By Will Dabbs, MD
New Orleans is unique among the cities of the world. Originally founded by the French in 1718, New Orleans developed a rich Creole culture that spawned from French, Spanish, West African, and Native American influences. In addition to being just flat-out weird, this entire vibrant port city sits about six feet below sea level. All that conspires to attract some truly remarkable personalities.
The year was 2001. It would yet still be another few weeks before Osama bin Laden’s merry mob of monsters ripped away any pretense of innocence from the human species. I was a 35-year-old medical student with a wife and three young children trying desperately not to work myself to death in Jackson, Mississippi. We were just dirt poor, but we had each other. With the crystalline clarity of hindsight, this was the probably happiest time of my life. There is a certain curious innocence to being unencumbered by material possessions.
My precious wife is the acknowledged master of making do with nothing. She had scraped up a few bucks, and I had a rare weekend off. We thought it might be fun to catch the train in Jackson and make a holiday in the Big Easy. The kids would enjoy the adventure, and we needed a change of scenery.
America’s train stations were built in the golden age of the early 20th century. Fast forward to 2001, and most of those places had degenerated into neglected hellscapes. Regardless, we were young, fit, and ignorant as we all piled aboard Amtrak’s City of New Orleans heading south.
The Trip
The kids loved the trek down. The walls of the train were covered in a sort of carpet. At one point a gravity-defying mouse unexpectedly scampered the length of the car sideways, which was strange. We pulled onto a siding to make way for a passing freight and spotted a modest alligator.
Once in New Orleans, we found ourselves a fair distance from our cheap hotel. We couldn’t afford a taxi, and we were too clueless to worry. As I was not asleep or in the shower, I was naturally packing a handgun. That likely violated some Amtrak rule, but I’m not as torn up about that as you might think. With all our gear on our backs, we struck out across inner city New Orleans in search of adventure.
The Setting
New Orleans had a homeless problem long before homeless problems were cool. The temperate climate sprinkled with a thin layer of unfiltered voodoo served as fertile ground for drug abuse and general unwashed creepiness. We soon found ourselves picking our way through a massive homeless encampment—a skinny white man, his pretty wife, and three small kids all packing luggage. We might as well have sported t-shirts emblazoned with, “Attention All Cannibals: Come and Get It!”
It was summer and just stupid hot. The crazy homeless New Orleans people glared at us all hungry-like. My 6-year-old son dutifully clung to my finger throughout.
The Man
The sun beat down mercilessly upon one and all. As we walked out from underneath a massive underpass covered with graffiti, we happened upon a guy leaning against the side of a derelict building, his weathered face turned heavenward. My son stopped in his tracks and, with the inimitable innocence of youth, asked, “Dad, what’s wrong with that man?”
Our hero was reclining in full sun on an August afternoon in the Deep South while remaining unnaturally still. He also had flies crawling in and out of his nose. I was a military veteran and a medical student with a little experience in such things. Without much thinking, I said, “Well, buddy, that man is dead…”
My boys had never seen a dead man before. They felt this warranted a closer look. For my part, I was vexed.
All the nearby businesses had long since been abandoned. We couldn’t afford a cell phone. I wasn’t sure what the protocol might be when one serendipitously stumbles upon a corpse in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Just as I was beginning to feel burdened by the gravitas of the moment, a squad car drove up. A cop got out, walked over to the dead man, and prodded him with his boot. Turning to his partner, he said, “Yep, call the meat wagon.”
Denouement
That really was a wonderful trip. We took in the World War II Museum, the French Quarter, and the zoo. We ate some delightful food and enjoyed a lovely weekend of fellowship and togetherness, nothing of which my kids recall today. What they will remember until the very end of time was the dead hobo they discovered chillin’ in the Big Easy.
