I’m jazzed I’m here – New Orleans / 2
Posted by nickmarco on June 3, 2008
Taking off from Washington it’s always touching. From the Reagan National Airport you can see all the monuments and the Pentagon and the green stretch over the city.
I stayed attached to the window as always, till the clouds hid the scenery below. Then, I started reading again the “Letters from New Orleans” by Rob Walker, I just missed the last few pages. I was reading the letter about “St. James Infirmary”, a song with a odd story I’ll write about later.
Then Beatles’ Help! in the iPod, I just had the time to listen the album and the plane started going down in the swamp. It went along a street that runs suspended on the marsh, green like the moss and brown like water, stretching as far as the eye can see.
It looked as if we were landing into it when we got to the New Orleans Airport, the Louis Armstrong International Airport. “Welcome to New Orleans, we’re jazzed you are here!” it’s written on the yellow-blue signs. “Thanks – I thought – I’m jazzed to be here too!”.
I found the shuttle I already paid and would take me to the hotel. But I hadn’t print the voucher, so it was necessary to call the company and ask them to fax it. I asked the lady at the front desk to do it for me and she kindly accepted. “It will take half an hour; I’m sorry, you can go to the bathroom or take something to drink if you want…”. I went to get a copy of the local newspaper instead, The Times Picayune, because you can understand many things from a local newspaper, and above all I was looking for obituaries.
My expectation were just in part frustrated: it had two page and a half of obituaries (as many as the following days), and each one had its own photo, and I read them all looking for at least one jazz funeral. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any, I would satisfy myself with “live” music…
In the meantime, we had a good laugh with the lady of the shuttle company and another worker of the airport, who randomly mangled my name.
I had read almost all the newspaper and I had been there for about a hour when finally I got my ticket. The waiting was not that weight anyway. It was raining on the street to the town and it was going to rain all night long.
