Taiwan 2024 - Northeast Coast, Brickman Playing Checkers / My Third Experience in New Orleans

It's pretty easy to tell that this cement brickwork was assembled from three pieces.  Still very well done, and one can picture our soon-to-be son-in-law engaging in a real game with the guy.

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Nick moved back to Houston in high school, so how did I end up in New Orleans again?  After moving down to the Houston area, during the first year of our marriage, it entered my head one day that it would be a good idea to get into our new little Toyota Corolla station wagon and just drive over there to have some fun.  So Chenjean and I packed up, hit I-10 and pointed east one morning, making the drive in about seven hours. The plan was to find a hotel in town to stay for a few nights...sounds easy, right?  Well, what didn't end up in my calculations for the trip was that it was February, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MARDI GRAS SEASON!!  Not a hotel anywhere within ten miles of downtown.  Our fun little trip began with great frustration over this, until I had an idea.  Why not go to Gretna, where Nick used to live?  As stated in yesterday's post, Gretna is some distance from downtown, so a room there probably would be easier to find.  We again headed east on I-10.

Then something extraordinary happened.  We'd driven a few miles, going along at 55-60 miles per hour (highway speed limit in those days was 55), when an older black guy pulled up in the lane next to us.  He acted like he wanted to talk, so Chenjean rolled down her passenger window.  He then yelled to us over the wind and traffic that it looked like we were lost, so where did we want to go?  I yelled back that we were going to Gretna.  He yelled back, "OK, follow me!"  So we moved over to his lane to get behind him, and followed for a few miles.  Upon our approach to the exit for Highway 90 he held his left arm high outside his driver's side window, pointing to the right over the top of his car indicating that we needed to exit that way.  I flashed my lights in thanks, and we went our separate ways.  We found a room right away in Gretna.

I shall never forget that stranger and his kindness to someone on the highway he didn't even know, perceiving that we were unfamiliar with the area.  It warms my heart to this day every time I think about it.  It's the little things in life, right?

Chenjean and I did end up going back into town that day.  After checking into the hotel we drove back downtown and watched one of the last parades of the season, returning well after dark.  A little culture lesson for her, being still relatively fresh in this country, and a trip down memory lane for me, as it was in the French Quarter where my friends and I had the run of the place years before.