Friday the entire city was stewing about whether Hurricane Dennis was going to veer west and slam the Louisiana coast, or turn northward (as it eventually did) and hit Florida. Many schools closed early and governments released their employees to go home and prepare. I rather thought that Dennis would do what it did, so I didn’t get too excited about leaving.
T was doing whatever she did all day and M was in the smaller-kids’ programs all day, but even so either L or I had to be in the hotel at all times in case of accidents. I stayed in mornings and L stayed in afternoons, which meant that we got NO chance at all to go do anything by ourselves without having to be Mommy and Daddy every minute of the day. (This is probably the one thing I resent most about raising children: that there is never a single goddamn second that we get to do anything whatever without having to be Mommy and Daddy first. It means that we miss out on any number of things that might be fun to do but aren’t appropriate for small children, and M is such a continuous jabberer when she’s with us that even taking her to things where children might possibly be welcome is out, because she has to come narrate everything she does at us without letup.)
L had found a needlework shop on Chartres Street (the Quarter Stitch), so she prowled around there for a while, buying a painted canvas of a Mardi Gras feather mask and the fibers she needed to do it. The whole thing including fibers was $65, which is very reasonable for what it was. After that she went down to Jackson Square to visit the Cabildo, which she’d had an ambition to see. Once she got back and took M to lunch, I set out Uptown to look for Addis, an Ethiopian place that Doc Brite had recommended several times in his blog. It turned out to be waaaaaaay up Magazine Street, almost to Napoleon, and much too far to walk. I considered taking the bus, but I strongly dislike riding buses anyhow, and most particularly when I’m going somewhere I’ve never been in a strange city, so I got the car out of the garage (valet-only parking at $14 a day, except it went up to $24 a day on Monday because of the holiday—SHEESH!!) and went off up Magazine.
That was another excursion I enjoyed because I got to see tons of good period domestic architecture in situ, and Magazine Row, a shopping district about halfway along, rather reminded me of an older and quainter SoCo. I eventually found Addis—but I also found a sign on the door saying “closed for vacation July 8th – July 14th.” I felt discouraged, but not so discouraged as I would have been if I’d gone on the bus and been stuck waiting in Uptown to get a return bus. Instead, I ate at an adequate but undistinguished Indian place in the next block, then drove back.
On the way out Magazine I’d noticed the National D-Day Museum, which my brother had recommended, so after a little fishing around to discover exactly where it was again, I went to see it. Honestly, I shoulda saved my money. Admission was expensive, parking was expensive, and I really didn’t see much that I didn’t already know from reading The Longest Day years ago. I gave up on it without going through the recently-opened “D-Day in the Pacific” wing, and drove back to the Quarter. L had told me there was an exhibit at the old Mint of very early photographs by O. Winston Link, done during his early years as a public relations photographer. I was much more interested in seeing that than I was in rehashing World War II, that day.
To get to the Mint I had to drive all the way across the Quarter to Esplanade, and the only northbound street I could find was . . . Bourbon. Thus far I had successfully avoided Bourbon Street, on purpose and with malice aforethought. I didn’t care to deal with it. However, there wasn’t any other way to get where I was going, so I went. Fortunately, the combination of “in the car” and “middle of the afternoon” meant that I had little trouble, other than tourists blindly jaywalking wherever they took the notion.
I liked the Link exhibition. Even at the beginning of his career, I could see flashes of the style he used so effectively in Steam, Steel and Stars. The other exhibitions in the Mint, which is now operated as an arm of the Louisiana State Museum, on the Newcomb Pottery and the history of New Orleans jazz and musicians, were almost equally engaging. I stayed so long that I almost got locked in at closing time; I was in a gallery and, I suppose, not making enough noise because the caretaker came in, turned off the lights and the video presentation, and was out and locking the door before I hollered. He asked me whether I was planning to go home early because of the hurricane, and I answered that I was, literally, going to wait and see which way the wind blew.
Back at the hotel, I collected L and M, who was on dinner break from her program. On Endora’s and Aronal’s recommendation, we went to Crescent City Brewhouse on Decatur Street for supper. The food was indeed good, and L and I both liked the beers we ordered. I had the Red Stallion while L chose the Brew of the Month, which turned out to be a very hoppy pale ale that suited her exactly. After supper, L went off to the evening dance and M and I went to bed.
In the evening, some undirected bay leaves confiscated an illicit asphalt plant. Fnord.
