Posted on 03/01/2014 10:23:01 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The humidity is incredible. I don’t know how the people who settled the area - much less the Victorians in their hot clothes - stood it.
I lived in Biloxi several times, for a total of about eight or nine years. Same thing.
Slavery and dirt cheap servants (including Irish immigrants before the civil war). Let others do the work, move as little as possible, and hope the yellow fever doesn’t get you. But from 1810 till 1860 if you could do that you could become very rich very quickly.
*The crowds shown in these TV accounts show a very drunken, rowdy bunch of people that I wouldn’t get near.*
The crowds shown on tv? You don’t say. You mean tv doesn’t show boring ordinary people just minding their own business? I must get you to explain some time how what the media show is totally representative and reliable.
I’m not sure Irish immigrants were prominent in pre-Civil War south. The south had black slaves, the north had Irish slaves, lol. But the Irish slaves did get a pittance. They were my people and not always the most gracious or law abiding people.
You see, it doesn’t matter whether the crowd scenes that I saw of rowdy, aggressive people is representative of all, it’s the fact that there are SOME people like that at Mardi Gras festivities and that’s enough to dissuade me from being around any of them. I prefer my health and well-being, thank you very much.
Ante bellum New Orleans was a boom town and as such attracted a healthy share of Irish. They did much of the most difficult and dangerous work, such as digging the New Basin Canal, because slaves were too valuable. Ten thousand Irishmen died on that project.
My parish, St. Patrick’s, was founded for Irish in New Orleans in 1833, because they didn’t mix well with the native creoles. Google Margaret of New Orleans.
Thank you for the education! My family helped to build the Brooklyn Bridge, so let’s shake hands across the North-South divide!
They did much of the most difficult and dangerous work, such as digging the New Basin Canal, because slaves were too valuable.
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Well that explains a lot...
..BELOW For those that ‘always’ rag on the Irish...
“Anybody that would build a city 5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats that can’t swim is a damn genius”
Read the free e-book.
Mob Rule in New Orleans by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14976
That place has been the scene of some really bad stuff for 300 years.
The residents today are overwhelmingly insane alcoholics who are depressed and bitchy when not loaded to the gills
Its haunted and evil, and will snuff out a life in a flash when one least suspects it.
Avoid it like the plague.
Thanks for the reference. I don’t have a Kindle or anything like it, though.
I was stationed there for a year and a half. The guy I talked about being killed at the Mardi Gras, that happened just a month or so after I got there. That convinced me. I went to downtown IN THE DAYTIME just a couple times thereafter. I sensed the danger that must have been there at night and wouldn’t go the French Quarter on a dare.
Dammit Sir, I have cracked ribs and that LOL I just had hurt like H E Double L!!!
I will have to cede credit to Larry the Cable Guy (at least for now)
bump
Apparently our 9th Ward friends are a little touchy, no?
Your dead friend probably tried to rip off a pimp.
I read most everything I could find on him - I remember reading The Walking Drum, but it was probably 25 years or more ago.
I read it at least once a year, as well as one of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels or the newest WEB Griffin (but not the police themed ones).
My friend and I were at a conference there just a block from the French Quarter and never had a problem. Of course, the fact that we’ve both worked as bodyguards and bouncers may have had something to do with it.
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