New Orleans

 

 

I was asked to attend the American Standards meeting on Aerospace at New Orleans. I hadn’t long joined Castrol ( it was 1982 ) and the timing was incredibly inconvenient. We hadn’t long moved to Wilmslow and our house was being reroofed. I had to leave my wife with tarpaulins covering part of the roof. However the trip was seen as necessary to join up with the consultant who would be handing the aerospace products over to me. I had never met him before but he was held in very high regard by the company

I made a very bad start at the New Orleans airport by asking a policeman where I could find a bus to the hotel. He looked at me pityingly and said I shouldn’t use the bus but the hotel limo. I learned that the limo was actually a shuttle minibus and that buses were seen as only for the poor. My first lesson that American English is different; my first thought ( and fear) was the limo would be a very upmarket and expensive taxi.

I can pass over the meeting except to say that it was held in two parts and I had to request an extra days stay because there was a free day between. The consultant was a disappointment. I felt obliged to spend a lot of free time with him and he only seemed to want to go a restaurant and then on to a bar where he drank quite heavily. He also seemed to know a lot of the attendees but barely bothered to introduce me.

On our free day we went on a Mississippi stern wheeler  on a cruise up the river. The cruise was on a rather fake ship, the Natchez. Although with the look of a traditional Mississippi river boat the Natchez was actually newly built only a few years previously.

New Orleans is the home of jazz. The first restaurant we chose had a jazz combo and I was able to request a classic , “muskrat ramble”. Our consultant was a relatively elderly man who didn’t want to walk. I did go as far as the nearest park where there was  a statue of famous jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong. The tourism peak was however  a visit to Preservation Hall in my final evening. This is a living museum where you queue to hear a group play in the most traditional style in surroundings supposedly similar to early days of 1917 or so.

Entrance is cheap but the price is that you “stand in line” as the Americans say for the evening concert. I recall I was next to a couple who in exchange for keeping their place bought mint julip drinks from a nearby vendor. On a warm evening this ice cold drink was most wonderfully refreshing. Preservation Hall itself was stark with just wooden benches for the audience. Such was the crowd that many sat on the floor or stood around the walls. The group was a mixture of old timers ( all coloured ) and a couple of young whites.

New Orleans has still a French ambience. The centre French Quarter is notable for Creole building around courtyards with first floor balconies. These are fronted by intricate ironwork. In Jackson Square they sell “beignets” which are sugar coated  batter rings like doughnuts.. These are really unremarkable except for the location and name.

It happened that during my stay there was St Patricks Day. I soon found that the throng of people by the hotel were celebrants with a profusion of green, fabric shamrocks. I had the strong impression that the day was really an excuse for a street party. Apparently this gets quite rowdy as the evening wears on but I was back in my room by then. Many Americans seem to think, on often slender evidence, that they are linked to Irish immigrants.

One feature which was new at the time was the Louisiana Superdome. This later became famous as a shelter during hurricane Katrina. The Superdome was also notorious for the crimes among the refugees. Mercedes Benz now have the naming rights. This is a sports stadium with a sliding roof which is also used for all sorts of events and exhibitions. It is the largest permanent dome structure in the world. The Millennium Dome is larger but regarded as a temporary structure. The Superdome has a seating capacity of about 75,000. I took a guided tour. I was impressed to by the immense gradually sloping access ramps along the outside. Fully covered not only do they handle large crowds leaving all at once but they allow emergency vehicles to go to all levels- they are easily wide enough for two vehicles to pass.. During my visit there was a Camping and Caravanning show.

My visit was before Hurricane Katrina  destroyed much of the city with massive flooding as the levees burst. I expect it is now much changed.

As it turned out I had virtually nothing to do with aero products for many years. The qualification testing  makes them expensive and laborious. This testing was something I avoided as we didn’t have the facilities or structure to cope. Probably rightly aviation standards are very precise and detailed. Late in my time with Castrol we became involved in compressor cleaning of ground based gas turbines used in power stations. Even then I was in a secondary role helping to support a product bought in from a specialist firm. I did get to visit Heathrow and walk round a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. It really is immense.