Our big streetcar trip up St. Charles Ave. was aborted midway through, due to a 7-alarm fire that consumed a historic home in the Garden District. No one was injured, and anyway that wasn’t the biggest crisis that afflicted Carol and I at the start of our New Orleans adventure. At a French Quarter eatery just after our arrival in the city, I was served what was the first in what would become a Homeric odyssey of po boys over the next three days. But the “French bread” – within which my shrimp lay defenseless for my impending masticating assault  – was soft! And spongy! With the interior texture of marshmallow! And not French bread at all! It was a lese majeste of gargantuan proportions.

If there was any doubt I was back in the city where I grew up but as a hayseed tourist this time, it was made clear in my very first steps onto Bourbon St.

   “I can tell you where you got your shoes,” a tall, African American man said walking straight up to me. Still possessing the sting of having lost $10 on this scam some thirty years ago on a Mardi Gras visit to New Orleans, I was ready for it this time.

It’s not overstating it to suggest a visit to New Orleans is a great tune up for an extended trip to Europe. Parts of the city come closest to the look and feel of Europe that no other city in the United States can muster. New Orleans is unique, I think, among American cities in that way. European cities of comparable size all seem to come with a charm, grace, pace and architectural beauty that is at once nostalgically Old World, yet eminently livable by every modern measure. European cities are as much playground as centers of commerce. They clang, ring, chime and clatter. Cafes spill cheerful patrons onto sidewalks and along cobbled squares. They effuse joie de vie, gemütlichkeit and la bella vita. They invite walking, if not pure wandering.

  For our first Valentine’s Day together, Carol suggested filet mignon and a movie at home. “The restaurants here are all crazy on Valentine’s,” she explained. I’m blessed her idea of crazy matches mine, especially when it comes to dining. It will, though, be my first Valentine’s Day lacking any exuberant panache or over-the-top flair.

Back in the early 1970s, at the height of my self-delusion of single handedly saving the world, I applied to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH. I remember writing the required biographical essay in language so flowery that I had to water it before sealing it in the envelope. So filled with myself at the time I might have included a photo of me in leotards and a cape. I never heard back from Antioch, not even a form rejection letter. I think it was the cape, though it might have been the leotards

   Turns out I had timed our January arrival in Chicago via Amtrak’s Southwest Chief to coincide with the delivery of the Arctic Circle’s Polar Vortex. I say “turns out” because planning the trip had nothing to do with advance weather forecasts. Even if it had, I would not have been put off by any climate effects emerging from something that sounded like a new thrill ride on the city’s Navy Pier, or a new constellation of planetary alignment revealing itself for the first time in Chicago’s night sky. In this I would soon become much enlightened.

   It was sweet by comparison to hear “Grandpa!” as a stand-alone greeting coming from a squeally voice, instead of following a string of expletives out of a swerving monster truck on the I-5.

   The purpose for Carol and I traveling to Chicago in January was to meet and babysit for my side of the generational issue of grandchildren. The run-up to Carol’s meeting of Harper, 7, and Juno, 3 1/2, was upbeat. “She sounds nice,” Harper had told my daughter. This was to me anyway, in sharp contrast to this exchange with Juno on my previous visit at Thanksgiving:

Me: Did you have fun with Grandpa?

Juno: No.

Me: Are you sad Grandpa is leaving?

Juno: No.

Me: But you’re going to miss Grandpa, right?

Juno: No.

This train don’t carry no con men, this train;
This train don’t carry no con men, this train;
This train don’t carry no con men,
No wheeler dealers, here and gone men,
This train don’t carry no con men, this train.

                                              — Woody Guthrie

   Carol and I were enjoying an afternoon of profound joy and utter dissipation on our third and final day aboard Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, when my idle mind wandered into the devil’s workshop that belonged to the new CEO of the nation’s one and only long distance passenger rail service. Seems the same kind of cost-cutting mentality that would reduce the cost of a face by cutting off the nose has invaded the executive halls of Amtrak. Get this:

This train is bound for glory, this train.
This train is bound for glory, this train.
This train is bound for glory,
Don’t carry nothing but the righteous and the holy.
This train is bound for glory, this train.

                                         –Woody Guthrie

    There’s two ways to look at the climate change issue from the observation car of a long-distance train:

1)    The planet is just too big for one species to destroy it on its own.

2)    What a horrible species we are to be able to destroy a planet this big all on our own.

   Fortunately, Carol and I were simply enjoying ourselves too much as we awoke to day 2 of our excursion from L.A. to Chicago to consider the prospects of global warming. Except maybe to smugly contemplate the smaller carbon footprint we were impressioning on the earth compared to planes and automobiles. We had bigger fish to fry, ecologically speaking.

   Happy Hour began the moment Carol and I located our berth, unpacked what we’d need for the night from our bags and turned the luggage over to a steward for stowing below. Our initial gales of laughter were less from the wine than from discovering the dimensions of our “bedroom” accommodations. Opposite of the TARDIS, it seemed somewhat smaller on the inside. Two people maneuvering around soon resembled a game of Twister. The berth contained everything you’d find in a master bedroom. There was a full-size bed, a sink, a bathroom and a shower. We eyeballed the total space at about 36 sq. ft., perfect for two pygmies built like #2 pencils.