You Never Know Who Knows What
Today, I’m back at Coliseum Square Park in New Orleans, where I often spend lunch hours strolling the grounds, borrowing shade from live oaks, coveting surrounding mansions and trying not to look like a creep on a park bench. Across the street from one corner of the park stands a colossal house spread across what may be two lots. I’ve never seen anyone living there but I have seen film crews dragging gear in and out a few times. It has long been one of my favorites in this neighborhood. It needs a little work. Many windows have no drapes or blinds; some have lace curtains that need to be straightened. This place stirs my imagination. On dreary days, does loneliness settle into the imagined, silent vastness of its halls and bedrooms? Maybe not.
It was on such a walk past this house that I happened upon a stranger.
Two doors down, a man with a broom swept leaves from the curb. He had a scruffy gray beard and wore work clothes and knee pads. Nearby sat an old pickup truck, which I assumed belonged to him. As I turned to walk toward him he was coming my way and appeared to want to talk. I guess he had seen me standing there, studying the house. I sized him up: middle age, blue-collar worker, friendly, not from this neighborhood, probably one of the hired handymen easily found during quiet weekdays along these lush streets, raking, trimming or making small repairs to mansions they could never dream of owning. He did not look dangerous.
“You know who owns that house?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been wondering.”
This is what happens in New Orleans. People come up to you on the street and start talking as if they know you. I have not seen much of this behavior anywhere else. I still do this by habit in other places and sometimes it’s a mistake. It scares people.
He proceeded to tell me, with the enthusiasm and rapid recall of data of a radio sports announcer, that the home is owned by a well-known film and television actress who lives out of town but who fell in love with New Orleans, bought this property some years ago when it was in dreadful condition and who has been fixing it up. (I later confirmed all this independently and found she had made important restorations to this place).
He continued, unprompted, to rattle off her filmography and television roles, throwing in an occasional director’s name and year of filming. He told me this house was used in the show “American Horror Story” and was recently in a film that was a remake and had something to do with Clint Eastwood.
I was a bit insulted when he stopped and said, “Oh, you probably haven’t seen “Pootie Tang.” Indeed.
Stunned by his encyclopedic knowledge of this subject, and too dizzy to ask him how he came about all this information, I switched the subject to the cost of these antebellum and Victorian money pits and he told me the biggest mistake owners make is to delay maintenance.
“They let them go and by the time they get around to fixing it something else has gone bad because of it and now it costs you more. When someone tells you there’s a problem, you fix it right then.”
I shook his hand, thanked him and walked away, schooled at the intersection of Coliseum and Race.
Oh, and the actress? Who else but Jennifer Coolidge, Stifler’s mom.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.
This is one of the cool things I’ve found about traveling in most of the south. People will just talk to you over any reason.