New Orleans Endures

The trumpets blared and the trombones rolled and I pulled the bed sheets around my shoulders as the New Orleans jazz band marched into my hotel room. I squinted at the clock, which said 5 a.m., then buried my head in pillows.

It was a rude awakening. Worse than the church bells of old Strasbourg or the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square. Worse than the jingling bikes of Beijing or the whining Vespas of Rome.

As I tried to remember where I was and why I had not barred the door, I thought I had it figured: I was back in college and those crazy Sigma Nus were running through the sorority house on a Rush Week dare.

I flailed for the light, then sat up in bed. There were no fraternity men. There were no trombones. There was only a sleepy blonde staring at me from the mirror, a crazed-looking person wrapped in white sheets.

Old-Time Musicians

But music still shook the air. So I slipped on a robe and padded out to the dark, humid corridor. Five stories below, in the courtyard of the Hotel Saint Louis, the sun seemed to have risen.

Bright lights beamed on banana trees and on the bent heads and pulsing arms of old-time musicians and their instrument cases stamped “Preservation Hall.”

It was a warm-up for “Good Morning, America,” another hotel guest mumbled. They were broadcasting live from the Saint Louis courtyard during the Republican National Convention. No one had mentioned this when I checked in.

I had not had such a jolt since the 1976 Democratic Convention in New York City, when I elected to stay at the uptown Regency Hotel to escape the noise of politics at Madison Square Garden.

As I arrived at the Regency the marble-and-tapestried lobby erupted with reporters, floodlights, cameras, Secret Service men and the candidate Jimmy Carter. Happily, they left after a super-power breakfast, and peace was restored on Park Avenue.

If you can’t beat them, I decided from my New Orleans perch, join them in your room. I grabbed some grapes from a basket on the dresser, then scrambled back to bed to watch my hotel on TV.

Uptown Scrubdown

When the sun really did come up over the French Quarter rooftops in my window, I set out to savor the pleasures of this old section that had been scrubbed within an inch of its life before the Republicans came to town.

The word was that the city even poured mint-scented pine oil into the sewers to cut the usual summer stench of stale beer. The natives were praying that the neighborhood cleanup would last.

You can have the French Quarter late at night, with its topless, bottomless, endless entertainment. You can have the giant pink cocktails called Hurricanes and the plastic cups of daiquiris that are carried down the streets by revelers and even swigged in moving vehicles. There seems to be no law in New Orleans against drinking and driving, or drinking and trying to walk.

I like the French Quarter in the morning when the skies are as limpid as the skies over Venice, and for many of the same watercolor reasons. I like the sight of a fat tabby cat who preens on a cast-iron balcony above a street called St. Peter.

I like the smells of strong French coffee at the Cafe du Monde, where square doughnuts called beignets are flash-fried and steeped in powdered sugar. If you want to see a fellow’s hair turn white, watch a guy with a dark mustache bite into a beignet.

Quick Portraits

Street artists who sell their wares around the iron railing of Jackson Square begin arriving around 9 a.m.; they unfold stools and pull out easels and charcoal and pastel chalk. They’ll sketch your portrait while you wait and introduce you to the chartreuse parakeets that sing at their shoulders.

French Quarter shops sell rare coins and lace, ceramic masks and the homemade pecan candies called pralines. You can buy a gallon of Tabasco, the pepper sauce that is concocted on Louisiana’s Avery Island, or a voodoo doll complete with pins.

Along Royal Street are remarkable collections of antiques; for European furnishings and bric-a-brac New Orleans may be the second biggest market in America after New York City. I wandered through three stories of showrooms at Keil’s Antiques, with its French and English furniture.

I would have invested in a tall Brittany hutch if I could have come up with a better answer to my husband’s simple question: Where would you put it? He shook his head when I replied that it would be perfect with the long oak country table near Keil’s front window and the two skinny benches by the wall.

We bought, instead, an antique letter scale with brass weights from Cheapside in London. I don’t know its exact age, but it was made when you could mail a four-ounce letter anywhere in England for a shilling. The postal rates are pressed into the brass.

Margaret Keil, the proprietress, was born in 1900, one year after Keil’s opened its paned-glass doors. Her neighbor on Royal, who owns the esteemed Henry Stern antiques, is a gentleman of 92. Each is active in shop affairs and makes buying treks to Europe.

They’re part of the gentler pace of the good life in New Orleans, where dining is an art and bountiful breakfasts are a tradition--not something that should begin at 5 in the morning with all that jazz.