-over-the-hill headliners like Aaron Neville and Taj Mahal and Willie Nelson (my god, he’s 80 and still fantastic!) and Los Lobos, The Mavericks, great artists who haven’t quite made to the bigs that only some of us have heard of like the Larry Burton band, Rosie Ledet, Satan and Adam, Yvette Landry and the Red Stick Ramblers, Zigaboo Modeliste and the Meter Men and other names that fairly scream fais do-do, new super stars like The Black Keys and totally random lagniappe like the Little Willies introducing their new album with Nora Jones sitting in,  unannounced, all sprinkled across 12 different venues playing from 11 in the morning to 7 at night: take your pick. We all do, heading for different stages and linking up for lunch at the food courts that offer anything you can imagine and some things you can’t - red beans and rice with andouille sausage, crawfish pie, blackberry cobbler, crawfish etoufee, fried chicken and alligator and lots more. In between, there are parades by Krewes like the Apache Hunters Mardi Gras Indians, or the Highsteppers Brass band. I head for Kim Carson and her band, the Casualties, to listen to some local country western with a Louisiana flair, songs like, “Men, I Only Like ‘em When I’m Drinkin” and “Are you Fast Enough?” [To Handle me].

 

I am wearing a new red and white and tan tee shirt emblazoned with an American Flag and a big eagle that I bought at Shepler’s Western store in Denver. Clearly the tee shirt shouts “I love America” and I liked it for that, but mainly I just thought it was colorful and cool, perfect for an American music fest. I was walking along minding my own business and sipping a beer when some lefty pseudo sophisticate asked snidely, “What’s with all the America stuff?” It took me aback, I wasn’t intending to be controversial. In no mood for an argument to ruin my day, I ignored her and her boy friend, after all there are plenty of lefties in the music community and in a community like New Orleans, but I got to thinking, why would anybody be offended by this shirt? A few minutes later, another couple walking by gave me a thumbs up and said, “Really like your shirt!” followed a little later by, “Hey, love it, where’d you get it?” Amazing, I have never worn a shirt before that caused so much unsolicited reaction, all day long. I had unintentionally metamorphed into a walking political statement. That got me to wondering what the ratio was in this crowd of “likers” and “dislikers”, so I started keeping track of pro and con comments. The final tally was 10 to 1 in favor. That was comforting.

 

That also caused me to pay closer attention to the  tee shirts other festies were wearing. Some of my favorites: “Its not a party until the sausage comes out” and,  “Open your mind and your ass will follow.”

 

I finished the day rocking with people half my age to Fleetwood Mac, with Stevie Nicks belting out “Yesterday’s  Gone”, what a song of tragedy and hope. I stood no more than 12 feet from Mick Fleetwood as he played the most amazing drum solo I have ever seen or heard. Every now and again he would stop and seem to go into a trance and shout “Are you still with me?” to which of course the crowd screamed its assent and he would start ripping away again. The music was so loud and the base so intense that the ground vibrated under my feet and my ribs collided with my heart beat to the point I seriously worried for a bit whether the music might be doing damage to my aging cardio system! Hey, dude, I didn’t even have any mind altering substances to help transport me back to the beat of my generation. Far out.

 

The Jazzfest party doesn’t end when the fairgrounds close. No way, man, this is New Orleans. We took a cab to dinner at a restaurant favored by locals called Eleven Seventy Nine, very good, restaurants don’t survive long in New Orleans unless they are very good, then back to the Quarter, I wandered through the drunken revelry on Bourbon Street and stumbled across a jazz bar called Fritzel’s. Tiny, intimate, just hard wood benches and a long bar, but crowded with jazz lovers from all over the world. Great place. Shut it down and stumbled back to the Hotel St. Marie to call it a night and do it all over again the next day. Man, what a party!

 

 

Sunday morning, for breakfast I walk to another New Orleans iconic restaurant, Mother’s. Standing in line, you order whatever you want at the counter, pay cash only, grab your café au lait and then find a table, display your number and wait until its delivered. You will not go away hungry. Sunday morning, I read the funnies in the Times Picayune. They have all my favorites, Beetle Bailey, Hagar, Filbert, Dagwood, Peanuts, For Better or For Worse, Hi and Lois, Prince Valiant (my god, I can’t believe he is still in the funnies!), Doonesbury, Zits, BC, Pickles, Garfield, the Wizard of Id. Having finished a glorious repast and completed my literary ablutions (like the proverbial ostrich deliberately ignoring the front page), it’s back out to the fairgrounds for another afternoon of Jazzfest. I finish the day at the back of the Acura main stage, sweating contentedly against a fence at the very back of the crowd listening to the music I can barely hear coming from the distant Acura main stage across a sea of swaying people punctuated by colorful flags floating above it all in the breeze, used as rallying points, LSU in purple and gold and others more creative such as “Save the Tatas.” New Orleans is such a kaleidoscope of values all mixing together and moving in hidden currents like tides changing in a vast bay. Just like America. Somehow it works. As the crowd constantly passes by me going in both directions at once, I am amazed by how many people bring 3 and 5 year olds to these events, mostly riding on dad’s shoulders. Somebody next to me is shooting big bubbles from a bubble gun and everybody is laughing as one of the high riding 4 year olds tries to catch them without falling off. There is hope, isn’t there? A fine end to a great few days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

:-)