STORY CUP

Thursday, June 18, 2009

A Place Called Storyville

I realized there was something exciting and quite different about New Orleans the first time that I visited the city. Today, if you go south on Canal Street you will eventually end up at the Mississippi River. The City is in the process of rebuilding, but if you had followed Canal to the River before Hurricane Katrina you would have encountered many tourist attractions such as the Aquarium of the Americas, the World Trade Center and the Canal Street Wharf. Unlike today’s tourist-driven atmosphere you would have found something quite different had you taken the same journey in the 1950's.

I first visited New Orleans during the Eisenhower Era and remember standing on south Canal Street and staring down the hill toward the Mississippi River. New Orleans is a major international seaport and what I saw was a bunch of seedy bars that sailors from many countries frequented when they were in port. The bars were off-limits to American military personnel, and for good reason. They were dangerous, the women you met there "loose," and venereal diseases rampant.

"Those bars are a good place to get killed," my Aunt Carmol, an ex-marine during World War II and no shrinking violet herself, had told my brother and me. "Don’t ever go there."

The Canal Street bars were long gone before I ever had the opportunity to defy Aunt Carmol’s advice. Still, even as a youngster I felt the potential danger and lingering intrigue present around nearly every corner of New Orleans. One less dangerous but very intriguing place that was eventually cleaned up by the U.S. Navy was Storyville, the Big Easy’s early-day fantasy land that did as much to establish the City’s reputation as a latter-day Gomorrah as anything else in its history.

During the early days of New Orleans there was a shortage of females. To alleviate this situation, street prostitutes were released from French prisons on the condition that they migrate to the new colony. In 1744, the number of bordellos and houses of prostitution prompted a French army officer to comment that there were not ten women of blameless character in New Orleans. City-wide prostitution continued until 1897 when a puritanical city official devised a plan to control the problem. The plan resulted in the formation of Storyville.

Locals called Storyville "The District." It existed from 1897 until 1917, the concept of New Orleans’ alderman Sidney Story. Story’s plan wasn’t to legalize prostitution, but to control it by defining the boundaries within which it would not be prosecuted as a crime. The concept worked for nearly two decades and ironically the District became one of the City’s leading tourist attractions.

Despite the belief of many - likely propagated by fictional accounts in literature - Storyville wasn’t located in the French Quarter. It encompassed an area north of the Quarter, just east of Canal Street between N. Rampart and N. Claiborne. Elaborate bordellos, fancy restaurants and dance halls quickly appeared and flourished, along Basin, the street that became a legend because of its association with early jazz.

Jazz flourished in Storyville, although it didn’t originate there. Each bordello was a place for music as well as prostitution and each establishment generally had a piano player to entertain its guests. The bordellos often hired bands to perform, as did the restaurants and clubs that sprang up in the District. Jazz superstars such as Buddy Bolden and Louis Armstrong often performed there. Storyville was near a train station and many visitors to the City also frequented the bordellos and the clubs to listen to jazz. These visitors, as well as sailors of all nationalities, took this new sound back with them to their cities and countries of origin.

In 1917 the Secretary of the Navy was Josephus Daniels and his nickname "Tea Totaling" perfectly described his tolerance for sin. Daniels insisted that New Orleans either shut down Storyville, or else he would close the naval base across the river in Algiers. The base provided too much income to New Orleans for the City fathers to see it close so they shut down Storyville instead.

A wave of Puritanism swept across the United States during the era of World War I and the residents of New Orleans weren’t exempt from this phenomena. Embarrassed by Storyville, city fathers began systematically dismantling the District. In the years following 1917, all the elaborate bordellos were demolished leaving only a metaphorical scar in place of nearly two decades of irreplaceable history. Even the street names were changed, world famous Basin Street becoming North Saratoga.

Toward the end of World War II, city fathers made yet another planning blunder. Soldiers were returning home from war and needed a place to live, so the Iberville Housing Project was built on the site of Storyville. Never spoken about in travel brochures or in tourist information, the low-cost Iberville Housing Project quickly became dangerous and crime-ridden. Close to the French Quarter, the Project was a place to avoid at all costs instead of the tourist attraction that the District had once been.

Even with the dismantling of Storyville, prostitution never left New Orleans. It simply spread out across the city to places like the seedy bars frequented by sailors on south Canal. Unlike south Canal, transformed now into a tourist attraction rather than a city blight, the area around Storyville remains largely unknown and off limits to tourists.

New Orleans’ city fathers made a colossal blunder when they demolished the historical District. They compounded their error when they covered up their mistake by building the infamous Iberville Project. Finally realizing their horrible error in judgment, they did return the name Basin to the famous street that was home of legendary jazz and fabulous bordellos.

New Orleans still exudes a well deserved aura of danger and intrigue and there are still more than enough historical sights to see, even though one of the most famous is forever gone. Few vestiges of Storyville remain, yet like the tang of Tabasco Sauce on the palette, its memory remains long after the last spicy bite of Etouffee has been consumed.

LouisianaMysteryWriter

A Knight at the Ball

Mardi Gras season ended much too soon because I have more stories to tell. This one could probably last until next year but I may as well tell it while I am thinking about it. This story happened more than thirty years ago and my memories are not getting any clearer as time goes on.
I was still married to my first wife Gail at the time. Gail and her family were from Chalmette, the town down St. Bernard Highway from New Orleans that was all but devastated by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Gail had two brothers and five sisters. Her sister Mertie was married to a wealthy drilling contractor named Bobby.
There are many Krewes, or clubs, that celebrate Mardi Gras. They range in size from very large to very small, and they come and go based on many different socio-economic reasons. They all have one thing in common: a king and a queen that serve for only one Mardi Gras season.
Rex is one of the oldest and largest Krewes and rumor has it that the king only becomes so after donating a million dollars to the organization. I don’t know if this is true, but I did know one of the former kings of Rex and he was a very rich man.
My brother-in-law Bobby was also wealthy, although not nearly wealthy enough to reign over Rex. Lucky for him, there was a Krewe, not quite as famous or large, of which he did become king. Thirty some years ago, Bobby and Mertie were crowned king and queen of the Krewe of Arabi. Bobby lauded the position over everyone in the family and to hear him tell it, he may as well have been King of Saudi Arabia instead of the Krewe of Arabi.
While not as expensive to attain as King of Rex, being King of Arabi did not come without a price. Bobby, according to family rumor, had paid fifty thousand dollars for the privilege of serving as king. His costume cost twelve thousand dollars, his wife Mertie’s twenty five thousand. They had a son and daughter and each of their costumes cost more than five thousand dollars.
Bobby and his immediate family rode on the King’s float during the Arabi parade and threw thousands of dollars worth of beads, doubloons and various premium throws to the adoring masses gathered along the parade route. Bobby also bought thousands of dollars worth of alcoholic beverages served at the Arabi Ball. Being sister and brother-in-law, Gail and I had the privilege of sitting at the King’s table and drinking his whiskey.
While nowhere as regal or elegant as the Rex Ball, the Arabi Ball was still quite an affair. Bobby was drunk as a skunk, dressed in full costume and mask, and waving his kingly scepter like a royal fool. As the night progressed, he began knighting the male members of his entourage. When my turn arrived, I came close to losing an ear in the process.
Bobby did not like me very much, but in deference to Gail’s father, he was civil to me when he was sober. The problem was, his sobriety was an unusual occurrence and the night of the Arabi Ball, he was anything but. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence as I knelt before him, awaiting knighthood.
The large ballroom was dark, music of a live orchestra loud, along with the noise of restless revelers. No one except Bobby and I realized that instead of the normal knighting, he had struck me with the sword hard enough to knock off my mask and put a bloody gash in my scalp.
Okay, I was also drunk having consumed a goodly amount of Bobby’s bourbon. Acting as if nothing outside the ordinary had happened, he simply wheeled around on his throne and continued reveling.
Yes, Bobby was drunk, the large ballroom dark and noisy. My own mind, and my body, was impaired. I really do not know if he struck me in malice or simply let fly a misjudged blow because of his drunken stupor. Quickly forgetting the incident, I cleaned the blood off my head in the bathroom and returned to the raucous party.
That was more than thirty years ago. I am no longer a member of the family, nor, do I believe, is Bobby. There was no permanent damage done from Bobby’s blow - intentional or not. Every knight must face a little adversity, and hey, I am Sir Eric, Knight of Arabi.

Eric'sWeb