re: NOLA: The First 300 Years

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Then the low life, non-desireables start showing up

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on dirt bikes

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Them Sicilians are very much part of the New Orleans history as well.

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When y'all weren't lynching us.

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NOLA is that neighborhood that was so nice for the longest time. Great people. Great comradery. Beautiful homes. Everyone loves to go visit. But time eventually took its toll and all the houses started falling apart. Land value started decreasing because no one cleaned it up.

Then the low life, non-desireables start showing up and won’t leave. Then their friends show up one day to sleep on their couch and doesn’t leave.

Now they’re like rats and start multiplying and the neighborhood gets worse and the eventual complete transformation into the ghetto trailer park is complete.

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Two of my SC cousins moved to Texas, two brothers, both Duke grads ... both ended up in the oil business in the 70s.

One is still in Dallas, the other moved to NOLA (still in the oil business, both of them at the time) and lived there since the late 80s.

He passed some months ago. He had named me the Executor of his Estate thus causing me to spend some time in NOLA and Baton Rouge over the course of the past 16 months. I had been there in HS, a couple of times in college, quite a few times since for business or to visit my cousin or a fraternal convention, or to help after Katrina and, as stated, to settle Rick's Estate several times here recently.

NOLA had it's issues in the 60s and 70s. I was at the Mardi Gras when Al Hurt took the brick bat to his lip in the parade. There were a lot of problems plaguing the city even then ... but you could visit most neighborhoods and City Park without worries.

I have witnessed, as an outsider, the slow deterioration of NOLA much like seeing relatives' kids once or twice a year ... it's like a time lapsed snapshot in my mind over the course of the past 60 years.

Rick loved his first few decades there ... he learned to live with it but it took a really bad turn with Katrina in his opinion. Some of his friends and he referred-to Katrina as the great flushing. He lived downtown, Third St in the Garden District .... it is insane how much we got for his house. Insane. The oil business was very good to him but ... I walked away from it all wondering why the people who bought his house (I assume it was "people" ... it was a property mgt LLC) would pay that much for his house down there given what is happening all around them.

Boggles my mind.

And then I saw this documentary yesterday and it reinforced the history and charm aspect yet, it was a gross misrepresentation of the actual reality.

And that's a shame in all honesty.

All the other influences referenced, French, Italians, Germans, Spanish, et al ... the architectural influence is still there. The planning influence is still there.

The cultural influence, the social governing influence, the sheer ethical and moral influence ... all gone.

Well, then again, in the past century perhaps the ethical and moral influences are still there ... perhaps that's what I missed from the first 300 years is that negative influence, like no other in the South, from 1923 forward (or in the case of the documentary, 1917 forward).

Today I wonder if there is any hope for NOLA to return to its greatness but I think two things are working against it .... mother nature and human nature.

Am I wrong?

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Them Sicilians are very much part of the New Orleans history as well.


When y'all weren't lynching us.

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Teedy and the city apologized to us!

New Orleans also has it's own laws regarding real estate that are shared no where else in the State of Louisiana.

Kind of crazy when you think about it.

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When y'all weren't lynching us.

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Wut? I lynched Sicilians?