Spring Chicken Again, part one

Posted: May 15, 08 9:23am

There are many benefits of being no spring chicken. My list would start with being less self-conscious, less concerned about what other people think, more able to stand up for myself, more sure of what I like and don't like. Somewhat belatedly, I've figured out which hairstyles look good on me and which to avoid (afros, shags). Ditto, pants styles (wide leg, not tapered). Exercising is finally a habit and so, mostly, is eating right. (My daughter asked recently when I started liking salad. I couldn't remember, though I can remember a time when I didn't like it.) Being able to see the horizon line is also spurring me to go for things I've always wanted to do. I'd like to claim greater wisdom, but I'm still working on that one.

All that said, there are plenty of times when I still long to feel like a spring chicken. And I have discovered that, in certain places and under certain conditions, the years fall away and for a magical time that spring-chicken feeling is again mine. New Orleans is one such place. It's impossible to feel foolish there, no matter how old you are. (As someone observed on TeeBeeDee, “It's the only place where a woman my age needs club wear.”)

Listening to certain music in the middle of a crowd also does it for me. So when we were offered a free place to stay in New Orleans for Jazz Fest, I jumped at it. Jazz Fest is an annual four-day music extravaganza, featuring continuous performances on eight stages by everyone from headliners like Randy Newman and the Neville Brothers to gospel choirs and brass bands.

My husband and I have friends who live in New Orleans part-time, and four of us formed a Jazz Fest posse. That itself helped shed the years - remember going everywhere with a gang? But once inside the fairground gates, we each went where we wanted, keeping in touch by cell phone. This worked out especially well for my husband and me, since he likes progressive jazz while I favor traditional New Orleans brass bands, preferably accompanied by a second-line parade.

By the end of Day One I felt pretty youthful, especially after our posse spent the evening putting up anti-George-Bush posters in prominent spots around town. The next morning we awoke to a downpour, but by 11 a.m., when the music started, the sky had cleared. The fairground, however, was a sea of mud.

A friend had warned me to pack rain boots, but I’d reasoned that in the New Orleans heat, flip-flops would be better. Wrong. Each step we took flung up mud, thoroughly spattering the backs of our clothes, and soon the muck was so deep that it sucked the flip flops right off our feet. We had no choice but to go barefoot (not as perilous as it sounds because glass containers were barred from the fairgrounds).

So while shod festival-goers kept struggling to find dryer paths, we squished through the mud, taking any shortcut we wanted. The longer we did it, the more fun it was. By the end of the day we were so covered in mud that we looked like the Pig Pen character in Peanuts. . This was a magical spell I hadn’t expected, and as more years fell away, I recalled that it was fun being five.