Taiwan 2024 - Northeast Coast, Rustic Signage / My First Experience in New Orleans

This being the old part of the town, and tourist-oriented, a lot of the signs and shops had a rustic look.  The first picture in the second column features the same building that was posted a few days ago in this series.

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As related in a recent post, I've been spending more of my retirement time re-reading some of the books in our library, the latest of which is a biography of Charles Schulz.  I really like anything that details the creative process.  In relating the history of the Peanuts comic strip and the influences that impacted "Sparky" in his formative years, David Michaelis cited George Herriman's Krazy Kat strip.  This sent me down the rabbit hole of exploring Herriman and his history in Wikipedia, where I learned that he was born and spent his early youth in New Orleans.  Upon reading this I found myself awash in nostalgia.

Why am I nostalgic about the city of New Orleans?  As it turns out, I do have a little bit of history there:

My first experience was when my brother Bob was in college.  As an undergraduate he attended Tulane University, ultimately earning a degree in electrical engineering (as did our father, and our grandfather, and our son as well to make the fourth generation EE in the family).  During his freshman year the whole family would pile into our station wagon, driving over from Orange to visit Bob and enjoy the sights and sounds of the Big Easy.  As an 11-year-old I thought it was great fun to be on a big college campus, and sought opportunities to explore the place by myself, which I actually got to do once or twice.  I remember his dorm building and room (he lived on the 2nd or 3rd floor), and the huge stereo system they had that very, very loudly played Lucky Man by Emerson, Lake and Palmer.  Bob grew familiar with the good restaurants along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain and I ate turtle soup there for the first time.  It was all such an adventure.

Mom and Dad went there sometimes on their own, and as a family we visited several more times during Bob's time there at Tulane.  Occasionally he would come home to Orange for a visit.  Bob liked fast cars, so showed up once in his orange AMX 390, which was a beaut.  I've always been uncomfortable in fast cars, though, so didn't enjoy riding in it.

One time during a visit with Bob the family stayed in a huge, four-story mansion on St Charles Street, riding the street car to get here and there.  We had to dress up on our last night there, so don't know if it was for graduation or another occasion.

So that sums up the first chapter of my time in New Orleans.  Two more to go...to be posted tomorrow and the next day.