My family has lived in New Orleans for dozens of generations. Some roots of the family tree reach deep into history, back to times before any city was yet built here.
I think I would love New Orleans anyway, even I had not been born here (a block away from our apartment, actually—full circle!). I’d love her even if I didn’t have a thousand happy memories here of the people I love most.
It’s not just her magnificent oak trees, charming streetcars, unbelievable food, music, and architecture, heavy French-Catholic flavor, one-of-a-kind playful quirk, and old soul. I love her heart.
My New Orleans is not slick and modern and efficient like many other major cities; she's often worn, weathered, and struggling in many neighborhoods.
Yet my New Orleans breathes and moves, alive and warm and personal, a place of life and color and magic that you can touch and taste and grab onto, a place people come to visit and discover that they cannot leave.
My New Orleans has a heart that is always a little broken—but, perhaps more than anywhere else on earth, she has a heart. An open, vulnerable, generous heart that throws a parade even for a funeral.
Maybe you already know the major tourist attractions and must-see sites in New Orleans; that's easy enough to find online. In this series, I want to take you deeper into some more personal corners of my favorite place in the world.
We will start today Uptown on General Pershing Street, one block off Napoleon Avenue, at the house of my maternal relatives, the Elmers.
My grandfather’s parents built this house more than 100 years ago as a multi-generational residence while they ran their family business, Elmer’s Candy, together. My grandfather grew up here, then as decades and wars and weddings and babies and deaths came, the house grew emptier and emptier.
My Great Aunt Peachy was the last to live here, taking care of the endless floors and nooks and crannies and staircases until her death. I loved every minute exploring this house brimming with secrets and ancient furniture and bedrooms with old-fashioned washstands, relics of a time before modern plumbing and power. One of my favorite features in the house was an elevator installed for one of the elderly relatives ages ago.
My first carnival memories are tied to this house. It sits a few blocks from the old uptown route. We based ourselves here for every parade. Aunt Peachy served us hot dogs on McKenzie’s buns and ten billion bags of Elmer’s Chee Wees (the Elmers sold the candy division of their family business, but retained the snack division—go order some and say hi to my cousins). At Mardi Gras, I loved meeting a seemingly endless parade of new cousins every year—seriously, the Elmers multiplied by exponents.
After Aunt Peachy died, Katrina almost destroyed this house, but someone saved it. Now it’s painted a modern charcoal palette and the inside has been made unrecognizable, but the house lives. When I'm at our apartment, I often take a long walk by the house to peek in the windows and glimpse the family ghosts one more time. It’s bittersweet, of course. But always so joyful because this house is an icon of love and family for me.
Even draped in new colors and with the interior walls rearranged, the Elmer house holds the stories and secrets and prayers and midnight confidences and tears and good news and bad news and grief and joy of so many generations—everything that makes a family.
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