Yes, I agree with what you said is very much true.

Danny Folse - Facebook

Looking back...

To me, New Orleans is more than just a few pleasant memories. It was Golden Key coffee, Yogi black pepper, Horse Shoe snowball syrup, Elmer's Gold Brick and Heavenly Hash eggs, Progresso olives, Frey hot dogs and bologna, Walker-Roemer Guernsey Gold milk, and Brown's Velvet ice cream.

New Orleans was a big bowl of seafood gumbo or crawfish bisque at Jaeger's on Elysian Fields, fried soft-shell crabs at old Drago's on Harrison Avenue, or a dressed roast beef po-boy at Parkway Bakery. It was a hot sausage sandwich with chili at Randazzo's grocery, a heaping basket of onion rings at Liuzza's by the track, a bucket of chicken from Chicken Delight, or a #4 at the old Bud's Broiler on City Park Ave.

New Orleans was riding on a maroon-and-creme colored NOPSI bus, and doing so for just a dime. It was sitting on the bus, and seeing all those cute girls in their plaid Catholic school dresses get on, and the nun who boarded and didn't have to pay. New Orleans was playing NORD football games at Kirsh Rooney Stadium, dancing in the quonset hut at St. Frances Cabrini CYO dances, and playing Biddy basketball at Stallings Gym.

New Orleans was the bugle call of the Fair Grounds, and the bells of St Rose of Lima church, the angelic sounds of the ladies choir at Holy Rosary on Esplanade Ave. It was the cries of the newspaper vendors on Canal Street: "Getcha PAY-pah! "Getcha late STATES PAY-pah!" It was the sudden honk of the Canal Street ferry as it was ready to depart. It was the foot-tapping sound of JAZZ coming out of Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. New Orleans was the sound of kids screaming, as the Zephyr went down that first big dip at Pontchartrain beach, or the siren of the hook-and-ladder truck from the firehouse on Paris Avenue.

New Orleans was the smell of piping hot just-boiled crawfish, freshly-popped popcorn at the Beacon Theater, the sparky electric smell of ozone on the St. Charles streetcar, or freshly brewed coffee at Morning Call coffee stand. It was the fragrance of night jasmine while walking along a sidewalk of my old neighborhood at dusk, the smell of somebody's just-mowed lawn, and the talcum powder just after a haircut at Bob's barbershop in Lakeview.

It was the feel of the humidity after a mid-afternoon rain, the coolness of the breeze on the lakefront, and the refreshing cold of K&B's Drug Store or any McKenzie's Bakery on a hot summer afternoon.

New Orleans was running on the neutral ground, riding my high handlebar bike with baseball cards in spokes, climbing the live oak tree at my grandparents', swinging on the big swing set at Stallings Playground, racing pirogues on Bayou St. John, fishing old bottles from City Park's lagoons, and fishing at the stinky spillway near Marconi Drive.

New Orleans was seeing the faces of the people who sat on their front porches in my old neighborhood. It was the feeling of love and kindness from my family.

Gone are the sidewalks of old brick, the neutral ground with old green streetcars on it, and the dim incandescent streetlights for stick-ball games.

The old sights and sounds, smells, tastes and feelings of New Orleans have not gone away completely; they have only become distant memories of a younger time, when the street lights were dimmer but the hearts were warmer. Time seemed slower, and old age seemed so very far away.

For me, New Orleans was not just a place, it was more a time, and a state of mind. I am grateful that my road of life passed through New Orleans.

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