The moment we entered the New Orleans city proper, drops of rain began to splash on the windshield. These were not your average raindrops from Minnesota or Humboldt County. They were gargantuan—each one at least the size of a large pitted grape—and it only took a few drops to completely blur my view. I turned the windshield wipers to full blast, but it didn’t help. We were in the middle of a tropical downpour.

Apparently Louisiana had been getting hit with hurricanes the few weeks before we arrived. The storms had largely subsided but rainfall was still quite frequent. We hadn’t even considered the hurricane factor when planning the trip, and at this point nothing was going to stop us from having the excursion of a lifetime.

I was fresh out of high school, trailblazing across the country with my best friend of 12 years, Marcus. He had hardly been outside of Minnesota, and I had never been to the South, so in that sense we felt a lot like Lewis and Clark. Somewhere along the line we were hoping to meet up with a Sacagawea or two, but that’s another story all together.

Thomas Jefferson purchased New Orleans from the French as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Many don’t realize that originally, Jefferson had intended only to purchase the city of New Orleans. But Napoleon’s forces and budget were growing weak in France and its colonies, and times were becoming desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so when ambassadors from the United States came to make a bid for New Orleans, Napoleon made them an offer they could not refuse. Instead of the city of New Orleans, America could have the entire Louisiana Territory at the amazing price of $15 million, but they had to decide within a set amount of time. Hence, without the prior consent of President Jefferson, the ambassadors had to make the decision themselves.

Now, two hundred years later, Thomas Jefferson is the man credited for making the Louisiana Purchase, despite the fact that he knew nothing about it until the ambassadors returned from France.

Marcus and I were relaxing in our room in the Hotel Royal in New Orleans’s French Quarter. Most of the time when you see New Orleans on television, you’re seeing the French Quarter. It makes up the heart and soul of the annual Mardi Gras celebrations and is a hot spot for TV’s “Cops” and the infamous “Girls Gone Wild” videos. It’s also the center of tourist activity, swarming with cops, and in my experience, the only part of the city where African Americans appear to be a statistical minority. In all, New Orleans is 67 percent African American.

I had gotten travel tips from a friend of mine who had stayed at a hostel in town. The most important thing she told us was to stay in the French Quarter. Not just stay in a hotel in the French Quarter, but also physically stay in the French Quarter, especially at night, because, as she so eloquently put it, “There’s about a million local black kids who are just waiting for a rich white kid to jack.”

Now, I am not a racist. But I make no effort in being politically correct if it conflicts with my views or a point I’m trying to make. Just like everyone else, I have beliefs and perspectives about all cultures that I’ve gathered from my personal experiences and the mass media. But whatever ideas or conclusions I come to, I try my best to keep an open mind and not judge individuals based on my limited white perspective.

Keeping this in mind, I find it safe to say, judging by my experience, that race relations between blacks and whites in New Orleans haven’t changed much since before the civil rights movement. Many people feel this way about the South in general. But having traveled through other Confederate states already and gotten a pretty good sense of the mood, I can assure you New Orleans is definitely one of the worst parts. It’s one of those places that give northerners justification for stereotyping the whole Mississippi Delta region. Integration seems limited mostly to matters controlled by law. This isn’t to say there is no mixing of cultures. Cultural diversity is one of the city’s merits and main tourist attractions. It’s the relation between white and black locals that shocked me. I didn’t see a single white person hanging out with a single black person except among other obvious tourists. The word “nigger” pops up like common speech in practically every sentence when talking with the locals. Every single white person we met told us to stay within the limits of the French Quarter, especially at night, or “the spooks” would get us.

Crime is high in New Orleans, with a per capita murder rate of 4.3 percent in 2001, compared to the 1.4 percent rate in my hometown of Minneapolis. The percentage of how much was committed by black people on white tourists didn’t concern me at the time, but when someone warns me about how to avoid being a victim, 95 percent of the time I’m going to do what they say.

Still, racism among the white locals is unbelievably prevalent and seems to be practically taken for granted by the general society. How on Earth it could get like this (or rather, stay like this) is a dusty old jigsaw puzzle to me, and a lot of the pieces are missing.

I kept this somewhere in the back of my mind but proceeded with confidence as Marcus and I began exploring the streets of the French Quarter, first by vehicle, then by foot.

The city is old. You need not know any history to know that. You can smell its age—the stagnant, sweet mustiness that could only come with 320 years of imperialism, war, blood, slavery, hatred, drunkenness, sex, crime, and of course, tourism. The architecture is a telltale reminder of a time that once was. Many of the original buildings have been restored or are still standing including those that used to be brothels, hotels and speakeasies. Every now and then we would pass an old plantation house, set far back on huge lots with trees covered in Spanish moss and huge gates at the front. I imagined there was still a lot of old Southern aristocratic blood living in the area, made rich and powerful from decades of oppression. I wondered how much power they still possessed over local economy and government.

We drove through a lot of residential areas. This was when we started to get an actual idea of how some people in New Orleans live. Most of the neighborhoods we saw seemed predominantly black and fairly poor. The unemployment rate in New Orleans is 11 percent, with 45 percent of all households having an annual income of less than $25,000. All of the houses were quite old and beat up, many looking from the outside like they had only two or three rooms. The front yards were small, strewn with clotheslines full of dirty white undergarments. Naked children and their broken toys were scattered about the rough, patchy grass. Seeing such tiny mangy yards and dilapidated buildings left me with the idea that New Orleans, much like other parts of the South, never fully recovered from the Civil War and the loss of slavery as an economic backbone.

Some houses with outdoor balconies still have “Romeo Spikes” on the supporting pillars. These are crowns of long steel spikes once used by fathers to keep their young daughters safe from their male callers. Many a young Romeo met his fate impaled on these barbaric creations, a tour guide later informed us.

We had only walked about a half-block from the hotel when we saw a tavern called The Morgue. Neither one of us was 21, but I had a good feeling that it wouldn’t matter. We strode in confidently and sat at the bar just like we do it every day (which we would for the next week). The pretty young bartender asked us if we were 21, and I told her we were. She didn’t ask for identification, so I ordered a Chartreuse on the rocks, knowing this was probably the only time I would ever find a bar that served it.

Chartreuse is traditionally an after-meal drink with a very distinctive and acquired taste. I was first exposed to it when I was 14. It was in a book I read by Poppy Z. Brite entitled “Lost Souls,” about a group of modern-day vampires who rape, kill and get drunk in New Orleans. So, of course, I immediately wanted to try it.

This thick yellow or green liqueur is made by an order of Carthusian monks in Grenoble, France. The exact process of making it is protected by a sacred vow of silence, but it is flavored with peppermint, hyssop, and orange peel. Take a swig and you’ll see that the taste is thick, sweet, and strong (110 proof), and in my opinion, it tastes somewhat like black licorice. Your throat will burn for about 30 seconds but with a pleasant minty aftertaste. A warm feeling enters your stomach and your face becomes warm and rosy. The “high” is different from most other alcohol—uplifting, and even enlightening. It’s my favorite, but I wouldn’t recommend drinking a whole lot of it to get drunk—it is quite sweet and thick. It’s best served straight up or on ice.

Near the end of the War of 1812, soon-to-be president of the United States Andrew Jackson led defenses against the British in Louisiana. Jackson, warmly referred to as “Old Hickory,” led the American forces to an amazing victory over the invaders at the Battle of New Orleans. But all the blood had been shed in vain. A treaty had been signed in Paris prior to the battle, and news traveled too slowly to reach the platoons in time. Nonetheless, Jackson was considered a war hero and was later elected president of the United States in 1829. This “hero” would later go on to institute Indian removal which pushed thousands of natives onto reservations or to their deaths on the Trail of Tears.

After finishing our drinks and having a few more, we set off to further explore the French Quarter. Bourbon Street is the liveliest part of the quarter. Almost every business on the street is a bar, restaurant or nightclub. Blues and jazz poured out of the doors and filtered into the streets as we walked by. Public drunkenness is practically a given—in fact, all you need to do to legally drink in public is bag your bottle. Though it was nowhere near Mardi Gras season, it was not at all unusual to see pretty young girls bearing skin to groups of drunken guys for cheap, mass-produced plastic beads.

It was getting dark, and our alcohol-filled, food-deprived stomachs were quaking with starvation. We began looking for a decently priced place to eat, ignoring the fact that we were in a tourist epicenter and that our options were severely limited. Eventually, we saw a dimly lit restaurant on a corner that looked sparsely populated from the outside.

As we jaywalked across the street and approached the restaurant, two black guys came around the corner and positioned themselves between the front door and us. One was big and built like a linebacker, clad in all black with a somber look on his face. The other was smaller, dressed in an iridescent red basketball jersey. His expression looked a little friendlier than his bodyguard’s, and I noticed he had a Band-Aid on his cheek in the fashion of rap superstar Nelly.

“Hey, you dudes look like you want some hash,” the Nelly-guy told me.

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

“Oh, come on,” he insisted. “I’ll let ya have a free sample. Nah don’t tell me you don’t wanna smoke some free hash.”

Now try to understand that I was still a naïve young fool at the time with little experience in the real world. Understand that I also had no intention of buying any hash and that I normally would never take up an offer to do or buy anything a stranger tries to give me in a place like New Orleans, especially after hearing so many warnings. But we were in a relatively populated corner of the city at a reasonable hour, right outside of an open restaurant. And again, I was a naïve young fool, so I thought, “What could go wrong?”

Well, the first thing to go wrong was that he broke off a small chunk of the alleged hash and stuck it in the end of a menthol cigarette. At this point I cannot defend my actions whatsoever. Smoking a stranger’s contraband in unfamiliar turf in public is one thing, but smoking it in a menthol cigarette is crossing the line. After taking a semi-puff of the wretched cigarette and passing it on, I told him no thanks and turned to enter the restaurant. My mouth tasted like cheap cigarettes and dog crap.

Now the larger one had something to say.

“Oh, now you gonna smoke some and not pay for it?” He was fuming. The tone in his voice sounded like he meant serious business. “That’s ten dolla’s each. One hit, two hit, that’s twenty bucks. Pay up!”

I began to explain my reason for not buying any, trying to ad-lib something besides “I think you’re trying to sell me fake drugs,” but he wouldn’t hear it.

He looked like he was about to either implode or lunge at as us when his friend stepped in front of him with his hands out. “Chill, nigga, I’ll handle this.”

His friend stared at us with cold, violent eyes and blew steam from his nose like a bull for what seemed like five minutes. Finally, he turned and stomped down the block, venting his rage along the way with unintelligible grunts and mutters.

His friend turned back toward us. “Y’all sure you don’t wanna buy none?”

“Yeah,” I said, not taking my eyes off his friend down the block, kicking and punching a granite wall next to him like it was me.

“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be around...” I didn’t even hear his last words as we rushed into the restaurant and sat down for dinner.

Since this occurred, I haven’t drawn a lot of conclusions about the city of New Orleans. In order to accurately do so, I would need to spend a lot more than five days there, and I would need to spend at least half of it outside the French Quarter. But there is one conclusion I have come to ¾ that whatever might and glory New Orleans once represented has been reduced to ruins. What is left is one of the last remaining strongholds of a dying time with dying values, unable to let go of the past and too poor to move into the future.

The incident with the drug dealers set a mood for the rest of our stay in New Orleans, but not one of fear or insecurity. I think this rude awakening sort of shocked us both into the real world and into a higher maturity “bracket,” if you will. Actually, I’m really glad it happened. Now I’ll know never to trust anybody trying to sell me black-market goods on the streets of New Orleans. Besides, if it hadn’t happened, there would be many more things about the city’s people and culture that don’t make sense to me. Having this unique experience gave me a new perspective of what it’s like to live a life beside my own, a life I will never be able to fully understand no matter how poor or decrepit or old or diseased I become. A life I will never know. Just another piece to the jigsaw puzzle.