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Name: louisa rinnan

Location: Kapellen, Belgium

Date: Sep. 11, 2005

Seeing what has happened to my beloved city, is more then I can express. I lived in New Orleans and went to grade school in your beautiful city back at the end of the 50 'ties begin 60 'ties. My memories our of dedicated teaches at school, the long gone Laurel Mcdoungh school NR 1. My favorite 5th grade teacher Miss Massemini (I think) The long summer nights, with the sound of crickets always in the air. The unique smell of New Orleans that can not be found in any other city in the world. A faint sweet smell of magnolias blooming. I remember very well one evening sitting on the porch of our shotgun house just taking in the atmosvere and listening to the sounds of the crickets. It was still to hot to go in to sleep. We had fans in those days, no airco and uselly slept on the floors when it got to hot. As you see we wee not rich but as a child growing up in New Orleans I must say I have never, ever had any encounter with any thing drug related, nor any other crimes. The only police I saw were on TV. We lived in what they now call lower garden district. Below Magazine street. When Autum came and Halloween approced we would all get ready to go trick or treating. At that time "THE garden district" was not a place to go trick or treating, because the "rich people" ( our childhood idea of The Garden District ") never gave much and we would uselly hush us away! And yes we would go trick or treating alone when we were 8-9, and never worried about eating what we got. When it rained we would run out and play in the rain to cool off. The corner of Chippewa street and Clay square had the best snow cones around, and Clay square now changed names ) was our favorite playing ground. They had the tiny kids pool, we had to evacuate when it was storming, just to jump in two minutes later when the sky cleared up.The yearly fair on Clay square and Miss Pageant contest drew lots of families out. Remember once hiding out under the bleaches where the girls all stood and calling up to them. The panic was fun to watch,as we all ran off in differnet directions. We had so much harmless fun in those day; even being poor and not haveing much as a child we still held on to our inosence and saw no evil. And don't forget the first airconditioned buses that road to poncetrain beach! That was something new! And then straight in the water for a swim. ( don't think you will ever be able to do that again.) The best day of the years was dollar day. For one dollar you could ride all the rides as many times as you wanted. You can bet there was a lot of skipping lines by kids when they were in group. But in those days if you got caught you would apoligise and move back in line. No smart mouths , we had our manners :)