Dear Friends,

Life on track sometimes goes off the rails. By my junior year at Da J -- apparently an appellation alumni abhor -- I had invitation letters from colleges of which any Christ Church parent would be proud. That summer, the family shared in the peculiar and particular rite of passage called college tours. We visited Columbia, Princeton, and Yale. At the last moment, Uncle decided I needed a contingency plan, so we toured the University of Chicago in August.

The flight to Newark was my first flight after the 9/11 attacks. It was eerie knowing Flight 93 departed one of those gates less than a year earlier. Grandfather ‘51 was alive then and took us to the train. He knew it well and helped us find our connection to the Dinky. It was aboard that one car train that I spoke with a man I shared a brown back bench seat. His appearance was more memorable than our conversation. His hair was silver and stringy. He had huge fava bean shaped ears and sunken eyes. He was wearing discordantly candy apple red tennis shoes, jeans, and an unsanctioned blue tartan button up that might have been a Cambridge Classics from Mervyn’s.

The Dinky rode smoothly, far more so than the single railcars on which I was raised. Its tinted windows were soulless and immovable. All air in the car was artificial and smelled and even tasted of machines. The world from the windows was distant and theatrical. It did not seem real. To peer outward was to look, as in Paul’s words, through an opaque and dark glass. This diminutive dinky, like the other trains of the Northeast, was efficient, cold, and industrial. It was everything a New Orleans streetcar is not.

Grandfather was quite excited when we disembarked. “Do you have any idea who that was, TulaneLSU?”

“Who?” I was not asking for the identity of the man with whom I had just spoken. That conversation was so prosaic that I had already forgotten it. My question of response was really asking, “Of all the people around us, about whom are you speaking?”

“John Nash, the Nobel laureate and subject of the movie A Beautiful Mind. He was at the Graduate School when I was here.”

Had I known, I would have asked him about a Mandelbrot-based set on which I was working to describe the meanders in the Mississippi River. It was a lost opportunity.

Princeton was a lovely college town, perhaps the archetype of the college town. Its slate sidewalks are made from pieces far larger than those employed in the French Quarter. The only thing comparable were the occasional privately financed slabs on which you walk through portions of the Garden District. Princeton’s slate is too large to make walking comfortable. To avoid the cracks, I found myself taking huge steps or patterings of tiny steps. Either way, walking in a symmetric and handsome way was impossible in Princeton.

I knew of the town and university in the works of F. Scott. His words about its imbibed excesses and eating clubs painted a picture of a Presbyterian Babylon. I saw nothing of the sort in reality. Its ivy and masonry did nothing to unbind the Machiavelli latent in me. It was not the type of place that can satisfy the soul, at least one raised on New Orleans. Even though I knew it would break Grandfather’s heart, I could not sacrifice four years in such a place.

We took another train to New York City. It is one of the few cities outside New Orleans I can tolerate. Paris, Prague, Vienna, D.C., and Grand Rapids are others I can quickly recall. Although Uncle wanted to get a limo to the Upper West Side, he eventually deferred to Grandfather, whose love of the rails I carry forward today.

The first thing any observant first time visitor of Columbia University notices are the red bricks. Whoever built Columbia thought bricks should line and form every sidewalk. What a fateful miscalculation.

It was around 1998 that I was rushing down Dumaine. The previous day I used the last of father’s Central Grocery muffuletta mix. He was out of town, but was returning that night. The last time I did not replenish the muffuletta mix he was so enraged he tossed a fork across the room, breaking the glass of our grandfather clock. That pane is to this day blemished.

I took the streetcar as soon as school finished and hurried. I made good time down Royal before making the right. My feet barely brushed the ground, like they do as I rush for the clearance at Walmart or Dillard’s the week after Christmas. Man, however, is a terrestrial being, and I learned quickly that my impatience cost me far more time than it could save. Gravity’s ally that day was a malaligned Laurel brick. Its arris grabbed the tip of my toe and I fell to the ground.

Standing, I tried to return to my previous pace only to find that it was not possible. I tried one step, but the pain was so piercing I fell back to the same treacherous bricks that beguiled and grabbed me. An ambulance took me to Tulane Hospital where I was diagnosed with a broken ankle.

Father actually did not return that evening. My hurrying was for naught. Months of rehab later, I was able again to walk and run. My jumping, however, was forever diminished. The injury effectively ended my budding volleyball career. Since then, I have kept a grudge against bricks as a sidewalk material. My Columbia tour was over the moment I stepped onto campus.

The rest of the afternoon, we toured the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Riverside Church, and Union Theological Seminary. My favorite American ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr, taught at the latter. By the time I was there, not an academic worthy of mention was present. The Seminary was at that time and is today a shell of its former self, its prestige and influence withered as it succumbed to the temptation of liberalism while mainstream America fell under the power of the entertainment industry.

This post was edited on 2/16/20 at 8:49 pm