'The Big Easy' quite difficult for Mt. Airy family

by RICHARD McILHENNY

For our first vacation as a family of four, we decided to head down to New Orleans (nickname, "The Big Easy'), where we were invited to attend the wedding of Geoffrey Paterson and Amrita Lal. Geoffrey is an old friend of the family who migrated to New Orleans after becoming an optometrist in the mid-1990s. Apparently, everyone is either seeing mirages from the intense heat, or they are so drunk out of their skulls and shocked to see whom they staggered home with from Bourbon Street that there is a huge demand for corrective eyewear down there.

After realizing that he needed more out of life in the companionship department than the 16 or so cats he has collected (yes, Geoff is male), and being dissatisfied with dating scene there, he turned to the Internet and found Amrita, a beautiful and sweet girl of Indian descent who has no corrective eyewear that I know of, and they decided to tie the knot with a traditional Hindu ceremony, which in their case did not allow children.

Ignoring this trivial detail, we decided for some reason to bring the kids, 23-month old Jesse James and three-month old Daniel Boone. I was a little nervous about traveling with both of our beautiful, screaming boys, whom I love with all of my heart. But my wife Marissa had a life-long desire to see "The Big Easy," whose main tourist draw is that you can drink and puke and flash your private parts to people around you in the Most Haunted City in America, which sounds like fun for everyone I can think of except for my wife, who doesn't drink, is terrified of ghosts and is already flashing her boobs all around Philadelphia as she attempts to feed our young pioneer.

Regardless, we packed the car with our diaper bags, suitcases, stroller, bouncy chair, C-Pap machine, breast pump, toys, children's books, backpacks and all of the other things we needed for our rocking, partying time in New Orleans. YAHOO! This is going to be fun, whether we like it or not, I tried to say to myself as I pulled onto the Schuylkill Expressway, realizing that I forgot my sunglasses, which was the first and least of my problems on the trip.

After dropping the family and the luggage off with the skycap, I took the car to a lot and headed back to the airport to meet them at the gate. I approached security with my diaper bag, bouncy seat, and C-Pap machine, which is apparently a common terrorist disguise because after they moved the conveyor belt back and forth a few times trying to figure out what the C-pap was, I was asked to go to that little table with the guy with the latex gloves for some serious interrogation.

Now for those of you that don't know, a C-Pap machine is a very elaborate device that enables those of us with sleep apnea, (we snore), to breathe throughout the night and also for us to be in the same house with our spouses, who still love us even though we now have to sleep with a mask on with a big hose coming out of it, and also in my case a mouth guard to stop me from grinding my teeth. And what you have is what looks like an over-sized 12-year-old with a retainer who is about to go scuba diving in his underwear. Add a little bed head, morning breath and flatulence, and you have to wonder how she can keep her hands off of me.

Anyway, it's bad enough that I have to travel with the thing, but then this security person has to take it out and hold it up and ask me what it is and what I do with it and so the 48 people in line behind me are all looking at me like,  "what a freak!" So after I convince them that I am not going to hijack the plane to Syria with the thing, I meet the wife and kids at the gate and there is Geoff's mom, Leona, and sister, Stephanie, who help pass the time while we deal with the hour-and-a-half  flight delay because, as they say, "We need to get a new part for the plane and we're trying to get it off another plane," which just gave us warm and fuzzy feelings all over about flying.

So we board with all of our crap, and of course the kids are screaming at the top of their lungs for the first 15 minutes or so, which made us feel really popular with the other passengers, whom I glared it with a "Go ahead and say something? You think we're trying to make them cry?" kind of look, and then a guy in front of us was nice enough to lend Jesse his DVD player, and he watched Finding Nemo, which I can't recommend enough to everyone out there for a great film experience.

So after the three-hour flight, we got ourselves together and followed Leona and Stephanie to the airport shuttle, which I don't recommend if you are staying at our hotel, which is the last of 15 stops that our driver made, as he told us that we were "way, way, way, way, way, way far away" from the French Quarter and all the great bars and restaurants that the town was famous for. Our ride from the airport, which was 20 minutes away, took us an hour-and-a-half, and we were exhausted and could not wait to get to our rooms to unpack and unwind after our long journey.

Now the Columns Hotel is in the Garden District, which is where Anne Rice, the novelist, lives. It is a gorgeous area with mansions from the mid to late- 1800s that are mind-blowing in their size and beauty. The Columns was originally a home built in 1883 by a wealthy mahogany and tobacco merchant (he helped destroy our rainforests while giving us lung cancer), and has big pillars outside and verandas where you can sip your mint juleps while you watch the trolley cars go by. Brooke Shield's first film, Pretty Baby, was shot there, which I highly recommend that you avoid watching.

The rooms are spacious with beautiful antiques and what appear to be blood stains on the comforters, and there are no TV's or refrigerators, which is just perfect when you are traveling with a toddler who is addicted to Dora the Explorer and Elmo, and who needs cold fresh milk on a regular basis. The bar, which is extremely loud at night and can be heard from your room, is right next to the big sweeping staircase that leads you upstairs.

So my whole family, all four sisters, some of their significant others, my parents, grandmother and the Patersons were staying at the hotel, which made for a lot of fun. I figured that Marissa and the boys would go to bed at 9 or 10 or so, and I would be able to sneak out and have some fun a couple of the nights, maybe hit the French Quarter and have some drinks and catch a flashed boob or two, go to the casino and play some poker, that kind of stuff. Well,  as soon as we get in the room Marissa is spooked out. The place is giving her the major willies. I assure her that there is nothing to worry about, my parents were down the hall, my grandmother and sister were across from us, this would be fun, blah, blah, blah ...

So I went downstairs to get some ice and to put our milk in the hotel's kitchen refrigerator for the first of many, many times and the bar manager Craig was nice enough to help me out. So I asked him if the place was haunted and told him how Marissa was so freaked out and has a major fear of ghosts.

And he said, "Well, this is the most haunted city in America, and sure this place is haunted; people sometimes hear little girls running around the hallways and up and down the stairs and they are supposedly the children of the original owner who hung himself after his wife died, but you should be fine, the only other place that we hear of a lot of activity is in this one room. Which room are you staying in?

"Which room are you talking about?" I asked him, in case it was our room and he wouldn't fess up.

"Um, Room 21."

"Yep, that's where we are," I replied.

"Oh boy," he says, "we had this one lady who stayed here not too long ago who checked in, walked into room 21, put her suitcase on the bed, which was made, went into the bathroom, came out and the bed was like someone had slept in it. She left immediately and we have had a bunch of other people who came downstairs and wanted to check out at all times of the night, and didn't care if they had to pay for the room. They just wanted to get out of here."

"Yep that room is haunted all right!" chimed in a pretty cocktail waitress who was listening to our conversation.

To be continued.