The Chris Moeller Archives

NOLA Travelogue- Part 1 (of 2) "Son of a Gun, We'll Have Big Fun"

On Friday afternoon, my brother Aaron and I-- the Jose and Ozzie Canseco of the blogging world-- departed on our first-ever trip to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. It was not only to be a musical expedition, but a trip that saw us connecting back to the Southern U.S. roots that Aaron believes incorrectly that he possesses. Elvis Costello, Al Green, Tim McGraw, and Cassandra Wilson were among the headlining acts on just the one day of our attendance.

Before we had reached the Missouri border, we were met by a monsoon of rain, and it still hadn't let up by the time we stopped for the night at a hotel in the boothill of Missouri. The accommodations at the Travelodge were sparse, but we were grateful for the brief respite from the road and from the torrential downpour. It wasn't until we were awakened the next morning that we discovered the New Madrid Fault Zone ran straight between our twin beds. (I made that up.) Traveling is then all about loading up on as much free food as possible in the complimentary continental breakfast, but no where that we stopped did a hotel offer even fresh fruit as a healthy alternative. It's all donuts, cinnamon rolls, and sugary cereals in the health-conscious Deep South.

While passing through St. Louis on Friday, we had stopped for dinner at Ozzie's Restaurant and Sports Bar. We were delayed at the start of our trip and wouldn't be returning through St. Louis until Tuesday and I was looking to pass off a pair of perfectly decent baseball tickets for Monday night's game between the Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds at Busch Stadium. The opportunity to play Good Samaritan (or Ed McMahon?) was something I had been really looking forward to, and I knew Ozzie's would present a quality collection of sports fans from which to choose as our two lucky recipients.

Looking around the room, every table offered up either too many persons in the party or its patrons looked too well-to-do to deserve such a charitable gift (a $40 cash value, after all). But there was one father-and-son pairing seated across the dining room, peering intently at the Cardinals pre-game show on the big screen television, with the boy, around 9 years old, wearing a Cardinals cap. "What do you think?" I asked Aaron, and he suggested that the worst case scenario would be that they would have other plans for Monday.

I walked over to their table and asked the man if they were local and if they wanted a pair of tickets to Monday night's game. Quickly and excitedly, the boy replied yes, but then the father said, "No, we can't." and then to the boy "Your sister has a softball game that night." The boy banged his fist down on the table in anger, and I left their table side, another notch in my belt of domestic crisis.

Instead, we gave the tickets to our waitress (who was really cute), either to use for herself or to pass along to someone deserving. As it turns out, she had Monday off, or could get if off anyway, and she told us that we "made her evening." (I put my phone number and email address on the customer service survey card, but have yet to hear a thing.) That was a happy ending. If you can't help out a kid, a hard-working waitress-- on her feet all day and living on tips-- is a fine alternative.

There were still more soggy conditions on Saturday morning and afternoon as we cut through Arkansas and around Memphis, then down through Mississippi and across Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain Causeway into the Crescent City. The full tree-lined stretch of interstate through Mississippi is especially lovely, and we were rarely distracted from the carefully-selected CD and Satellite Radio soundtrack of our push down the continent to the Gulf Coast-- except that every 200 miles or so, our eyes would pop at the sight of gasoline for the price of $1.79 or $2.09 a gallon, only to find out each time that the gas station advertising such terrific deals had been long ago shuttered.


Coming next, Aaron's musical review of the Jazz Festival itself, complete with his customary bootlicking of the artists in profile. Then, Part 2 of my travelogue, "Make Levees, Not War."

posted by CM @ 3:55 PM