{"id":550,"date":"2010-04-29T18:52:08","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T02:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/?p=550"},"modified":"2010-04-29T18:52:08","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T02:52:08","slug":"road-trip-the-big-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/road-trip-the-big-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Road Trip – The Big Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

St Charles Street Car – New Orleans<\/strong><\/p>\n

We could have ridden this all day long! First operated in 1833, New Orlean\u2019s St Charles Street Car Line runs from Canal Street near the \u201cQuarter\u201d all he way out past Uptown, the Garden District and Magazine Street. When it gets to the end, the conductor simply turns all the seats around, goes to the other end of the car and off it goes in the other direction. For most of the way, the line goes down a\u00a0grand\u00a0oak-shaded boulevard with grass under the tracks and branches brushing the car\u2019s top. The driver is loud and verbal, yelling out the names of streets and how \u201cthey\u2019s lots of really stupid people, you know\u201d.\u00a0 One time he picked up a rider but said: “Don’t you dare think I’ll stop here again. Next time, you march\u00a0yourself down to the next stop”. He was yelling, and they have to yell, because the trucks (yes, train car wheels are called trucks) are screeching and grinding into turns that thousands upon thousands of other wheels have rolled on, and the brass and hardwood construction isn\u2019t what it used to be (but we think it’s better than it used to be).\u00a0All the windows open fully, so you can hang\u00a0 out and watch the stately homes going by – no guard rails, no ADA compliant, just great experiences without the Nanny State reeling you in.<\/p>\n

And, to finish the story,\u00a0the neighborhood street car dumps you in the French Quarter where you can buy a hand grenade to finish up with. It\u2019s simply one of the great rides in America, and it\u2019s only a buck and a quarter. Oh, and a hand grenade? It\u2019s a frozen fruit slushy with pineapple and lime \u2026 and four shots of Everclear. Don\u2019t know what Everclear is? It\u2019s 185 proof pure grain alcohol, the French Quarter\u2019s most powerful drink (outside of paint remover).<\/p>\n

So that was the good news. The bad: It is just heart breaking to see Katrina\u2019s footprint, the ruined and abandoned stately old houses in the Seventh and Ninth Wards. We camped in an RV park in the Seventh and each morning going into downtown on the shuttle we\u2019d pass blocks of century-old smashed up homes, which is tragic, but I\u2019d say 80% are now coming back to life. And they aren\u2019t just replacing them with plastic sheetrock wonders you see across America, but they’re carefully putting the old ladies back together. Most of the old oaks are still here too, unlike my town of Port Townsend where they seem to hate an old tree. Here\u2019s they\u2019re treating the big trees like injured old-timers, which of course they are. \u201cHell of a job, Brownie\u201d is the phrase that kept going through my head, that insane Bush statement that things were just dandy in the Big Easy after the hurricane passed. It might have been a big hurricane, but it was a man-made disaster because we didn’t maintain the levees properly.<\/p>\n

If you get a chance, I’d recommend a little vacation to this amazing city on the Mississippi. It’s worth the effort to help retain a truly special place that belongs to all of us.<\/p>\n

Larry Eifert<\/p>\n

Click <\/a>here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St Charles Street Car – New Orleans We could have ridden this all day long! First operated in 1833, New Orlean\u2019s St Charles Street Car Line runs from Canal Street near the \u201cQuarter\u201d all he way out past Uptown, the Garden District and Magazine Street. When it gets to the end, the conductor simply turns … Continue reading Road Trip – The Big Easy<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[44,61,77,92,100],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-painting-post","category-uncategorized","tag-field-trips","tag-lighthouses","tag-new-orleans","tag-port-townsend","tag-road-trips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}