The first item on our agenda was to go to the 3-D, I-Max. We saw both films, T-Rex and an underwater film. Both were great. We went to the 3-D, I-Max when we were in Galveston. That was the first time we had seen the 3-D version. At that time we were so excited about it, we even sat through the Nutcracker. This time the films were much better. The T-Rex story was a little lame, but the effects were incredible.
Wednesday, we hit the French Quarter. That did not take long. After the obligatory Café au lait and beignets at the Café Du Monde, we hiked around for a couple of hours. It was mostly souvenir shops, bars and T-shirt shops. We passed on the bar thing, and the T-shirt's could not be worn in polite company. Bourbon Street is all bars and strip joints.
Jackson Square was a clean, bright spot in this worn out area. The Park was clean and free of the hustlers that were there the last time we were in New Orleans. The serious people watching was around the outside of the square. I looked for, but could not find, the best hustle I had ever seen. This guy is probably in Boca Raton sipping Pina Coladas. When we were last in New Orleans, we watched a man dressed like a panhandler, pushing a grocery cart. The cart was full of bum paraphernalia, cardboard boxes wrapped in plastic bags, bedrolls, etc. He had a dog on a leash and a flat box taped to the front of the cart. There was a sign above the box that said, "Help me feed my dog Lady, I love her." He kept $4 or $5 in the box as seed money. Nearly everyone that passed threw a buck in the box. When there was so much money in the box as to discourage further donations, the man would remove the excess. We were excited about this money machine and watched for about 30 minutes. He was making between $50 and $100 an hour. We saw this guy at 7:00 in the morning and at 5:00 in the afternoon, every day we were in the French Quarter. Later, I was not sure if it was the same guy that we had seen both morning and night, or if he had franchised his operation. When you do the math on the operation, a person inclined to pull off this con could hit it hard for a few years and retire out of his safe deposit box. If you worked 200 days a year, 10 hours a day at 50 bucks an hour (200 x 10 x $50), your are making $100,000 a year tax free. After a while you could probably figure out which are your most profitable hours and cut back to 175, 8-hour days at $90 an hour ($126,000). I have since heard of a better hustle. John Wilson, noted BBQer, observed what we both suspect is the best hustle of all time. He watched a woman with a couple of unwashed waifs at her side, holding a sign that said, "Will Work for Medicine." She and the two kids were in a shopping center parking lot that housed a major drug chain. John said that there was a constant line of 4 to 5 cars waiting to give this woman money.
If the stock market flops, and stays flopped, and if my pension goes bust, neither of which will happen, we will be OK. In "Gone With the Wind," Scarlet O'Hara said something like, "As God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again." I'm spending my last $150 on a grocery cart and dog.
We scratched New Orleans off of our list. It was filthy and worn out. Everything needed a coat of paint. The last time we were there was a week after Mardi Gras. The place was clean and the azaleas were in bloom. It looked like the streets had not been washed since.
It is Thursday evening. We get the truck out of the hospital tomorrow. Hopefully, we will be in Corpus Christi by Saturday.
We left Memphis on the 27th of September. Since it was only 400 miles, we made reservations in a New Orleans RV park for that same evening. Memphis is on the south border of Tennessee, so we quickly got into Mississippi. The mile marker indicated 298 miles to the south border of Mississippi. The road (I-55) was the worst we had driven in the bus. It beat us up, and we were counting down the miles to get to Louisiana. We couldn't believe it when the roads actually got worse. We maintained 55-60 MPH in Mississippi, but had to cut back to 50 MPH in Louisiana. Twice I was bumped so hard on this roller coaster of a highway (I-10) that I came completely off of the pedals. We were worn out when we got to the RV Park that evening. The next morning we both felt like we had been in a car wreck.
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