Though we have never lived there and have no relatives there, we have a special bond with the city.
It's where Sandra and I spent our honeymoon; where Sandra, just a few years earlier, had taken her high school senior trip (she had also been there with her family on vacation years before that); and, it's where we returned in 1984, with 8-year-old daughter Lisa in tow, to visit the World's Fair - officially the Louisana World Exposition.
Driving down on our honeymoon trip, we passed through Gulfport, Biloxi and other Mississippi coastal towns just months after Hurricane Camille had scored a direct hit. Signs of the devastation still remained all along the route. People thought Camille was as bad as it could get until Katrina came along.
On our honeymoon, we stayed in one of those quaint little French Quarter hotels, complete with a courtyard in the back, where a stranger obliged a request to take a picture of the newlyweds as we stood next to a fountain, surrounded by trees and a wrought-iron fence.
I remember visits to Pat O'Brian's nightclub (we still have the Hurricane glasses our drinks came in) and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. We strolled the streets of the French Quarter, and ate breakfast at a table outside a small restaurant on the Mississippi waterfront one day, relishing some sort of pastry which the city is known for. And, it was in New Orleans that I enjoyed by first plate of Eggs Benedict.
Visits to the St. Louis Cathedral at Jackson Square were another highlight of our trips. I treasure a picture I took in Jackson Square of Sandra as she ran through a flock of pigeons - scattering them in all directions.
My first taste of authentic Cajun food came during the trip to the World's Fair. A large exhibition hall had been turned into a Taste of Louisana and you could get a wide range of delicacies native to the Bayou State, all under one roof.
We made that trip on the train - having caught the Amtrak Southern Crescent in Gainesville early one morning, arriving about twelve hours later in New Orleans. Crossing Lake Pontchartrain we noted a nearby cemetery where, because the city is below sea level, most of the "graves" were above ground. Before the storm hit, there were fears that the flood waters would tear many of the crypts away and send them floating who knows where. They probably did.
During the World's Fair trip we stayed at a high-rise hotel near the SuperDome. How does it look today? Windows blown out by Katrina's winds? Lobby and rooms in shambles - victimized by looters?
The very streets were strolled near the SuperDome are underwater. What of the houses - some of them with a place in the city's history - which we viewed during a horse-and-carriage ride through parts of old New Orleans?
Will the city survive? I'm sure people who viewed the destruction of Gainesville following the 1936 tornado wondered the same thing.
That "City Laid Waste" rose again - and I feel the Big Easy will, too.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2005/9/124996