House burning
We were headed uptown to Casamento’s to take mom to lunch and were driving down Napoleon when we saw a big mansion burned down to the foundation – the firemen still had the hose on the remains. The adjacent mansion had been left a shell as if a firebomb exploded.
Later, I learned a house on St. John Court had burned down many years ago. Ms. Marie said everyone came out to watch the old house burn. It was a big, beautiful antebellum house with a gallery all around. Since I’ve been in the neighborhood, there is only a bare lot that the owner is selling and asking way too much for – $500K – the lot is used primarily for parking by the residents on the Court up until recently when someone put a bunch of fence posts up to block cars during Jazz Fest.
Apparently, the large house had two spinsters living it who used to put real candles on their enormous Christmas tree. That wasn’t what burned down the house. But it made me think that when my uncle did our genealogy a while back it was very curious how many women had died in house fires. My mother’s people were land poor and came to the country very early, working the land all the way till they got to Louisiana.
My lament is for the beautiful houses that can never be rebuilt.