MAC GORDON: Lights still shining brightly in the Big Easy

Despite a raging controversy over the demolition of four Confederate monuments and the cries of people saying they’ll never cross its city limits again, I didn’t see anyone turning out the lights in New Orleans on a recent visit.

My hometown of McComb, Miss., rests 20 miles north of the Louisiana border and just over an hour’s drive to the big city south. Our people have been going to New Orleans and spending vast amounts of money there for almost 150 years. New Orleans has always been our home away from home.

But, all over McComb these days, folks are claiming disloyalty to the Crescent City because the New Orleans mayor and city council have ordered the elimination of memorials honoring Southern Generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard, Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and one recognizing the 1874 battle against Reconstruction.

“You’ll never see my shadow down there again” has been a popular refrain since April when the first monument fell. This from some people who have made a career of venturing to New Orleans once a week to eat in the city’s many renowned restaurants — and to shop at its clothing fineries.

The furor has been exacerbated in my hometown because our own mayor and board have voted to stop flying the Mississippi state flag, whose cloth is emblematic of Southern colors and stripes.

The memorializing of history is a complex enterprise. People want to remember and honor not only notable events but also persons who have excelled in certain endeavors. For example, there is a move afoot in southwestern Mississippi to pay tribute to persons from the area who have succeeded in the cultural arts. That list is extensive.

It is understandable that depictions of history are often controversial. We all have our likes and dislikes, or believe in one cause or another. For example, McComb native Bo Diddley’s music and its effect on other entertainers are generally seen as textbook for the genre known as rock-and-roll. However, some locals consider the achievements of this Hall of Famer dubious and frivolous. (The same can be said for novelist William Faulkner, who while alive never drew the favor of most of his fellow residents of Oxford, Miss., despite winning the Nobel Prize for literature.)

Sometimes, we honor only those involved on one side of an event or argument. That fact brings us again to New Orleans, where the monuments in question have stood for about 150 years. I did not agree with their banishment. Why, instead, didn’t that city undertake to build monuments in honor of the thousands of slaves who were brought there starting in the early 1700s to be sold and provide labor throughout the country? How about an edifice or full museum on the view that the Civil War was fought over slavery?

I doubt that New Orleans, which has been so popular a destination for so long, is likely to fold its tourism tent anytime soon.

I don’t know where else people who live within, say, a 250-mile radius are going to get their train ride thrill, as provided by the fabled City of New Orleans’ “big blue,” a line that makes stops in McComb twice a day on its way to and from Chicago and New Orleans.

Where else will anybody be able to view the almost total history of World War II? Being able to witness their museum’s riveting presentation of the experience of war offered in its Solomon Theatre is almost reason enough for the trip. I must add, without shame, that at no other war museum will you be better treated by a corps of volunteers that include my 93-year-old uncle, Bowdre McDowell, a Navy veteran of the war.

Where better than the celebrated Galatoire’s restaurant to enjoy the taste of superior dishes from the Gulf (I heartily recommend the pompano); the crab cakes at the Red Fish Grill, or the shrimp po-boy at Deanie’s Seafood or Parkway Bakery?

If gaining a little culture is your goal, the musical “Mamma Mia” is currently on at the city’s Saenger Theatre. You’d better hurry as the Broadway production nears the end of its momentous run.

The monuments may well be falling, and the history may be teeming with controversy, but the joie de vivre of New Orleans is not dead yet.

Mac Gordon is a former reporter for The Albany Herald. He lives near Blakely. He can be reached at [email protected].