by Shawn Inmon
“What is that beeping?” she asked.
“Beeping?” I heard no beeping, mostly because there are a lot of things I don’t hear. I was a disc jockey for ten years, with headphones slammed over my ears, listening to loud music. I’ve been to more than a hundred rock ‘n’ roll concerts, including seeing KISS from the front row seven times. In other words, I’m at least half-deaf.
“You can’t hear that?” Dawn was shaking her head. She seems perpetually surprised by my deafness.
“I think you’re imagining things.” I am perpetually surprised when she hears things that I cannot.
I opened the door to the stairs and then even I could hear it. A smoke alarm. An industrial strength smoke alarm. The door to our room must have been heavy to have kept that sound out. I shut the door again. Quiet, at least to my ears.
“Okay, you’re not crazy. There’s a beeping out there.”
Dawn dropped her chin and gave me the look that said both, “You are a moron,” and “Why am I awake and do not have my coffee yet?”
I laughed, because she is so cute when she is mildly ticked off, opened the door and headed downstairs in search of coffee. When I got to the bottom floor and onto the sidewalk, I shut the door behind me, grateful for some momentary peace. Leaning up against a railing was a young guy of maybe thirty. His hair was a mess, and he had bags under his eyes.
I smiled, and said, “Man, it’s a bit noisy in there.”
He gave me a haunted look and said, “You don’t have to tell me. That’s coming from my room.”
“How long has it been going on like that?”
“Since a little after midnight.” He had what veterans refer to as a thousand-yard stare.
“Non-stop?”
“No, it’s almost worse than that. It would blare like that for an hour or ninety minutes, then it would go quiet. We would finally just get back to sleep, then it would start up again.”
“Did you call the manager?”
“Of course. They are across town and said there was nothing they could do.”
I said a silent prayer of thanks that this had all happened to him and not us, then fixed a sympathetic expression. “Sorry, man. That is truly awful.”
“You don’t know the half of it. My wife wanted to stay in a different place downtown, but it was more expensive, so I booked us in here.” He grimaced and glanced up at the second floor.
I followed his gaze and saw a woman in sweats and no makeup, with bags that matched his, looking daggers at him.
“My sincere condolences. Can I suggest roses, or possibly diamonds?”
He nodded, disconsolate. “Would have been cheaper to stay downtown.”
Like any married man, I knew that it he wouldn’t be paying for that choice just today, but in hundreds of future conflicts. Every time he made a suggestion, she would remind him of this disastrous night in New Orleans. He would pay a heavy price, but there was nothing I could do for him. His fate was set, so I hustled off and found Dawn’s coffee. No sense in both of us having unhappy wives.
By the time I got back, Dawn was showered and ready to go. We left our room looking for a quieter environment, which would have included anything up to an active gun range.
As we walked toward our first activity of the day, we found the reputation New Orleans has for friendliness and quirky residents is well earned. Everywhere we went, people stopped and talked to us. Once, a lady with a well-dressed poodle walked alongside us for several blocks, chatting, only to say, “Well, I was really heading the other way, but I was enjoying talking to you.” Nice folks.
As we got to the edge of the Marigny district (pronounced MAR-uh-nee, kind of like marinate) we saw a lovely park that covered most of a city block. There were huge trees offering shade, which was attractive to us. It didn’t matter what time of the day or night, it was too damn hot in New Orleans.
Inside the gates of the park, we goggled a bit, as we saw what appeared to be a wild pig frolicking in the grass. As it turned out, it was no wild pig, but the very civilized Snuffleupagus Dawson. Snuffy is a pet pig, more civilized than many people. By the way, I know he is civilized, because he has his own Facebook page, which you’ll no doubt find if you search for Snuffy the Pig. Like all animals, myself included, he was immediately attracted to Dawn. Having a chance to feed Snuffy a treat and scratch his Brillo-pad head was a great start to the day. It’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’ve been befriended by a pig.
We walked toward the French Quarter and had a great lunch. I’m sure it’s possible to get a bad meal somewhere in New Orleans, but I never have. I had jambalaya with andouille sausage, while Dawn had calamari. It was great, and she was more than pleased that it came with no eyes staring back at her.
After lunch, we boarded a tour bus to visit one of New Orleans’ most famous graveyards, St. Louis Cemetery. For hundreds of years, people could just drive there and wander around to their heart’s content. Be warned: That is no longer the case. Too many incidents of vandalism have led the church to close the cemetery to anyone not with a certified guide. It didn’t really matter to us, because I wanted the guide anyway, to provide perspective on what we were seeing.
If you’ve never seen a New Orleans cemetery, you may not know that burials are handled differently here. New Orleans is often referred to as The City of the Dead, but the dead are not buried six feet under. Instead, they’re interred in above-ground tombs. Built on what was once a swamp, New Orleans has an exceptionally high water table. So objects put into shallow ground may not stay there. Floating bodies, or corners of caskets sticking up out of the ground, are not good for anyone, so an intricate burial system was developed in which bodies are not given their own shelf, but rather stacked inside. They’re left to decompose and make room for other bodies to come.
One of our first stops was at the grave of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, the most famous practitioner of Louisiana voodoo in New Orleans. By the way, if what you know about voodoo comes from Hollywood, chances are you’ve got it wrong. As with most things, Hollywood went for what worked for a story, not the facts. Voodoo is described as another spiritual pathway to communicate with the unknown—not all that different from many other faiths and religions.
St. Louis Cemetery is like all cemeteries in one way—it has a definite caste system. Some of the vaults are large, well-decorated, and look like little cities. Others have fallen into disrepair and are crumbling and in danger of falling down.
Nicolas Cage once owned a lot of real estate in New Orleans, but when he ran into financial difficulties, he sold it all, with one exception. That exception is a striking white pyramid vault right in the middle of St. Louis Cemetery. To my eye, it looked like it might have clues to where the treasure was buried in National Treasure.
Nic Cage’s last piece of New Orleans real estate
Seeing the cemetery was cool and historic, but the temperatures were once again in the mid-nineties, the humidity was set to “sticky,” and everyone on the tour was wilting. There was virtually no shade, and even our guide seemed thankful to get out of the sun and back on the tour bus.
Once the bus dropped us off, we hiked to a bar in the French Quarter that had lots of shade and misters. Dawn reinforced herself with a margarita. For the ten-thousandth time in a row, I did not have an alcoholic beverage.
We finally spent some time walking up and down Bourbon Street. I think it’s a law that when you go to New Orleans, you must visit Bourbon Street. I admit, I didn’t enjoy it. Imagine if Disneyland was for adults, not kids. Now, imagine that they have not cleaned Disneyland in several decades. That would still be cleaner and smell better than the Bourbon Street. The heat and humidity, mixed with garbage, sweat, bodily excretions and God only knows what, form the French Quarter funk. If I never smell it again, I will be happy.
Also, let’s be honest. A lot of people come to New Orleans to do one thing: drink. We saw a lot of glazed eyes. I hope they took a lot of pictures, because I have a hunch that’s th
e only way they will remember their trip. There are also hundreds of sad, homeless people and neon signs with hucksters out front doing everything but grabbing you by the collar to get you to come inside. All in all, as much as I love this city, I don’t know that I ever need to come back to Bourbon Street.
Once outside the French Quarter, the charm of the city reasserts itself, though. The architecture is varied and there are any number of stunning old buildings to gawk at and photograph.
Have I mentioned that Dawn is a great lover of the macabre? Her favorite books are all true crime, Ann Rule is her favorite author, and if something famously bad happened somewhere, she wants to see it. So, we looked up the address of the LaLaurie Mansion and walked to it. It is beautiful, with graceful arched windows and a balcony that runs its entire width. It’s also infamous, which is why we sought it out.
The first sign of trouble at the LaLaurie Mansion was in the early 1830s, when a slave girl was chased along the upper balcony by Delphine LaLaurie, who was brandishing a bullwhip. The young girl leapt off the corner of that balcony, trying to get away. Unfortunately she got tangled in the ironwork and fell head-first to the pavement, killing herself. The LaLauries were fined $300. You read that right: no jail time, $300 fine.
The next Very Bad Thing happened on April 10, 1834. Mr. and Mrs. LaLaurie were attending the opera. A fire started in the kitchen and the police and fire departments were summoned. They found a dead girl chained to the stove, burned to death. While the police were investigating, some of the other slaves begged the police to investigate the “third floor, where the bad things happened.” They did, and they found a horrifying room where the LaLauries had been torturing and killing their slaves for many years.
The LaLauries were tipped off that the jig was up while they were still at the opera; they separated and fled. Mr. LaLaurie disappeared, never to be heard from again. Mrs. LaLaurie fled to France, where she lived until her death.
The LaLaurie Mansion was among the pieces of New Orleans real estate Nicolas Cage owned. Legend holds that Cage was disappointed because he had believed he was buying a haunted mansion, but never heard so much as a piece of furniture go bump in the night.
LaLaurie Mansion
I knew there were a lot of other macabre sites in the city, so at dusk, we signed up for a walking ghost tour. As I’ve mentioned, I am a skeptic in all things. If I haven’t seen it or touched it, I probably don’t believe it. Even if I have, I need to take into consideration that I might have been drugged and my perceptions altered. I’m a tough guy to convince. Dawn, on the other hand, is a true believer, because it makes her happy. If someone tells her a convincing ghost story, she believes.
The good thing about the New Orleans Ghost Tour is that it was perfect for both of us. Our tour guide, Daniel, was funny, self-effacing, and chock-full of interesting stories and historical tidbits. It didn’t hurt that he had graduated with a degree in History.
Thus, I took a History Tour of New Orleans, and Dawn took the Ghost Tour. Perfect. Daniel knew the ins and outs of every legend, ghost sighting, and murder. He also chatted with me about the epic history of New Orleans as we walked between stops.
When the tour was over, I thanked Daniel for going over and above for us and slipped him ten bucks. He glanced down, then smiled and said, “I knew you were my favorite.”
I knew it too.
The witching hour drew near, and I checked my Fitbit app, which showed we had walked ten miles that day. No wonder our feet hurt. We limped back to our room and were happy to find dead silence in the building, with no sign of the chagrined couple down the hall.
Day Twenty-Two
After our epic march through the streets of New Orleans, we were ready for a quiet day of driving. The downside of visiting large cities is that there is typically no way to get out of the city without driving on a freeway. As soon as humanly possible, though, we take an exit ramp and look for a winding little highway with farms and small towns.
Today, we were lucky to find Highway 90, which runs along the bottom of Mississippi. I had been to Mississippi before, but only the northern part of the state. I’d never seen what it looked like along the Gulf. I now know that I had been spending time in the wrong part of the state. Southern Mississippi is filled with gorgeous white sand beaches that rivaled any we saw on our trip. Even better, they were all empty. Several times, we pulled off and took our shoes off to walk in the warm sand, or dip our toes in the water. We never saw another human being on any of these beaches.
Still, we were hoping to cross the border into Florida before we slept, so we pushed on through. We did make one stop in Biloxi, Mississippi, because it had played an unwitting role in Shawn and Dawn Part One—our romance when we were kids.
Dawn and I had come to a point at the end of 1978 where we wanted to be together more than anything else on Earth. Dawn’s parents were equally convinced that was a terrible idea. They were so sure, they had forbidden us to see each other at all. I was a freshman at the University of Washington at the time, and Dawn was still going to Mossyrock High School. That’s when I came up with the brilliant idea that we should elope.
The problem was that Dawn was only fifteen, and we couldn’t get married without her parent’s permission. I’m an optimistic guy, but even I was pretty sure that permission was not forthcoming. So, I looked for a state where we could get married without parental permission. I found only one state where that was possible: Mississippi.
The only town I knew of in Mississippi was Biloxi, again because my stepdad had spoken about it in glowing terms. So, that was my plan. We would get on an airplane in Seattle, fly to Biloxi, get married and return as husband and wife.
I never said I was mature or bright, did I? What would have happened to Dawn and me if we had carried out my harebrained scheme? I have no idea, but it never came to pass.
Still, all these years since, Biloxi has lingered in my mind, somehow legendary as the path not taken. When we rolled into town, I saw a sign for a national cemetery there. We try never to pass up the opportunity to pay our respects to the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, so we turned in. As they always are, the grounds were impeccably maintained, permeated with a sense of somber duty.
I was surprised, then, when I saw a sign that read No game playing at Biloxi National Cemetery. I looked around. There was a solitary woman carrying a bouquet to lay at one of the white crosses, and a groundskeeper mowing the lawn, but the rest was deserted. It was hard to imagine a busload of schoolkids pulling up to play hide-and-seek or something.
I Googled the sign, though, and found the answer. It turns out that Biloxi National Cemetery was some sort of a hotspot for Pokemon Go, and people had been walking the grounds with their phones, trying to capture Pokemon. The very idea boggled me a little. All our national cemeteries are hallowed ground. I can’t imagine being so out of touch with that idea that you would enter to play a video game. The sign was evidence it had happened, though.
After our visit to the cemetery, we were ready for lunch. As we rolled through Biloxi, I saw a black station wagon with a pink pig straddling the roof. On the side of the station wagon were the words: “Slap Ya Momma’s Barbecue.” I’m not 100 percent sure that’s grammatically correct, but it was eye-catching, and when I rolled down the window to take a picture, the smell of smoky barbecue did the rest. I was gonna miss Southern barbecue down the road.
The rest of the day was just driving, but what a wonderful drive. We hugged the Gulf coast for most of the day. For the first time, I wished the Silver Bullet was a convertible.
Once again, we managed to hit the only city of any size right at rush hour. It’s uncanny how I manage to time this out. Luckily, what they call rush hour in Mobile, Alabama, wouldn’t compare with a Sunday afternoon in Seattle traffic. We breezed right through town, rarely having to dip below 45 mph.
Then, something weird: As we approached the Jubilee Parkway Bridge, we saw a sign that warned of fog
ahead.
“Really?” I said, looking at the sky. “I think that sign must be left over from winter.”
There were a few clouds, but nothing too ominous. It was another hot and humid day, and fog didn’t seem to fit the equation.
But as soon as we hit the bridge deck, we also hit fog. And another of those drenching rains the South seems to specialize in. Dawn was driving and I was navigating, but when you’re on a freeway on a bridge, there’s not much navigating to be done. The few miles crossing the Jubilee Parkway Bridge may have been the worst driving we had to do on the whole trip. We went from sunshine to deep fog to pounding rain, then back to sunshine, all in about ten minutes.
Welcome to the South.
As soon as we got over the bridge, I had Dawn take the first exit. I had no idea where it was going, I just wanted to be away from Interstate 10. As it turned out, that road dropped us into the southernmost portion of Alabama, and it was beautiful. We drove through country that had no cities or towns, just mile after mile of winding highway, farms, and blue skies. We could have made it from Mobile to the Florida state line in less than an hour on I-10. The loopy way we went, it took us two and a half hours. We were much happier taking the long way.
Before we crossed into Florida, I did see one more tourist trap we needed to investigate: Bamahenge. It’s just like Stonehenge, except it’s in Alabama. Oh, and the “stones” are all made of fiberglass. Other than that, it’s just like Stonehenge, really.
This, the second Stonehenge replica of the trip, might just have met our quota.