I don’t know much about football, but I do know this: the Chicago Bears are playing the New Orleans Saints later today.
The Quarter was joyous.
I’m kind of a Saints fan. My appreciation for that team started during a 2007 vacation. Mike and I happened to have been in New Orleans 14 years ago on the weekend the Saints beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a playoff game, and before, during, and after the game, the sidewalks in the French Quarter were packed. People were singing in the streets. Makeshift parades rolled down Toulouse, Royal and Rampart Street. In Jackson Square, street musicians played “When the Saints Go Marching In” over and over. And over and over. And over.
It wasn’t Mardi Gras. It was football.
The win that day meant the Saints would head to Soldier Field the next week for the NFC championship game against the Bears. “It’s just like old times,” our bartender laughed. She meant, of course, that it was the way things were before Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane had hit over a year before, but People down there still referred to the disaster in everyday conversation. B.K. and P.K. Before Katrina, Post-Katrina.
I asked the bartender how her life had changed since the hurricane. She used to tend bar Uptown, she said. That place is still closed. But she felt lucky. She only had to leave town for a month after the levee failure. And when she got back, her landlord didn’t raise her rent.
When we visited our favorite jewelry store in New Orleans, the owner told us her house had flooded, she and her kids had to move into her sister’s place in New York, and her marriage ended up in divorce. Her employees had scattered to places like Arizona and North Carolina. They weren’t coming back.
And yet, she said she felt lucky. When she and her children returned to New Orleans in October, her old landlord said it’d be okay to rent her store space month to month. See how business goes before committing to staying. She confessed she wasn’t a football fan, but she was glad the Saints were winning. People were coming into her store. And they were happy. Buying things. And during her exile in New York, her kids went to private school. They got free tuition. “You know, because we were Katrina refugees!”
At our favorite bookstore (not exactly a hangout for football fans) the guy at the counter said business was up. There was a buzz in town. He hadn’t seen it like this since B.K. Before Katrina. “Go Saints!” he called out to us as we picked up our bag of books and headed outside.
That playoff win wasn’t enough to make the people of New Orleans forget the empty storefronts. The boarded-up buildings. The desolate, abandoned 9th ward. The friends who have left. Or have died.
But for one day, in New Orleans, the sun was shining, the streets were full, and things were looking up. Everybody felt lucky to be there – including Mike and me.
When we returned later that week to our Printers Row neighborhood here in Chicago, I told our Hackney’s bartender the reasons I’d be backing the Saints in the upcoming game against the Bears. Things have been so horrible down there, I said. New Orleans needed something to cheer about.
“Oh, brother, Screw that!” he said. Actually, he used more colorful language. And then he went on. “I am so sick of that, the whole country backing the Saints because of that hurricane,” he said in disgust. “C’mon, Beth, How about Chicago? We had a fire!”
I had to laugh.
This year is the 150th anniversary of that Great Chicago Fire. And this year, every city with a NFL football team has fans looking at empty storefronts, boarded-up buildings, desolate and abandoned neighborhoods. All have friends who have left. Or have died. So who to root for in 2021?
All of us.
A long time ago Billy Ohde and I had good seats for Bears games but they were adjacent to seats that were ordinarily reserved for busloads of the opposing teams’ fans. We loved when the Saints played at Soldier Field. Their fans would parade in like a second line, singing, all dressed sparkly and looking pretty. They could even carry their pretty sun umbrellas! Ah, the 1980’s!
A great story, well told.
Thanks
We are the lucky ones. All of us. We made it across the finish line of 2020, even though the first week of January felt like overtime for some of us! Still, we’re here, we’re still standing.
Driving through Minneapolis over the summer and beyond, seeing the burnt out Target or the boarded up ruins with chain link around ’em, it was easy to get sad or scared. Change is always hard but sudden, violent change is jarring.
Still… just past the chain link was a line of volunteers I was headed for. Behind them were mountains of groceries, supplies, and essentials for the survivors of the discontent. All year long I’ve kept my eyes on those lines and the people they exist for.
So let’s celebrate the victories, in spite of the defeats. A moment of horror delivers a movement of rage, but as the dawn breaks there is a memorial, and kindness, and now a garden grows on Chicago Ave, Minneapolis.
We’ll rise too, like the flowers watered by tears. We’ll dance in the sun, open our petals and pulses to the sky and remind the universe that we’re still here. And the churches and parking lots will once again overflow, this time with mobile testing sites and vaccination tents. But in the end we’ll have each other to lean on, when all the levees break.
So yeah, Chicago burned; Minneapolis rioted, The Big Easy drowned, and not even Capitol Hill is sacred. Check for survivors, do what you can, and know with every breath you’re one of the lucky ones too.
Just ready to sit down to watch the game and read this blog. (Big Smile) memories of that time. The city was In Mourning but when the Saints won the Super Bowl, We felt some normalcy and resiliency!! We were going to be ok
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