Voodoo Rue’s PA-cation: Part 1

Though I love New Orleans, every now and then it’s nice to get away…from the crime, from the heat, from how easy it is to start off every morning with a drink, if one chooses. While I’m overdue for a real vacation (like say…to Paris), I did manage yet another road trip home in early July. The reason…my 20-year high school reunion.

It would have been much easier to fly, but I love driving. I especially love driving in the summer, when, unlike my trip home for Christmas, I know I’m not going to hit a major snowstorm on the way up north.

My co-pilot for this trip was Miss Pat, another New Orleans resident and PA native who happened to want to go home for a visit as well. While the drive is usually about 19 hours in total, we decided to break it up into a couple days and see a few sights along the way.

Fist stop, the Dickel Distillery in Cascade Hollow, Tennessee. While not quite as well-known as Jack Daniels, this distiller of Tennessee whisky has nonetheless been around since 1870. I’m not a whisky drinker myself, but I have to admit the tour was fascinating. Also interesting is that most of these counties in Tennessee where such famous liquors are created are dry counties. So while one might buy a bottle as a souvenir or gift, there are no tastings. Sucks for you whisky drinkers.

We soon hit the highway for our next destination, Nashville, where we checked into the Renaissance Hotel, napped, and prepared for a night out. After dinner at some restaurant whose food was clearly not memorable enough for me to remember the name, we strolled along Broadway and some of the side streets, stopping occasionally at random bars. This part of Nashville is fun and busy, yet somehow still quaint. Eventually we landed at Wanna B’s, a karaoke bar on Broadway. I don’t think we intended to stay until damn near 3 a.m., but we were having a good time, doing shots and enjoying the singers. While karaoke bars have the potential to be uber-cheesy and horrible, we were impressed with some of the talent we heard in this one. This is Nashville, after all, home of many aspiring country music singers. My personal favorite was the guy who sang “Come Sail Away”…as Cartman. A brilliant tribute to South Park.

We stumbled back to the hotel quite late, past the darkened back entrance of the Ryman Auditorium. Our hotel had beautiful glass elevators that looked out over the city on the way up to our 20-something-floor room. That’s just bad news for any hotel when an unstoppable mooner like me is about. Hope you enjoyed the pasty white full moon that night, Nashville.

Day two: Onward to Roanoke, Virginia, where my good friend Jen Bath has been living for a few years now. We arrived in the evening, tired and hungry. Jen drove us around downtown Roanoke, which definitely has its lovely spots, before taking us to dinner at Macado’s, a nice little pub with an impressive sandwich menu. The food was good, the weather beautiful, the service nice (our server even gave Pat and I free shot glasses in honor of our first visit there).

Afterward, Jen drove us up to see the Roanoke Star, also known as the Mill Mountain Star. According to Wikipedia, it’s the “world's largest freestanding illuminated man-made star,” clocking in at 88.5 feet tall. The star can be seen from all over Roanoke, including from Jen’s front yard. The top of the mountain near the star also boasts a lovely scenic overlook from which you can see all of Roanoke lit up in the dark.

Exhausted after our long day, we went back to Jen’s to retire for the night and get ready for the next leg of the trip…home to PA. In the morning, we avoided the highways by going through some of the more rural parts of PA, like Lancaster and Gettysburg. We arrived near Philly near late afternoon, and once Miss Pat was settled in at her folks’ home, I hit the PA turnpike north. I expected heavy traffic and delays, but while there was construction and heavy traffic, it moved at an impressive clip for most of the way. I pulled into my mother’s driveway just before dark.

It’s good to be home.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Voodoo Rue's PA-cation.

My letter of complaint to the Travel Channel

(Sadly, I had to shorten it to get it to fit in their comment box, as they provide no e-mail address for contacting them.)

To whom it may concern,

I’m writing to express my displeasure with a recent comment made on Samantha Brown’s “Passport to Europe.”

I enjoy most of the shows on the Travel Channel and think Ms. Brown does an excellent job with her shows. However, I do take offense to this.

On a recent trip to Nice, France (I’m not sure how old the episode is…I watch a lot of reruns), Ms. Brown celebrated Carnival with a bystander. She asked the gentleman if he had ever been to Mardi Gras, and he replied that he had. She responded by saying: “I wouldn’t take my kids to Mardi Gras!”

This statement shows that Ms. Brown has clearly never attended a Mardi Gras outside of the beads-for-breasts mayhem that goes on in the Quarter, on Bourbon Street. Those cheesy “activities” have nothing to do with Mardi Gras and go on year-round. No truck-pulled parades have rolled through the Quarter since around 1975. Those parades, in fact, come for miles down St. Charles Avenue, starting at Napoleon, and the streets are lined with families during the Mardi Gras season. Only in New Orleans do hardware stores sell ladders with seats already attached to the top of them, for the kids. Take a look at pictures of St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras day, and you’ll see just how family-oriented it is.

Nearer to the madness of the Quarter, the police set up barricades to keep the crowds away from the floats. Farther uptown in the route, there are no such barricades, and adults and children alike are free to run up to a float for good “throws,” and I can attest that the riders do give the best throws to the children.

Please understand that I am not some offended parent…I don’t even like kids…but I do live close to the parade route and have been here for two Mardi Gras (or would that be Mardis Gras?). Yes, it’s very crowded, but so was Nice, from what I could see on television. But the police are out in force, and they don’t tolerate any inappropriate shenanigans along the parade route, nor do parade-goers who have brought their children.

I realize that in many ways New Orleans an anti-paradise. Our crime is sky high, our city officials are corrupt and incompetent, and the summer heat could fry an egg on the sidewalk. However, please realize that this is a city that relies on tourism for its survival (not to mention levees), and a blanket statement as such about a celebration that is VERY family-friendly away from Bourbon Street is damaging…for all of us.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Melissa Lewis

Memorial

In April of this year, my family came down to New Orleans to visit. It was the first time here for most of them. Sometimes it’s easy to take the things in your own backyard for granted, until someone opens your eyes.

We did all the predictable tourist stuff…toured the French Quarter, rode the streetcar, went to Audubon Park, walked on the Moon Walk and looked over the Mississippi, took a swamp tour at Honey Island, drank like fish. I dragged them all over New Orleans. They had no plans and no intentions and were happy following my lead.

The only thing my brother Mike asked is that we visit the National World War II Museum. Since Mike generally asks for very little (at least from me…his wife and kids might disagree), I was happy to oblige. It’s not generally my subject matter of choice, even knowing that my own grandfather had died in World War II. I don’t watch many war movies or documentaries, nor do I read much on the subject.

The National WWII Museum opened in New Orleans on June 6, 2000, 56 years after the invasion of Normandy, thanks to the efforts of author and historian, Dr. Stephen Ambrose (Band of Brothers). That being said, it is truly one of the best and most fascinating museums I’ve ever been to, and I think as a family we spent somewhere between three and four hours perusing the exhibits. I appreciated the small theaters scattered throughout the museum, showing short films that documented the progression of the war. Seeing articles that actually belonged to soldiers fighting the war—rations, weapons, letters, etc.—made it seem more real.

Visiting the museum piqued my interest in World War II, and I soon found myself on Netflix renting the series Band of Brothers, mostly because of my new-found interest in the subject matter, and only a little because I’m recently crushing on Frank John Hughes, one of the stars of the movie. Out of five stars, I’d give the series six. It’s fantastic, overwhelming, enlightening, and heartbreaking.

Soon I was asking my mother for more information on my grandfather, and she pointed me toward the Indiana Military site. My grandfather, a native New Yorker, was a 1^st Lieutenant in the 106^th Infantry Division, 422^nd Regiment, DHQ. His division was activated in 1943 in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and then transferred to Camp Atterbury in Indiana for advanced training before leaving for Europe. According to the 106^th Infantry Division Web site created by Carl Wouters, “The 106th was the last of 66 US Infantry Divisions to be activated during WWII. Being one of the more unfortunate higher numbered divisions, the 106th were repeatedly stripped of manpower that was needed elsewhere.”

My mother was able to glean some information from diaries left by my grandfather and from survivors of his regiment, at least one of whom STILL keeps in touch with her to this day.

She wrote on the Web site:

“They arrived at the front on December 11-all green troops. Since officers were allowed to ship an additional trunk....my father did. His men thought it wasn't like him to do that. When he got to the front lines, he opened it up. It was filled with long johns and dry socks for his men. That's the kind of man he was.

Around Dec 16, he was on his way (to or from) headquarters when he and other soldiers were captured and taken prisoner. One man escaped-got back to his lines-and told them Lt Krol had been taken prisoner. A rescue party was formed. (with many volunteers).

From his men we heard............There was a group of 11 to 16 GI's being guarded by a Nazi soldier. The soldiers were in the open-forced to lie down in the snow. As the rescue party drew near..........my father saw them and ran in the opposite direction to draw the attention of the Nazi guard. He succeeded. He was killed, the rescue party saved the others. He earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star.”

The Indiana Military Web site also includes a scan of the obituary from the New York Times and of the official notification my grandmother received telling her that her husband was killed in action at the Battle of the Bulge.

While the Allies eventually triumphed, the Battle of the Bulge resulted in approximately 81,000 American casualties, many of those fatalities, one of which left my mother without a father when she was little more than a year old.

I wish I would have known my grandfather. My mother tells me that he had a degree in English, and I think he and I would have had a lot to talk about.

My father served in the military as well. He was in the U.S. Navy in the 1960s, stationed on the USS Saratoga. Fortunately, my father left the Navy long before the Saratoga was deployed to Vietnam in the 70s.

My father was a quiet man a rarely spoke of his time in the service. My knowledge comes from what I learned from my mother, what I’ve seen in several books, and the very little he told me, mostly only when plied with a few beers. He traveled to many different places, but I think he preferred home. The only souvenir I have from his travels is a decorative wall hanging that says “Souvenir of Malta — Island of Sunshine and History.”

He may not have spoken much about his time in the service, but he was most certainly proud of it, and often sported a U.S. Navy hat.

Today I am still learning about the wars this country has fought, about my grandfather, about my father, and about the hardships endured by all. It’s a humbling experience, and it has made me feel both grateful and ungrateful at the same time for all the things in this life that I don’t appreciate.

When crime hits too close to home . . . again

I have so many things that I want to blog about. I want to blog about my trip into the Barataria to go canoeing with the alligators. I want to blog about my family’s first visit to New Orleans and our trip to Honey Island Swamp and to great places like the WWII Museum. I want to blog about the awesome CD release party of Shamarr Allen and the Underdawgs.

But once again I find myself caught up in the never-ending cycle of news stories centered around violent crimes. This time the crime was one that my friends were witness to. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, some psycho opened fire on his estranged wife and her friend in the middle of a crowded bar, my FAVORITE bar, the bar in which I feel most safe and most welcome. The woman died, and the friend was severely injured.

According to the news story on NOLA.com, the victims had just gotten off work at a local hotel and were relaxing with a cocktail when the husband, who had been arrested there earlier in the week, stepped through the door and opened fire.

It breaks my heart to realize not only that crime CAN and DOES happen everywhere, but also that my friends were there and could easily have been injured.

I realize that this crime was the product of a domestic dispute and that little could have been done to prevent it. (The husband was arrested earlier this week and a restraining order was filed against him.) But it comes on the heels of so many other violent crimes throughout the city:

On Friday night a 24-year-old man was shot in the face and hip just blocks away from the site where a 35-year-old woman was killed when someone opened fire. On Saturday a bullet-riddled body was found on Airline Highway. (Yes, I know that’s Jefferson Parish, but it’s still close enough to be frightening.) Just the other day, in Marrero, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the head with an assault rifle. A seven-year-old boy was shot when his father stopped to buy drugs with his two kids in the car.

The most telling part of incidents was one line in the initial story posted on NOLA.com concerning the death of the 35-year-old woman. According to the story, a fight began in the parking lot of a gas station, one opponent wielding a baseball mat, the other a machete. The line to which I’m referring: “He said he called police but they did not come.” After the men left, one returned with a gun, firing into a crowd and killing the woman, an innocent bystander.

What’s wrong with this picture? This is not an isolated incident either. In 2007 NOLA.com posted an article concerning an attempted rape on Royal Street. The police were called but never arrived.

On May 1, NOLA.com reported that the NOPD admitted that it had “misreported” recent rape statistics. This on the heels of a story of a young woman who was kidnapped in the Quarter, raped, and dropped off in Gretna. The NOPD is investigating the kidnapping, but neither Orleans Parish nor Jefferson Parish wants to investigate the rape charge. The two parishes are fighting like my brother and I used to over who had to wash the dishes. “I don’t want to! I did it yesterday! It’s his turn!”

“It’s not my job! It’s yours!”

Who’s job is it? Who is to be held accountable? While our illustrious (insert sarcasm here) Mayor Nagin is defending his every suspicious move by claiming that those who would like some accountability are simply politically motivated and are hurting the recovery of New Orleans, the beat goes on.

Where are the crime cameras? Why do the traffic cams work so well as catching speeders and red-light runners, generating income for the city, but none of those crime cameras work?

While Nagin is busy giving non-answers and Police Superintendent Riley is busy cooking the books on crime stats, the city that I love is flailing. Who is going to help?

Yesterday’s sign of the times came in a phone call to my mother, who is very much in love with New Orleans, though she does not live here. I realized how bad things have gotten here and how bad the news looks to others when she said to me: “I think it’s time you moved home.”

The problem is, I already am home.