Some natives refer to northshore newcomers as “come-heres” or “come-overs.” However, their actual disdain, if any, is tempered with a sense of inevitability - not to mention the probability that they’re really transplants themselves! After all, unless you were born here, you’re technically not a native - you’re a newcomer.

Patrick Clanton’s family goes back eight generations in St. Tammany. Owner of Jewel’s Pipes & Cigars and clearly the wittiest tobacconist in the parish, he muses that his friend Adelaide Boettner’s family first moved to Mandeville in the 1930s. Adelaide is a member of the Mandeville city council. “She still considers herself a come-here. I couldn’t believe she felt that way,” he says.

To trick newcomers, the old-timers laid out the roads to thoroughly confuse drivers - even those with excellent logic and navigational skills. For example, traveling south of I-12 on Highway 190, you can continue straight ahead at the intersection of Highway 22 onto what becomes North Causeway Boulevard - or take a left onto, yep, Highway 190 again toward Slidell and beyond. By the way, Highway 190 in north Covington is called Collins Boulevard. What’s more, to the west toward Goodbee, Highway 190 becomes Old Hammond Highway, but only after it is called East Boston Avenue and Business 190. Get it? Don’t try to figure it out.

Nor should you be disappointed when you can’t find the hill in Covington. You won’t get a nosebleed or even have to climb to get to the well-known (and often referred to in directions) Claiborne Hill, site of a currently vacant shopping center that actually used to be sort of a hill, compared to the flatland around it. It is at the intersection where you turn onto Boston heading into downtown. According to longtime resident Dr. Kenneth Nolan, because the surrounding area was built up to the hill’s original height, the hill is imperceptible today. In fact, the only high point is the overpass to get to - you know - Collins Boulevard.

Another no-longer-in-evidence landmark is Hotsy Totsy Road. You can almost gauge the tenure of a come-here by his or her reference to the Mandeville road now called Lonesome Road. The reason? The name originally referred to a brothel located down the road from where Mandeville’s police station now stands. Some folks thought, “Yes, we’re considered a bedroom community here, but let’s not get carried away.” They might have taken it a bit to the other extreme.

It is common for come-heres to quickly adopt the thought that we ought to blow up the bridge. The laissez-faire attitude of metro New Orleans seems to slow down to an even more comfortable pace over here, and the inclination for newcomers is to keep it to themselves once they settle here in the Ozone Belt. (Well, it used to be called the Ozone Belt, when ozone was still cool.)

Newcomers really like the vast quantity of trees here. One of the first things they do is tell their builder which trees on their little piece of heaven can give way to the new home’s floor plan. Then they get upset when the trees that survived the cut die suddenly because of the amount of fill required to raise their new castle to its appropriately elevated status. Maybe that’s why the cellular telephone people came up with the tree/utility-tower combo! These camouflaged towers pop up whenever residents raise enough hell about the ugly appearance of cell towers. I s’pose, if you squint your eyes real tight and wiggle your head, they might look like real trees. Kinda. They don’t fool woodpeckers, that’s for sure.

These, and so many other changes, have been made on the way to becoming who we are. And all of us - old-timers and come-heres alike - have it really good on the northshore. It’s just a matter of perspective.

Major case in point was my recent encounter with fellow realtor and frustrated writer James Moise, whose family has lived here for generations. When I told him about the story I was writing for the magazine, he looked me square in the eye and recited an incredible piece he’d composed some years back. It was written in response to Walker Percy’s comment in the New Yorker magazine that Covington was “an attractive but nice non-place.” The phrase stuck in Jim’s mind and he concocted this retort, which Percy enjoyed. Moise gave me permission to edit the lengthy piece for publication here, though he commented that it is “a bit waggish and acidic for an upscale uppie-yuppie magazine.” Here ‘tis…

BEING HERE

By A. Ben Hear (aka James Moise)

In the beginning there was a void, and the Spirit of St. Tammany moved undisturbingly thru the nothingness of loblolly and longleaf pines floated between the Bogue Falaya and the Tchefuncte Rivers. Theory was this NonNessOfBeing was surrounded by a foreign country, possibly Louisiana, and was in effect attached thereto and made a part thereof. Indeed, there was some empirical evidence to warrant such a premise. After all, Earl Long, Jimmie Davis, and Chep Morrison, wrapped in vapors like apparitions, appeared every four years or so to beg the vote and support of the theoretical electorate. Then too, the residents of this NonPlace were known to consume the seasoned and spiced crustaceans from the Gulf or the Lake, to say nothing of the dwarf lobsters that infested the bottom muck of the great swamps of the Great State. Such consumption demanded the spirited hops and barley known as Regal or Jax. Yet the seafood so ingested, to say nothing of the bellied brews, were merely imports. The native produce was ozone air, Spanish moss, and a particular strip of asphalt known as Jahncke Avenue. Indeed, there was little to recommend that this NonNess of Existence was a part of anything, to say nothing of Uncle Earl’s fiefdom.

One morning, the Almost Tropical Sun melted away the fog and the mist and it arose on death-like and skeletal spindles from the vast and glimmering but stunningly shallow lake: Span after span after span after span after span after span after span after span after god-awful span of prestressed concrete. We heard the bell toll as a dollar was paid. The grim reaper held forth his scythe.

They came at first for a Sunday afternoon spin in the country and found the air was cool and clean and scented with pine, the water so incredibly delicious that it was tasted to the heart of the gut. As time passed, more came. They came here to get away from it there, that which they created for themselves - and strangely and so predictably they insisted on bringing it with them. They did. They spun chain saws and poured concrete and built cement block cubicles to house their cheap and gaudy discounts. As time passed, more came. They came here to erect neon icons in honor of mammon, signs of flashing arrows that enjoined the passer-by to EAT their franchised hamburgers and donuts and dead chickens that warranted a “pawdie tah goe awn inside cha moudt.” As time passed, more came to put their spitzer-shaped speed boats to the surface of the Bogue Falaya, and with the vacant zest of hollow-headed and pathetic little ants they tossed in their spent beer cans with relish and glee and abandonment. As time passed, they came here to add their insult to our injury and rechristened the Great Spirit as the North Shore. For they were good at what they did, these that did but kill. Then, after the funeral, after the sweat ponds on the forearm, and the silent slice of the spade and the braying of the mule, they looked upon the bloodied corpse of the Been-Here and said it was good what we done. It was fair what we done. For what we done was just and American. See here, the Been-Here didn’t get the Bottom Line and had an Anti-management Attitude!

Oh, dear friend! Oh, dearest, dearest friend! Surely there is a just and loving Father above. By His Providence, He shall damn these vile reprobates and sluttish libertines to eternal hell fire and everlasting pain! Which they deserve! Which they deserve! Which they deserve! As God as my witness! Which they deserve!

Copyright 2003, M&L Publishing, all rights reserved.