Thoughts On: New Orleans

[This comes from a 3rd-person narrative written by Emmilou Collins Edmonds Adams. Portions in brackets [] were added for clarification.]

Watching the news now about the havoc that Hurricane Katrina [August 2005] made of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans in particular just breaks my heart.
 
My mind cannot comprehend what has really occurred. I have no doubt that in time it will be rebuilt if the Lord does not return first, but I do not think it will be in my lifetime as I am almost 84 years old.
 
This has prompted me to write what few memories I have of New Orleans.
 
Strange as it may seem, I remember having a dream as a child of going to New Orleans in a boat (from Denver?). That is all I remember of the dream and I have remembered very few dreams through the years. I really cannot imagine how I had even heard of New Orleans at that time.
 
My first real connection to New Orleans came in 1943. I had just finished college and was not yet working. Lee had just been commissioned in the USNR and was to be stationed in Raleigh, North Carolina, for three months. I wanted to make a trip to see him. With much reluctance, Mother and Daddy agreed for me to go.
 
We were living in Waco at that time. I went to Houston for a few days which I spent at Uncle Ray’s. I interviewed with Humble Oil Company (to become Esso and then Exxon). The headquarters were in Houston, but the jobs in labs were in Baytown. So I also made a trip there and was interviewed and hired to begin work in September.
 
My agenda for the trip to Raleigh was by train, Houston to New Orleans, New Orleans to Greensborough, North Carolina, change there for Raleigh. It was impossible at that time to get sleeping car reservations. I had seat reservations for the train from New Orleans to Greensborough, but that was all. In the mean time I had to spend the night in New Orleans. Daddy had tried to get me a hotel reservation there but was unable to.
 
I had share a seat with a lady (perhaps ten years older than me) who was in somewhat the same boat. We teamed up and after many phone call were able to get a room we could share in a hotel in the French Quarter. I remember that after checking in, we went out to find a place to get something to eat. And I had shrimp Creole. Next morning we parted ways because she was going a different way, even from a different station.
 
When Lee O [was] back in the States following VJ Day, he was to report to New Orleans for reassignment. By that time we had been married a year, most of it spent apart. I went with him to New Orleans. He expected to be there a few days at least so we spent the day in a rental car trying to find a place to live instead of sightseeing. We did eat at one of the famous restaurants, Antoine’s. We finally found a room in someone’s house. Lee reported in next day and was immediately sent to San Francisco so we spent only one or two nights in that room. When he had orders for discharge a few months later, he had to return to New Orleans, but I did not go with him at that time.
 
I did not return to New Orleans until many, many years later. On one of the trips which Charles and I took with our Young Heart group with our church we went to Disney World [and stopped in New Orleans].