GONE WITH THE WIND
By Carol
Fondiller
I’ve always dreamed of
visiting New Orleans.
The Spanish moss
hanging from trees, laissez le bon temps roulez, beignets, chicory coffee,
pralines and me, beautiful crinolined me leaning over one of those iron grilled
balconies in the French Quarter.
When I think of New Orleans, I’ve
encased it in this diffused, glimmering haze, with mayflies and levees and me as
a heartless antebellum belle, flicking my fan at my admirers as they duel for my
favors, laughter tinkling in tune with the darkies singin’ sweet
spirituals, while mammy is more concerned about me and my beaus than she be with
her own kin...bless her soul, oh those amiable “darkies” with their
infectious rhythm, rich laughter as they put my welfare above their own.
That’s what New Orleans means/meant...the Quadroon Balls, slave markets,
Mardi Gras jazz, brothels, voodoo, vampires...laissez le bon temps roulez...So,
when Katrina hit New Orleans, and that other bastion of antebellum mythos,
Biloxi, Mississippi, I felt a sense of personal loss. That great impersonal
hurricane ripped not only the roof off New Orleans but it exposed the
maggot-filled belly of that beast. DARKIES!? Sittin’ on a bale of cotton
playin’ banjo and mouth organ while a little kid danced? I’m being
wistful about a city that had slave markets, an aristocratic upper...no,
overclass, and a caste system that rivaled India’s.
I am infected by the “Gone With
the Wind” sickness, as is every white girl in America. The trouble with
Gone with the Wind is that it tells a slamming good story. But frankly, my dear,
we should give a damn about what it says, and how it has infected the American
Psyche.
The opening paragraph of this
piece is offensive - Darkies, Minstrels, etc. But that the old way of life that
Margaret Mitchell wrote about so movingly and what the late Senator Strom
Thurmond, democrat cum dixiecrat cum Republican, thus perhaps proving Darwinism
by reversing it...and wanted to regain and what Senator Trent Lott told the
guests at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday.. if ol’ Strom were
elected president when he ran, things would be a lot better, ie., no
antidiscrimination laws, God in the schools, Strom’s God that is, and
Kirsch, Kinder and Kuchen for the ladies, bless
‘em.
One positive and powerful
thing that Margaret Mitchell did, was to portray the strength, courage,
resourcefulness, inventiveness, tenacity of Southern women, in contrast to the
fragile, shallow image they were compelled to portray in polite society.
Unfortunately, the image of the Happy Darkie slave is still with us. There are
some people who aver that the Blacks were lucky to have been brought over here
because they were educated to European, i.e., civilized
behavior.
The French Quarter did not
get destroyed. What did get destroyed was the 9th District, the poor section of
town, most likely rarely visited by tourists. I won’t go onto who got out
and who didn’t. What happened in the Astrodome, that’s still in
contention. All I know is babies did not get raped contrary to what was reported
with salacious concern and pornographic detail by the other media. Who can
forget the sight of a TV location newscaster up to his knees in swill, gasping
into the microphone “there’s a little dog in here. We’ve got
to get him out “athere...”? And the dog was in a doggie carrier. The
newscaster crooned with the mike about poor wet doggie. True Tiny Tim
Journalism...
That hurricane ripped off
the layers of laissez le bon temps roulez along with Scarlett O’Hara,
Blanche Dubois, (a victim of Southern Gentility), Mardi Gras and exposed the
fragile support system that kept New Orleans together and made it such a hot
destination. The underpaid underclass supported the ol’ South - instead of
living in slave quarters, people lived in shacks or crime infested housing
developments. The schools and playgrounds that were washed away were already
teetering on the edge of destruction brought on by graft, greed, neglect, racism
and classism. Hurricane Katrina exposed the rattling relics of “The Old
South”, the souvenirs of lemme see, how did Margaret put it? “The
Cavaliers... washed away by the war a gallant way of
life”.
Wouldn’t it be
wonderful if Katrina washed away the generations-old travesty, the generations
of old power?
Speaker of the House
Rep. Hastert wondered whether New Orleans should be rebuilt and naturally this
brought down a tsunami of objections. Since then Hastert has been mute on the
subject. I am being heretical, I know, but I’m thinking that maybe
it’s not such a bad idea. The City is below sea level, we don’t have
or won’t enlist the know-how of the Dutch, who know about dikes and
dams.
Theirs have worked for centuries.
Do we want to rebuild the Old South with it’s alluring, poisonous dreams?
Certainly the City should have some historical sites, museums of Jazz, African
and French and Spanish culture, places where human beings were bought and sold
and treated as cattle or cunning little toys. And, of course, A Streetcar named
Desire.
As to the physical rebuilding,
I hope they don’t try to “recreate” the Old Orleans, or hire
the Disney folks to re-do it. But basically, I hope that Hurricane Katrina has
torn away all the racism and poverty. Then, indeed, laissez le bon temps
roulez.
Posted: Sat
- October 1, 2005 at 04:08 PM