The Kindness Of Strangers

The Kindness Of Strangers - A Tribute To Tee Eva

“Why do you like New Orleans so much?” is the question I am most frequently asked — usually accompanied by the kind of snarling of the nose and pursing of the lips that an awful smell or terrible taste produces. This facial expression and tone of voice is usually served with a side of disapproval, garnished with judgment, and topped with a hint of condescension. There was a time when this bothered me and I felt compelled to defend myself for the audacity of having an opinion and daring to like something that someone else didn’t. Now I typically just smile and say, “Because it feels like home, even though it isn’t.” 

Greater poets than I have said it better. Bob Dylan said, “There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.” Tennessee Williams famously remarked, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” Mark Twain once quipped, “New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.” Chris Rose commented, “If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom.” But my favorite quote about the city is nearly a hundred and fifty years old, and comes from a man who, like the city itself, is a blend of very different cultures. Lafcadio Hearn was a Greek author who discovered his muse in Japan, and wrote many influential books on Japanese culture after becoming a citizen and adopting the name Koizumi Yakumo. Before he moved to Japan he lived in New Orleans and wrote, “Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.” His words could not ring truer if they were written this morning.

New Orleans welcomes everyone. Even if you aren’t from there, you belong there. From the gutter punks to the aristocrats, and everyone in between, if you love New Orleans, New Orleans will love you. One of the things I love the most about the city is that perfect strangers treat you like an old friend, or better yet, like family. I once met Big Chief Monk Boudreaux — of the Golden Eagle Mardi Gras Indian Tribe — in the Louisiana Music Factory Record Store, and he invited me to his house for a Mardi Gras party. Literally invited me, as in, gave me his address and directions to his house. What prompted this? I told him I was a big fan of his music and he said “you family.” Many of you may not be familiar with Mardi Gras Indians, but in New Orleans they are royalty, not to mention this guy has recorded with the Neville Brothers, and the multi Grammy winning Dr. John. This man has performed with the best musicians in the business, and I can barely even play a radio, but I was welcome in his home.

About three years ago I ate lunch at Dooky Chase, a historic Creole restaurant in the Treme, and asked the waiter if by chance the owner and chef, Leah Chase, was in the restaurant. He said she was, and after speaking with her, we were invited into the kitchen where she regaled us with tales of her life in New Orleans, all while sitting on a walker and cutting up Creole tomatoes. Ms. Leah is over ninety years old and still shows up everyday to open the restaurant and work in the kitchen. If you aren’t familiar with Dooky Chase the restaurant, or Leah Chase the chef, allow me to give you a brief history lesson. This isn’t just a typical mom and pop, local neighborhood restaurant. To quote the The New Orleans Times Picayune, “It was here that plans were drawn up to help the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stage sit-ins and to shelter others trying to further the cause of racial equality...in this restaurant we changed the course of the world over bowls of gumbo.” Through the years she has welcomed Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, and James Baldwin as patrons. In more recent years Ms. Leah has fed and dined with both President George W. Bush, and President Barack Obama in her restaurant. Those familiar with my writings know how much I love to be fed by chefs and restaurants that have won James Beard Awards. Leah Chase was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America. Ray Charles memorialized this lady in a song (“Early In The Morning”, 1961), and yet, this perfect stranger — a nobody from nowhere —  was welcomed into her busy restaurant kitchen during lunch. At this very moment a picture of her kissing me on the cheek hangs in my office, an ever present reminder that no one is beneath you, and you are never too busy or too important to welcome someone into your space for a few minutes.

More years ago than I can remember I watched something on the Food Network that spotlighted a tiny little package of dynamite known as Tee Eva. She was the owner of Tee Eva’s Famous Old Fashioned Pralines And Pies. I was fascinated as she explained that the secret ingredient in her gumbo was the over one hundred year old cast iron pot which belonged to her grandmother. Sitting there on Chicken Creek, I knew I could not leave this life without having tasted gumbo cooked in a nineteenth century cast iron pot. You’re bucket list has things like climbing Kilimanjaro or skydiving, my bucket list reads more like a menu. Don’t judge. As I learned of her death today I was moved to write this tribute, and thankful to have both seen that pot with my own eyes, and more importantly, to have tasted that gumbo. The first time I walked into her tiny little shop/kitchen, with the walk up window, on Magazine Street, I was greeted by this enormous smile and larger than life personality packaged in a pint sized frame. I introduced myself and explained that I’d come from Tennessee to sample her gumbo and eat some of her miniature praline, and sweet potato pies. She welcomed us into her kitchen and for the next half hour we were spellbound by her stories of becoming a caterer for movie shoots — including the New Orleans filmed “Oliver Stone’s JFK” — and celebrities like Phyllis Diller, Sugar Ray Robinson, Mr. T, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Locally she was known for walking around town with a basket of pies, strutting in the style of the Ernie K-Doe Baby Dolls, of which she was a member, and for whom she was a backup singer. Right now I’m smiling as I picture her strutting around Mid City Lanes Rock-n-Bowl with her basket of pies, to the tune of the Allen Toussaint penned, and Ernie K-Doe recorded, “Here Come The Girls.” She leaves behind a great quote on her philosophy of life. “I've lived the life of a sharecropper, I've lived in the projects, I've tasted the good life. Sometimes I make my living, pay my bills, sometimes not. But I keep going. I always knew I could be anything I wanted to be, but it takes more than that. You gotta want to be somebody inside....I'm very proud to walk the streets with my basket. I strut when I walk the streets with my basket because I'm part of a long tradition of black women who made a living and kept their independence selling pralines this way."

The Bible says, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2). I realize the author was intending to encourage us to show kindness to strangers because you never know when the stranger you serve is a servant of the Most High, but sitting here today, reflecting on the kindness shown to me, I realize I was the stranger they served, but they were the angels.