In recent years I’ve written about some very serendipitous events, including accidentally bumping into my baseball idol in an out-of-the-way town (A fluke in Frederick) and befriending a delightful young New Yorker on an otherwise ill-fated trip last fall (The kids are all right).

Well, we just returned from a trip to New Orleans, and guess what? It wasn’t any different.

***

It had been more than 45 years since I’d last stepped foot in the Big Easy.

In June of 1980, a girlfriend and I were in the middle of a summer-long road trip around the country in a ’67 VW bus, with no plans. No Internet, no GPS, no timeline, nothing but a map and a lot of whimsy.

I’d been working at my first post-college job at Harper & Row publishers for less than a year when the company decided to pull my division back to New York, so I was jobless. I took my life savings with us – $500 – and it lasted the entire trip. Mostly we just pulled into campgrounds when we were finally worn out each night. Of course, we also did a tremendous amount of mooching off of friends, relatives, and strangers along the way. In fact, we could have won a Wealth Management award for all the mooching we did.

One of those strangers was a young student named John, whom we met while he was feeding Cheetos by hand to a bunch of hungry alligators. Yes, you read that right! So very Louisianan! We had stumbled for no reason upon the campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, which had a ’gator swamp in the middle of it, and there was John. He was extremely adorable, we said hello, and he ended up inviting us to his parents’ house in Slidell for the weekend. Of course, we accepted. We had absolutely no trepidations about suddenly taking up with this stranger. Ah, youth and innocence.

With a couple of days to kill before the weekend, we found a campground for the night (“a really expensive one – $10,” says my diary) and decided the next day to venture into New Orleans, starting out with a place called the Gumbo Shop, where for $5 I tried, for the first time, “shrimp creole, seafood jambalaya, and sausage beans . . . perhaps the best food I’ve ever eaten,” I wrote. After that, the night involved oceans of alcohol (including, of course, the famous Hurricanes); three street punks named Ted, Loddie, and Dudley who were free with their cash; dancing at the 544 Club on Bourbon Street until the lads finally ran off, no doubt in search of trouble; and a near catastrophe when our cab back to the RV park ran a red light, spun out on the road, and missed a collision by “an inch or so.” There were no injuries, and absolutely nothing untoward happened that evening, which proves that someone upstairs was looking out for our royally irresponsible selves.

Of course, I did “pull a Paula Bocciardi” and lost my only pair of glasses at some point in the night. My theory at the time was that “they flew out when Dudley was swinging my camera case around.”

Yes, I did have a camera case with me. I carried a Super 8 sound movie camera with me at all times on that trip, and I now have a 90-minute film (along with a killer soundtrack) on YouTube to prove it. But I have no idea why my glasses would have been in the case. I’m probably legally blind without them. Why wouldn’t they have been on my face?

(Amazingly, the 544 Club had my glasses the next day, when we made a retrieval trip back into the city.)

Anyway, I’ve really diverged from the point, which was how fortunate we were to meet John. That weekend he brought us out on the bayous in his boat, which ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole summer – the cypress trees, the Spanish moss, the herons, the tiny shacks along the shore, the secret, narrow inlets, and the silence of it all. Then his family took us to dinner, where I apparently devoured – again for the first time – crawfish and softshell crab, along with boiled shrimp, gumbo, prawns, oysters, trout, French fries, hush puppies, salad, and root beer. His family was extremely impressed with my blowtorch appetite. And with my enthusiasm. I twisted the heads off all those crawfish like there was no tomorrow.

What a nice family. When we left Slidell, according to my diary, I had to “fight the tears back.”

John and I are still occasionally in touch. He was displaced by Hurricane Rita and is now a well-known fish and game writer in Alabama.

***

The American South has seduced me for years. Even before the ’cross-country trip, I’d spent a couple of summers in South Carolina – hot, humid days when the air always smelled sweet from cured tobacco. It was a heavy sweetness, like thick molasses. And unlike seemingly everyone on the planet, I found humidity to be sexy. It was like everyone was sweating with an unspoken, forbidden anticipation.

In college I masochistically took a course on William Faulkner, the great Mississippi novelist. We had to read NINE Faulkner novels, all of them dense with heat lightning, drawls, brawls, whiskey, and murder.

That’s how I looked at the South – a place where mysterious goings-on were taking place in swamps, and where something steamy yet delicious was just around the corner.

Remember Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin in The Big Easy?

Barkin (Anne): “That’s okay. I never did have much luck with sex anyway.”

Quaid (Remy): “Well, your luck’s about to change, chère.”

Yowza. That about sums it up. In the South, your luck can change at any moment – and in any direction.

***

Meeting John was one of the highlights of that long-ago summer trip. But we were young, and times were different. Could something similar happen to me now?

Well . . .

My recent trip to New Orleans was part of the “Two Years of Paula,” some of which I’ve spent trying to visit the final U.S. states I have yet to see. By March, Florida and Alaska were all that remained, and although I wanted to see Hemingway’s house in Key West, no one seemed very interested in that.

Instead, I came up with a brilliant scheme in which we could spend a few days in New Orleans (“Monday Morning Rail” is named after Arlo Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans,” after all*) and rent a car one day to drive to the nearest town in Florida, if only just to step over the border and say I’ve been there. The two Julies were on board, and I dragooned them into driving three hours to Florida for lunch in Pensacola. Then three hours back.

Most of our stay was conventional. I mean, at my age now, I wasn’t expecting to turn a corner and end up doing The Hustle with a guy named Dudley. We did a number of tourist things, of course – stayed in a historic (and allegedly haunted) hotel, visited the Jazz Museum and the Voodoo Museum and cemeteries and Mardi Gras World (where parade floats are made and displayed), rode the streetcars incessantly, watched second-line wedding musicians from our hotel window, ate jambalaya and fried chicken and po’ boys, drank Sazerac, and never even saw a vegetable. We also discussed at length the beignets we sampled at three different places – disagreeing on our favorites, but effectively rating them A+, A++, and A+++.

We were lucky to know someone who has lived in New Orleans for years – our former San Francisco dog-walker Al. Al’s wife sings regularly at blues/rock places in the city, so we spent some time in the French Quarter listening to her band. They also took us to Frankie and Johnnie’s, where we sat outside and plowed through 6 pounds of crawfish.

But we also shared a terrific meal with two people we were meeting for the first time.

***

A few years ago, I started following a couple of other writers on WordPress. I can’t for the life of me remember how it happened, and neither can they. Most of my subscribers are either friends or family. In the beginning, I did get lots of “likes” from bloggers who were mostly 23-year-old South American women hawking makeup. I knew they weren’t reading my blog entries, so I asked a savvy young person – my niece – what the heck was going on. She explained that people were “liking” my blog so that I would like theirs. Well, they were barking up the wrong tree.

But two legitimate bloggers did begin to follow me, and vice-versa. One of them, Michelle, is a Louisianan who writes regularly about the genealogy and often hardscrabble lives of Acadians who came before her. (In the late 18^th century, a large number of French-speaking Acadians were exiled from Canada and resettled in the bayous and prairies of Louisiana. Many suffered from discrimination, and the Cajuns [an elision of “Acadians”] became a big part of Louisiana culture.) An obviously accomplished talent, Michelle writes extremely succinctly – just a few paragraphs, typically (the anti-Paula!) – and often adds just a tiny dash of droll humor. Always a smooth, entertaining, and informative read!

When I blogged about possibly visiting New Orleans, Michelle commented that she would be happy to send me her recommendations. I took her up on it, at which point she mentioned that she and her husband (a New Orleans native) also would be happy to take us out for some beignets.

She was taking a huge risk. She didn’t know me from Adam. It can be really uncomfortable to meet a total stranger. And I would have two accomplices tagging along with me.

For my part, I was excited but really nervous. I consider myself a bit of a schlub. Unsophisticated. A charlatan, even.

But Michelle and her husband drove something like 90 minutes through rush-hour traffic to pick us up at our hotel and chauffeur us like divas to dinner at a place called Delachaise (all the names in New Orleans seem to be beautiful) and then to their favorite beignet spot on Magazine Street, an adorable avenue of locally-owned small shops and restaurants that reminded me of the more laid-back towns in northern California. We never would have discovered that street on our own, and it was a delightfully far cry from the often skeevy parts of Bourbon Street.

More importantly, our conversations that evening were warm and filled with laughs. Good-natured. Easy, as if we were already friends. I’d say it was the highlight of my stay.

***

My two takeaways:

First of all, never forget that you can unknowingly make a big difference in someone else’s life.

In 2019, Michelle commented on one of my blog posts simply with “I love your writing!” I had no idea who she was, which made the praise all the more meaningful. I was having a bit of a hard time with my health at that point, and that one line lifted me up.

Michelle says that my comments on her posts gave her the same gift and actually encouraged her to keep writing.

Imagine making a difference in the life of a stranger who lives more than 2,000 miles away.

So when we feel lacking in accomplishments or purpose – when we think our life résumé should merely read “nothing to see here” – we should remember that our value as a human being is based not upon scale. The effects of our simplest gestures can ripple exponentially. And silently.

Secondly, take risks. As an introvert, I never would have reached out to Michelle if she hadn’t offered recommendations and beignets. Taking an uncomfortable step can kick-start a lot of joy. All it takes it the right amount of effort, optimism, and serendipity.

Sometimes you just have to sprinkle some seeds in the dirt and see what sprouts.

***

^{* Steve Goodman wrote the song, but Arlo Guthrie’s version was and continues to be my inspiration.}

***

Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

April 26, 1977 [age 21]:

“I’d gotten a postcard from a life insurance company stating that if I so desired I could order a couple dictionaries from them for free. Of course I wanted some dictionaries!  I ordered them and a salesman called today and had me on the phone for about 15 minutes trying to get me to meet with him to discuss the insurance next week. Turns out they don’t mail any of the books – he gave me the address and I can personally go over to the office if I want, but I don’t want life insurance!  Rats. So much for the dictionaries.”

June 1, 1977 [age 21]:

“[My beagle] Peanuts got out this morning. She dug into [our next-door neighbors’] yard and then somehow made it out front and ran away with Bert, the Rosales’ dachshund. Mom drove around in the car, looking for them in vain, but [Mrs. Rosales] knew Bert’s favorite hangout is Noble School so she found both of them down there. I say, that girl surely gets around.”

June 18, 1977 [age 21]:

“[My beagle] Peanuts chewed up [my sister] Janine’s RETAINER last night. Ewww.”

June 20, 1977 [age 21]:

“I’m really ambivalent about going up to school in San Francisco this Fall. In many ways I’m ecstatic about getting free of San Jose, but then again, I’ll miss [my friends] Ted and Joe and Morris and my family. I love the City and I’ll be up there to catch all the fun, but it’s changed, so what if I don’t even know it any more? The homesickness may get to me, my roommate may be a horror, no privacy, my writing might dry up, etc. But maybe all that will be offset by my new independence, and I’ll be happy. I hope so. But there’s still my big question: what if I don’t get enough to eat??”

July 1, 1977 [age 21]:

“My room-cleaning is progressing fairly rapidly. My desk has been neatly sorted into manila envelopes marked “Souvenirs” or “Letters,” etc. ([my sister] Janine says that when I die, they’ll cremate me and put my ashes in a manila envelope marked “Paula.”)”

July 8–9, 1977 [age 21]:

“[My friend] Morris and I went up to Berkeley [to see Joan Baez in concert] today laden with all kinds of food and a bottle of white wine which, miraculously enough, we got by the door. (Morris brought a bottle of champagne wrapped up for Joan Baez and they actually brought it backstage to her). Joan was beautiful beyond words. Great humor, great presence, beautiful voice, whether a cappella, with her guitar, or with her backup band. The Berkeley crowd wore long peasant dresses or jeans and a floppy blouse. I thought I looked cool in my workshirt slung over my tank top, but I’d borrowed a strapless bra from [my neighbor] Suzanne Rosales and it was too big and kept sliding off. Not so cool.”

July 23, 1977 [age 21]:

“I watched ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ on T.V. with Mom & Dad tonight. How appropriate. I quote unquote identified with the tomboy girl named Mick in the movie and I loved it. My heart’s a lonely hunter but most of the time it’s my fault ’cause I hide inside.”

August 3, 1977 [age 21]:

“Mom thinks I have way too many books for my bookcase but Dad called me down to Piedmont [High School, of which he was the principal] to sort through a box of books that a teacher left behind. So I came home with 7 or 8 that I had to hurriedly stuff under my bed before Mom could see them. I think she’s having a midlife crisis. Meanwhile, I’m moving to SF State in a few weeks and time is passing me by because I just realized that my tan has faded and my journal is not full and I still can’t cook.”

August 4–5, 1977 [age 21]:

“I brought my coin collection to class today [I was a teacher aide in an ESL class] so that I could give Javier [one of our students] some of my duplicate coins. As it turned out, I felt compelled to give him nearly ALL my duplicates, and I hated my altruism the second I put them in his hand.”

August 29, 1977 [age 21]:

[I had just moved away from home and into the San Francisco State dorms.] “Things worked out pretty well last night. There was an open room with someone watching T.V. and after walking slowly past about 3 times I got the courage to knock. The girl was really friendly, name is Katie, and we talked for hours. We also went up to the 6th floor to scout out the ‘experimental’ rooms. I walked in on this half-naked guy named Arthur and his weird, spacey, Krishna-type roommate who told us that their floor was a commune-type place that was busy tilling the soil and didn’t like visitors. Weird. Then we visited Verducci, the rich dorm, and it gave me the creepy feeling that I was in the lobby of an expensive hotel. Pam, Rett, Katie, I, and this other newcomer named Mary sat around drinking Sambuca and polished off the whole bottle. Mary is so weird – she’s crawling with money and is very intelligent but looks and acts REALLY old. She’s 23.”

August 30, 1977 [age 21]:

“Unfortunately, my whole day was terrible because of my first day at work in the Dining Center. I did a horribly dumb thing – I was supposed to take some trays full of water out of the salad bar, and naturally they were full and too awkward, and I saw that the area on which they were sitting seemed to have drain holes, so I dumped them out. But I guess they weren’t drain holes. I heard a loud rushing sound and all those gallons of water poured out through a cupboard and onto the floor. It’s like I created a huge natural disaster.”

September 1, 1977 [age 21]:

“My new Thursday night class is called The California Scene, with a teacher who’s a real dolt – the kind of guy who’d show a whole film out of focus.”

September 3, 1977 [age 21]:

“I went to the Wharf [with two dormmates] today and got really tired. No one ever wants to eat, they just insist on messing around with salad and carrots.”