Yesterday, they kicked off the return of the famous street cars to St. Charles Avenue, doing it as New Orleans always does: with a parade. The cars have been running on Canal Street (from the river to the cemeteries) for perhaps a year now, but this is the first time we’ve had them back on St. Charles. The run is shorter than before, only to Napoleon, but that still gets Tulane and Loyola students to class, and gives tourists the best ride in town through the incredible mansions of Uptown.

We’re told the line will be extended on to Carrollton by next Spring. The ride is $1.25 and a trip down memory lane. To my knowledge–which is limited, of course–New Orleans and San Francisco are the only American cities that have retained these street cars.

I was born in 1940 and can still hear the street cars from Birmingham downtown streets in my mind, going back to the late forties. The sound was so distinctive–the creaking, metal-on-metal shrieking, it was beautiful. Later, Birmingham modernized and went to trolleys, those fore-runners of city buses that ran on electricity by means of overhead poles and hot wires. They were quieter, the rails were pulled up from the streets which made automobile travel easier, but something was lost. Whatever it was that was lost, we still have it, at least on Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue.

When you come to this city, you absolutely have to ride the street car. Admittedly, it’s not very comfortable–the seats are wooden planks–but you’re doing it for the experience.

I will confess to having sat at a sidewalk cafe’ having a late lunch and reading my newspaper while the tourists went by on street cars, taking in the sights of which I was a part. I felt so European.

Football fans in this city are experiencing the best and the worst of it. LSU’s team is Number One in all the college rankings. If they hold up against their next two opponents, then win in the SEC championship–some pretty big ifs there–they play in the Louisiana Superdome on January 7 for the national championship, perhaps against Oregon.

The Saints, however, keep adding more grey hairs to everyone’s heads. Against incredibly high expectations, they opened the season with four straight losses, then came back and won the next four games. Yesterday, Sunday, they were playing the winless St. Louis Rams. Winless means the Rams had lost all 8 games this season, so naturally, this one is a gimme, right? Had the Saints won, this would be the first time in NFL history that a team lost the first four games, then won the next five in a row. It was not to be. St. Louis looked like the champions of old, winning by a score of 37 to 29. A sportswriter called the Saints’ effort “some of the worst football a team can play.”

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. Thank you, Charles Dickens, for that memorable line which has been overused to death, but which applies to this city in a hundred ways.

We have a convention in town which was scheduled prior to Katrina and which did not cancel, thank you mayors and city leaders from around the nation. The National League of Cities will bring to New Orleans some 3,500 mayors, police chiefs, and city council members from one end of America to the other. They will be brainstorming ways to reduce crime, strengthen city finances, and encourage public transit. No doubt, they will be taking the street cars.

The paper is now publishing a daily list of road closings. In post-Katrina New Orleans, finally some of the streets are being repaired and major thoroughfares are getting improvements. This makes for more headaches in the short run, but we will gladly endure the pain for the gain.

Finally, here is a brief letter to the editor such as we’ve not seen before. Debbie Snyder of Destrehan writes: “The best part of my day is 6 a.m., when I devour The Times-Picayune with my morning coffee.”

“All of your writers are so very talented…(and then she names some). They are so very entertaining. First thing in the morning, I’m having a laugh–it’s great medicine for the soul. I applaud their God-given gifts.”

Recently, I sent a note to Editor Jim Amoss concerning the allegations against Una Anderson, in which I said something to the effect that: “The Times-Picayune is our hero, much in the same way the Washington Post was in the nation’s capital following Watergate. However, this puts a heavy burden on you to get your stories right. I have no idea where the truth lies concerning Pampy Barre’s claims that she received a bribe. But we are counting on you to get the story right.”

The Louisiana Baptist Convention meets in Alexandria today, Monday, through Tuesday night. So, I’ll be there with a thousand of my closest friends, and back Wednesday. Pray for us.