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"Miracle at the Spotted Cat" "Why did you come back and stay?" someone asks me. I say, "Good question." "We are al sitting around talking aout how after two and a half years, a lot is not going well, when we notice an ancient man in the doorway. He looks ninety, easy, in a suit, a tie, mirror sunglasses, a vest, a bowler. His shoes are sharp pointed as his chin. The music : eight men---a bass, two guitars, a trombone, a clarinet, a cornet, an alto, a washboard. They are called "The Palmetto Bug Stompers." They do funky swing jazz,not Dixieland--dizzying. You could about park a car in this place--a sedan,not a wagon. It's the Spotted Cat, on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans, in January, 2008, or as we count time here, thirty months after the storm, two weeks to Carnival. On the walls, paintings R. Crumb would have made if he lived in New Orleans and went through a blue period. Signs say MINIMUM ONE DRINK PER PERSON PER SET. In front of the band, a little box for the THANK YOU can, and a stack of CD's. I am sitting with old friends next to a Japanese couple we just met--first time in the U.S. The boy has burnished bronze dreads, the girl wears a night out dress: jersey wrap with a slinky sash. They want to know if New Orleans is back. The patient is still on the table, we say. When crime rises and rises, when redevelopment plans fall through, when we ride down old streets and see sign after sign, FOR SALE FOR SALE FOR SALE, when the few politicians we trusted confess to bribery, when we realize how many have given up on coming home, we ask ourselves why we didn't go, too. Many people would like to dance but no one is. The place is full of the yearning to dance and the music.... THE OXFORD AMERICAN, ISSUE 62, SUMMER 2008 "NEW ORLEANS AND THE GULF COAST: THREE YEARS AFTER IN THEIR OWN WORDS" |
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