“After you get over the disappointment of the few
numbered blocks, it slowly dawns on you that New Orleans rejoices in the most
lyrical street names in the world. Where else can you take a walk down
Narcissus Street, or Venus, Adonis, or Bacchus? Not only are the gods so
honored, but also all the best human impulses, Community, Concord, and
Compromise. On my way to the Pontchartrain lakefront one day, riding with a cab
driver who blessed himself with the sign of the cross as we passed each
Catholic church (but not the other churches), I took note of the names of the
streets we crossed: Abundance, Treasure, Pleasure, Benefit, and Humanity. Then
I remembered the name of the wide thoroughfare on which we were traveling, a
boulevard so familiar that nobody thinks any more about the meaning of its name
— Elysian Fields! The paradisiacal home of the blessed after death is best
known, in temporal New Orleans, as the fastest way to get from the river to the
lake.”--Charles Kuralt, Charles Kuralt’s America (1996)
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