On our last day in New Orleans Kathi and I took the tour of the oldest above-ground cemetery in New Orleans, Saint Louis Number 1. This was established in the 1780s, after the locals got tired of having their dead relations float up out of the ground during floods.
I absolutely loved this place. Something about the mix of decaying and well-maintained tombs, the dying November weeds, the gray sky, the glimpses of the city in the background, and the long history of burial sent me into a marvelous reverie.
I could have spent all day here.
One thing I learned from the tour is that this system only really worked because of the intensity of the rot inside these oven-like structures. In the baking summer heat bodies decayed very quickly, so that when the tomb was re-opened after the traditional year and a day there was little left but dust, which was swept to the back of the tomb so that another body could be deposited.
Tomb of chess legend Paul Morphy, of Morphy's Defense.
Kathi with the cemetery's most famous tomb of nineteenth-century Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. Maybe. Our guide explained that there have always been rumors that she was really buried somewhere else and this plaque is just there to throw off people seeking power (or dust) from her tomb. He showed us X marks on several other tombs that, he said, people had scratched to indicate that those other tombs were her real resting place.
After a fried chicken lunch, we started our journey home, already talking about going back next year. And that would imply that I will go on, with the help of Kathi, my other friends, and places like New Orleans, at least for one more year.
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