Thank You Notes......

This 'thank you' ran in our local paper Thanksgiving day. It was written by a displaced New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter who spent some time in our fair city.

It was sweet -- I think. It was complimentary -- for the most part. It was a nice gesture -- at least I'm pretty sure it was intended as such.... ;)

You might need to be a local to appreciate/understand it, but I think the general intent will come through. ....All joking aside, it was appreciated.


Thanks again to Baton Rouge
Red Stick love
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Dave Walker

Thank you, Baton Rouge.

In our time of meteorological crisis, you took us in and made us feel if not wholly at home, then reasonably comfortable in a home-away-from-home -- right down the very congested road from home-home, such as it is.


Some of us now know every single tree between here and there. Too well.

We know it wasn't easy for you.

We know we overloaded your schools overnight.

We know we gave some of you future tax headaches by panic-buying your suddenly overpriced homes.

We know we pushed the line at Chili's out the door and into the parking lot. (And is that Mike Brown moving to the front of the line? Hey, no cuts, FEMA Boy!)

Sorry about Tom Benson's post-game deportment. Won't happen again.

. . . . . . .

Thank you, Baton Rouge, for posting street signs way ahead of all of your major intersections. Given the way your streets change names every few blocks, the pre-emptive signage is a very gracious gesture.

Thanks for not laughing at us when we called to ask if you had any (motel, apartment, trailer park, campground, youth hostel, retirement home) vacancies. At least not every time.

Thanks for the overwhelming generosity you demonstrated by making room for our kids in your day-care centers and schools. Also your jails.

Thanks for Louisiana Public Broadcasting, which proved a safe harbor for WWL-Channel 4's news team, and still provides comfort and aid to WWOZ FM-90.7 and programming for both of our PBS affiliates.

Thank you for quickly re- stocking rubber gloves and bleach when we bought them out.

Thanks for having the Super Wal-Mart manager call us to see if we were OK when we missed a day.

Thanks for letting us poach your wi-fi, especially early on, when those satellite photos of floodwater depths first started popping up on the Web.

Thanks for so efficiently refilling all of those Xanax prescriptions.

Thanks for having restaurants with parking lots.

. . . . . . .

Thanks for letting us discover the differences between our cities, the things that make them so different, yet so similar; the things that make us siblings joined by a river, an interstate and a deep appreciation of fried food.

We noticed, for example, that your city has Jimmy Swaggart. Our city is where Jimmy Swaggart comes to party.

Your city has the Louisiana Legislature. Never mind about our city's political bodies.

Aside from sports bars, commerce in your city pretty much takes a break during Louisiana State University football games. Our city takes a break from everything for three weeks every Mardi Gras, two weeks every Jazzfest and pretty much every Friday afternoon.

Your city embraces chain restaurants. Our city embraces slow food.

Your city has weird Sunday drinking laws, which we never quite figured out. Thanks to the Saints, brunch and because it is a day that ends in "y," Sunday is one of our city's favorite drinking days.

Many of your businesses close on Sunday. Many of our businesses are closed forever.

Huey P. Long's grave is a tourist attraction in your city. People cross the Huey P. Long Bridge to come to our city to visit the graves of Louis Prima, Ernie K-Doe and Marie Laveau.

The hippest sector of your town is located beneath an I-10 overpass. The people who populated the hippest sectors of our town are now populating Houston and Atlanta.

Thanks for not being Houston and Atlanta.

. . . . . . .

Thanks for the Cathouse, Havana House of Cigars, Albasha, Rama and Superior Grill.

Thanks for your many glorious and bounteous Chinese buffets.

Thanks for Poor Boy Lloyd's fried catfish on Friday night.

Thanks for the Hallelujah Crab at Juban's, for the day the FEMA check arrived.

Thanks for Raising Cane's.

Thanks for not having too many too-hip joints, which make us feel fat and old.

. . . . . . .

And left-turn signals! Thanks for left-turn signals!

. . . . . . .

Many of us found your city's obsession with college sports kind of quaint, but at least your sports obsessions are occasionally requited by success, so thanks for making your colorful Tigerwear so prominently available in every possible retail setting.

. . . . . . .

Thanks for looking so sympathetic when we wore our Saints stuff.

Thanks for helping us avoid temptation by renovating your most popular golf course while we were in town.

Thanks for Smiley Anders.

Thanks for giving some of our most important cultural institutions -- Magazine Street boutiques, the Saints, Galatoire's -- emergency second homes.

Thanks for letting us wander around in a daze. Sorry if we sometimes did that behind the wheel of a car.

Thanks for letting us grieve, frequently in public, for our former lives.

Thanks for opening your convention center to our emergency evacuees, even if their presence freaked you out at first.

Thanks for letting us ask, every day, "What day is it?"

Thanks for not getting too upset when we swamped your cell phone airwaves. We would've called to thank you sooner, but we couldn't get a signal.

. . . . . . .

When our shore teemed, you opened your golden door to our tempest-tossed. Thanks for taking our tired, our poor, our news reporters, editors, producers and anchors.

. . . . . . .

"The only excursion in my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge," says New Orleanian Ignatius J. Reilly, in "A Confederacy of Dunces."

The journey -- there by bus, back by cab -- left him "broken physically, mentally, and spiritually."

He continued, "New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive."

Though we can totally relate to what he says about the drive, few of us share Reilly's enmity for your city.

Certainly none of us who survived the past three months only by your grace and hospitality and kindness share his view.

And your left-turn signals.

Thanks, Baton Rouge. It would be great if everyone in your city would join us the next time Mardi Gras comes around.

You may have to drive home to find a place to stay, but the invitation stands.

. . . . . . .

Staff writer Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3429.