A Streetcar Named Desire

Lake Pontchartrain RV Park, New Orleans

A Sailor: Can I help you, ma'am?
Blanche DuBois: Why, they told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemetery and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields.

We like this RV park. We've been here before. It's just off Interstate 10 that runs though New Orleans and it runs a shuttle bus downtown. They have a pool and a bar and a supply of free books as well as a store that sells beer and RV supplies. It's on a wide canal that leads to Lake Pontchartrain.

The Desire line is no longer running in New Orleans. Desire was sold in 1948 to an entrepreneur in Chattanooga and then repurchased and retired again in 1997. There is a replica on the River Line, which I intend to ride in the morrow after my oyster Po-Boy sandwich.

We could probably spend a month in New Orleans without getting bored, but we have places to go and other things to see. Maybe we can stay at Betty's RV Park next in Abbeville, Louisiana if she has space for us. We want to suck crawfish heads, buy some Cajun delicacies at the Piggly Wiggly and dance to a Zydeco band.

I need to watch my "Easy Rider" DVD again and catch the New Orleans cemetery scene with the man with the umbrella.

Blanche DuBois: You're married to a madman.
Stella: I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.
Blanche DuBois: What you are talking about is desire - just brutal Desire. The name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?
Blanche DuBois: It brought me here. Where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be.
Stella: Don't you think your superior attitude is a little out of place?
Blanche DuBois: May I speak plainly?... If you'll forgive me, he's common... He's like an animal. He has an animal's habits. There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is. Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you - you here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you, that's if kisses have been discovered yet. His poker night you call it. This party of apes.