Bourbon Street

They call it Bourbon Street for a reason.

The first day we hit New Orleans we went to Bourbon Street to pass the evening.  The French Quarter, home of Mardi Gras, and that weekend, the Irish-Italian American Parade.

How many Irish-Italian-Americans can there be in New Orleans, you ask?  Enough for a parade.

The French Quarter is Athens, OH for grown-ups.  Regardless of how old you are, it’s still socially acceptable to get pass-out drunk.

Before we set out, we put a number of beers in our pockets in order to avoid paying French Quarter prices.  I didn’t quite understand how that would work, but as I’m in no position to pass up a pocket beer, I complied.

We rode a streetcar, sadly not named Desire, down to the French Quarter.  The homes we passed were immaculate.

We stepped off the trolley, sorry – streetcar, and Cook said, “Let’s open a beer”.  So we did.

It’s unbelievable, there are no open container laws.  We walked around the French Quarter, an historic part of the world, and drank warm, cheap beer.  That’s living.

We saw all of the sites.  Why go to a bar for another beer?  Why not just stop at a convenience store, pick up a couple and keep walking?

Much better idea.

We did stop at a few cool bars.  We heard some live music at Checkpoint Charlies.  We bought Beignets at Cafe du Monde.  Cook showed us one of the coolest houses I’ve ever seen.

He said he was going to buy it some day.  I asked if we could lease one of the rooms.  He said yes.  I was serious.

As we were walking back to the streetcar at about 11:30 we passed a kid lying on the sidewalk, asleep or unconscious or something.

We kept walking.  You can’t stop for every vagabond lying in the middle of the sidewalk, can you?

Actually, yes you can.

We got to the next intersection and I stopped.  We need to go back.

We’ll miss the last streetcar if we go back.  It’s OK, if we have to we’ll pay for a cab, we need to go back.

We walked back and still no one had stopped to help him.

I bent down and tried to rouse him with no response.  His pulse was strong, he was breathing but it was erratic.

Chances are he was just drunk.  Going to the hospital or jail sucks, so we kept trying to rouse him.

Just as we were getting ready to call the ambulance, he opened his eyes.

I had balled up my coat and put it under his head.  He started to drift back off.

You can’t fall asleep on my coat!  Wake Up!

Wake up!  If you don’t get up, I’ve got to call an ambulance and that’s not going to end anywhere good for you.  You want to go to jail!?  You want to go to the hospital!?  WAKE UP!

He was in and out.  Finally, he was in.  Another guy was nice enough to stop and we dragged him to his feet.

We kept working with him, holding him up, trying to keep him awake.

I really didn’t want to send this kid to the hospital and jail.  But he couldn’t hold more than 20 pounds of his own weight.

After a few minutes it was clear that he wasn’t going to be able to stand on his own any time soon, and he could have dangerous levels of alcohol in his body. 

We couldn’t get enough information out of him to figure out where his friends, or whoever, were.

So we called an ambulance.

We tried to keep him awake and moving while we waited for the squad to come.

Though he was completely incoherent, we did gather was that he was 20 and he came to New Orleans from Texas with friends for the night.  God knows where they were.  He said he hadn’t taken anything besides booze.  I believe him.

He had the coolest name I’ve ever heard.  Ace.  Apparently you can name a kid that in Texas.

When the ambulance came he couldn’t walk, so we carried him over to the paramedics.

I thanked J.M., the only other guy on the street who bothered to help.  We smoked a cigarette.

We missed the streetcar, and paid for a cab back to Cook’s place.

How long would that guy have laid there if we hadn’t stopped?  Would he have died of alcohol poisoning?  Would he have been robbed hours later, stabbed on the streets of New Orleans at 3 a.m.?  He was alone, and cold, and in trouble.  No one stopped.

How many people passed that kid who self-apply the label Christian?  How many people who regularly go to church must have passed him lying in the gutter and decided to ignore him?

Statistics indicate that the answer is at least a few.

But I can’t blame them.

We barely went back, and we pretend like helping people is our life’s purpose.

But seriously, he could have been dead.  A man was lying in the middle of the sidewalk on a street busy with pedestrians.  A man who couldn’t be woken up was lying in the middle of the sidewalk, and no one was concerned?

In all likelihood, if we hadn’t stopped his wallet would have been taken and for the next 36 hours he would have been nauseas, vomiting and miserable.

When we stopped, his wallet was probably already gone and for the next 36 hours he was nauseas, vomiting and miserable anyway.

Hopefully we did more than just send the kid to the hospital, followed by a stack of paperwork, a court date and some fines.

We’ll never know what happened to Ace, and I really can’t blame anyone else for not stopping.

As a result of Ace’s poor decisions, he ended up in the hospital and we ended up laying out $15 for a cab.  That’s all I know.

But in the process we cared.  In the process, maybe somebody didn’t die.  Maybe someone who saw us there that night will stop the next time.

I also met a guy named J.M. who, as far as I know, was the only other guy in that city who had the bullocks to stop.

The cab driver on the ride home was an immigrant from Egypt.

I asked him what he would do if he could do anything.  He said he’d drive a cab.

I don’t know if he really understood the question, but I think he did.  It made me think.

This guy is happy driving a cab, if he could do anything, it’s this.  That’s a beautiful thing.

As we walked back into Cook’s house and turned on the television, it made me think, if I could do anything would it be this?

Taking pocket beers on the streetcar, touring history, helping kids without sense out of the gutter, talking to cab drivers and closing the night watching television and drinking one last beer with two of my best friends?

I’ll foot the bill for that guy’s cab any day.

Comments

every day is bourbon st. in prague. think an entire city with no open container laws prostitution legal and pot is openly smoked. beautiful buildings and crazy bars underground.  all of this with very little crime.

a mecca and an example for the rest of the world?

sure glad somebodyhad the bullocks to stay home and become an ambulance driver

Beers in pockets = sneakers, dont you remember Rambo, Brad. Also that kid reminds me of myself during bar crawl. Only my great friends didnt leave me. Thanks Brad and Melissa

Sneakers… haha, that was a fun night.