The Big Easy

2024 was one of those bittersweet years for our family. In March, our son married a beautiful woman whom we all love, and the wedding was one of those perfectly joyful events shared by close family and many friends. It was the highlight of our year. 

On the other hand, our family and a couple of friends faced some significant setbacks and challenges that made us all happy to celebrate the end of the year and ring in the new one. 

And that’s what we did. Some friends were staying with us for the holiday, and we all slept in later than usual on New Year’s Day after a late night telling 2024 where to goand telling 2025 how glad we were to welcome it. 

We turned on the news to learn that at 3:15 a.m. that morning,an American-born Texas residentdrove a rented pick-up truck down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 New Year’s Eve revelers before dying himself in a shoot-out with police. Dozens more were wounded, and the FBI eventually concluded that he acted alone, inspired by ISIS. 

Later in the day, a bomb-filled Tesla Cybertruck was detonated in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, killing the driver but thankfully injuring no one else. The twin stories filled the airwaves for days. 

Hell of a way to start the new year. 

The day after the New Orleans attack, one of the national news outlets did a piece on how the city was already bouncing back, specifically through street musicians leading a “second line.” 

A second line is a New Orleans parade tradition, with brassy blares of trumpets and trombones belting out joyous jazz (the “first” or “main” line), as folks form a line behind the band and free-form dance as it progresses through the streets (the “second” line). It’s common at funerals, weddings, and other social gatherings in New Orleans. 

When asked by a reporter how it’s possible to simultaneously celebrate and mourn so shortly after tragedy, trombone player David Glenn Andrews said, “As we know from the great Louis Armstrong, music is a healer. We’re back open. We’re not afraid, and we refuse to be terrorized.” 

Hearing that music and the spirit of resilience expressed by Andrews really moved me. 

I love New Orleans. It’s my favorite American city to visit, which I’ve done dozens of times over the last forty years, starting in college, as some of my closest friends at school were born and raised there and helped me learn and love every nook and cranny of the city, in all its gritty glory. 

Mardi Gras, friends’ weddings, long and boozy dinners at Galatoires, beignets and coffee at Café Du Monde, and late-night jazz at Fritzel’s comprise some of my fondest memories of the city. I volunteered to help build a playground at the Samuel J. Green charter school in Orleans Parish after the school was ravaged by Katrinaand attended the first Saints game in the Superdome after the storm. It was January 25, 2006, and the Saints handily beat their arch-rival Atlanta Falcons. I was living in Atlanta at the time, so I was a Falcons fan, but the Saints’ win made me happy.It was a much-needed salve for the citypost-Katrina, another time when mourning and celebration collided to give New Orleans its unique vibe. 

I reached out to my various friends from New Orleans after the attack to check in and let them know I was thinking about them after such a tragic event in their hometown. One of them said, “We’re a resilient city. So that’s helpful.” 

Another said he had been visiting the city for the holidays and left on December 30. “Thus, we missed the nightmare,” he said. 

Another of my friends who still lives there told me the attack happened right in front of Galatoires, my favorite restaurant in the city, where my friends and I dined together on many occasions. One night, NFL quarterback Eli Manning, himself a New Orleans native, was at the table next to us and was gracious enough to have his picture taken with my youngest son. 

Yet another fondand distant memory from New Orleans, now shadowed by a tragic and more recent event. 

New Orleans has a few nicknames. It’s called The Crescent City because of the graceful, crescent-shaped curve the Mississippi River makes around the city. It’s also called The Birthplace of Jazz, a nickname given to it by the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper in the early 1900’s, based on the many jazz legends from the city who pioneered the genre, including Louis Armstrong. 

My favorite is The Big Easy, and there’s no definitive origin that everyone from there agrees on. One theory is that it’s derived from the former “Big Easy Dance Hall” that burned down in the early 1900’s. Another theory conjectures it’s because black entertainers in the early 1900’s had an easier time getting gigs in New Orleans than in other cities in the South. Others think it’s a reflection of the slow lifestyle that pervades the swampy, humid southern city. 

That’s the one I like because it captures everything I love about New Orleans. 

There’s a poem called Going Home: New Orleans by Sheryl St. Germain, in which she brings this slowness to life in a vivid way. It’s a short poem, but she uses some version of the word “slow” more than twenty times to describe everything from the city’s trees, porches, mint juleps, and food to its distinct dialect. 

It ends with the following lines: “...and the slow river that cradles it all, and the chicory coffee that cuts through it all, slow-boiled and black as dirt; and the slow dreams and the slow-healing wounds and the slow smoke of it all slipping out, ballooning into the sky—slow, deliberate, and magnificent.” 

Here’s hoping that all the slow-healing wounds of the past year and the ones already being felt in this new one will slip and balloon into the sky and make way for brighter days.