Submitted by Cynthia Walker Burton

A unifier is someone or something that brings people together promoting cooperation and harmony. “A Streetcar Named Desire” was a 1947 Broadway play by Tennessee Williams about a Southern belle who moved to New Orleans and suffered mental and morale degradation.

I rode a New Orleans streetcar just a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Here’s my account of that streetcar which I named Unifier.

There we were in the Crescent City, the Big Easy, NOLA! My friend and I visited the New Orleans Museum of Art to see the exquisite Faberge egg exhibition. We dined on classic cuisine including powdery beignets and cafe au lait at the famed Cafe du Monde. We walked the French Quarter and raucous Bourbon Street while nibbling Aunt Sally’s Creole pralines. But the streetcar ride is what I cherish most.

We were packed like crawfish on our 20 block streetcar tour. The atmosphere was a hodgepodge of excited chatter, joyous laughter and the heavy Southern accent of the conductor. It was a potpourri of people of every age, gender, culture, and color. To our left sat an elderly couple with walkers quietly observing. To our right, teenagers were engaged in animated chatter. A middle-aged blind man sat across from us with white cane in hand, intently sensing the surrounding stimuli. Costumed revelers were also aboard.

Suddenly, two ladies boarded our streetcar loudly and proudly announcing, “We’re from New York!” They immediately began belting out songs at the top of their lungs including “New York New York,” “Chicago,” “God Bless America,” and “All My Exes Live in Texas.” All eyes were fixed on this unplugged musical duo.

Everyone got caught up in the spontaneity of the unrehearsed concert.

The blind man joined in, revealing a rich tenor voice. The teenagers sang harmony. The conductor’s deep bass boomed. A tambourine jingled and a whistle tweeted shrilly. And my unabashed alto was unleashed as I joined the cacophony. We were a choir on fire on a streetcar named Unifier.