My first day in New Orleans was my first day.

Thus, one can say I can reasonably claim to have some authenticity when I write and think -- and lament -- about my birthplace of long ago.

The act of evil which started at 3 a.m. on New Year’s Eve left 15 celebrants in the City That Care Forgot lost to their families and loved ones and many others horribly maimed in so many ways. I pray, as many of us do I’m sure, that God will comfort their souls and their families as they struggle to understand how an act of such unfathomable cruelty could take place in the greatest nation ever created by the mind of man. We are all part of that struggle and must face the fact that we will never know the full answer to that nightmarish question in this lifetime.

This collection of thoughts from the “mystic chords of memory” this aging mind still (thankfully!) possesses will voice the sadness and heartbreak one feels at seeing the slow death of the city of his birth and the city which has meant so much to him over the many years of his long life, a slow death so revoltingly revealed by the face of the city in the form of the public officials charged with protecting not only natives but visitors from all over the world in town for one of the biggest events of the year, the Sugar Bowl. The glaring, bumbling, sheer incompetence shown by the mayor, the pathetic Chief of Police, the “spokesperson” of the FBI who declared the driver of a truck loaded with explosives proudly flying an ISIS flag was not a terrorist, displayed to an incredulous world why so many consider NOLA, once the Queen City of America, to be a city beyond any hope of repair.

Here are a few random memories of this once-beautiful city from one who has lived there from time to time and whose law practice brought him there often over the years. I remember with love and fondness, in no particular order as New Orleans does not lend itself to orderly thinking, even in an ode of sadness:

• The truly mystic quality of the air and atmosphere of an early morning walk in the French Quarter, a place like no other in the country and very few in the world, which fills one with a sense of the eerie and the history with which these few blocks are imbued.
• A stop on that walk at Café du Monde for a large cup of café au lait and a big platter of beignets smothered in powdered sugar. Nothing like them anywhere.
• The trout almondine at Galatoire’s, one of the great dishes of the world, and one of the very few which makes standing in line on Bourbon Street worth it.
• A ride on the St. Charles streetcar down what is surely one of the most beautiful boulevards in all the world, lined with stately mansions and broad magnolias.
• Getting off the streetcar at “the Carrollton bend” to head for one of the finest diners in the city and a historic favorite of the natives, the Cameillia Grill, for one of the great burgers of the Western World.
• Until a few years ago, a plate of the incomparable Shrimp Etouffee at the Bon Ton Café now reborn, sadly, as a Prime Rib emporium.
• The Sunday Jazz Brunch at Commanders’ Palace in the magnificent Garden District starting with, if you’re brave enough, their signature Milk Punch!
• Eggs Benedict at Breakfast at Brennan’s on Royal Street across from the historic Louisiana Supreme Court building. (More Milk Punch!)
• The morning fog wafting down Esplanade from Old Man River and into the French Quarter at all hours of the night and day.
• My aunt’s indescribably delicious cornbread dressing, the centerpiece of her memorable Christmas dinners at her old home on West End Boulevard.
• The cab drivers who called everyone “Cap” and the waitresses who called everyone “baby.”
• The platinum-standard muffulettas at Central Grocery in the quarter across the street from the equally incomparable French Market.
• A Sunday afternoon stroll through Jackson Square, faced by the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral, and viewing the work of the various artists at work along St Peter Street in front of the Pontalba Apartments.
• And perhaps finishing it all off with an appropriately strong libation at the Carousel Bar in the Monteleone Hotel, frequently the home of Tennessee Williams and often visited by Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Eudora Welty.

Do I know what it means to miss the New Orleans of my memory? Yes, terribly.

Do I miss what New Orleans has become? I answer not in anger but in sadness: No.

I pray for its recovery. I wonder if it can.

Image: Roller Coaster Philosophy