New Orleans Flower Vendor
I moved down to New Orleans in January, 1975, with a group of friends, based entirely on my friend Eric’s recommendation that it was cheap and happening. And it was incredibly cheap. A place to crash on the floor of the Head Inn cost a dollar, and for a mere 15 bucks a week, you could rent a room there. You could get an excellent bowl of red beans and rice for 40 cents at Buster Holmes’ legendary restaurant, and a hamburger with everything cost less than a dollar at the Port o’Call, which had a great juke box.
Although I had travelled many miles at that point, I hadn’t worked at anything but childcare, so I needed to find a job that required no skills or experience. I managed to land a gig as a street vendor, selling flowers on Royal St. from a colorful cart. Every afternoon, we vendors would set out over the cobblestones with our buckets of roses and carnations to locations determined by our boss. My spot was on Royal St. and I was glad it wasn’t Bourbon St- Royal was wild enough. On Bourbon, folks couldn’t get though the crowds to make a purchase.
It wasn’t enough to just stand by the cart and look cute; you needed to have a shtick or a gimmick. Being from NY, I harassed people with my catchy rhymes, like “Don’t be sour, buy a flower!” and “Flowers are beautiful, Flowers are fine, Buy some of my flowers, so I can buy wine”. The only vendor who consistently outsold me was Agnes, who was Belgian and had long blond hair and a sexy accent and wore a long, flowing skirt.
Having a cart to stand by was the best way to watch the pre-Mardi Gras madness of the French Quarter. It gave me an anchor, an excuse to be on the street all evening, and it gave my friends a good rendezvous point. I met all sorts of people by my flower cart, including a Dutch guy who ended up moving in with me. One night as I was standing there, I spotted my childhood best friend from NJ stumbling down the street hanging onto some guy I could tell she’d just met.
Our shifts ended at midnight and we’d wheel our carts back from our various locations and collect our pay and often head over to the Café du Monde for some (cheap) chicory coffee and hot, sweet, greasy beignets.
The down side of standing by a cart in the French Quarter in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras was the amount of police brutality I witnessed. On the Saturday night before Mardi Gras, I watched the cops beat a fellow up for no apparent reason, and when he hit the ground next to my cart, I decided that I really didn’t want to be out there any longer. Despite my boss telling me I was a fool to quit just before the biggest event of the year, my flower-selling career ended that very night. It was the right choice, because after that the streets became all but impassable with Mardi Gras madness, and I was free to go play in it.
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