It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that it was the direct cause of my college choice, but it was certainly among the positive determining factors. My father and I were cautiously occupying a couple of stools at a New Orleans tavern a short time after I’d finished a school visit, with an hour or so to kill before leaving for the airport to catch our flight back east. As a high school senior with a fall birthday, I was still 17 years old and just shy of the then-legal drinking age. But as the barman casually sidled over to ask “What can I get y’all?” my dad had planned an appeal. “I’ll have a vodka tonic, tall glass,” he began. “And my son, well…he’s not quite 18 yet. You see, he’s down here visiting Tulane, he just had his interview, and as a little celebration we were wondering, y’know, if you thought maybe you could make a little exception, just this one time, it would really mean…” At this point the bartender cackled and raised his right hand, stopping my dad’s halting plea in mid-sentence. “Sir, let me tell y’all something,” he drawled with a wide smile. “Down here if you’re old enough to ask for it, you’re old enough to drink it.”

I had a beer. And Tulane had me.

So began four years of school at Tulane University, and a resulting long-term love of the mystical city in which it exists, New Orleans. Post-college I’ve twice dabbled with the idea of living there: once immediately following graduation, and then again after concluding a long work career in New York and seeking a potentially major change. Both would likely have been disasters for different reasons – my fellow alumni HJ’s counsel during my more recent pondering rang distinctly in my ears: “Dude, New Orleans isn’t a place you live,” he said with a note of patent obviousness, “it’s a place you visit!” On balance, I had to admit he was right.

Still, over the ensuing decades, and despite, I believe, exactly 12 trips back, I’ve always longed for the opportunity to engage in a real protracted visit, something more than a weekend, even if stretched to a third, fourth or fifth day, but a prolonged, lingering “stay,” where I could just be in the city, and pretend, if only briefly, to be something akin to a local. To eat at places you wouldn’t choose if only in town for a few days. Go grocery shopping. Do a load of laundry. To walk strange neighborhoods without any particular place to go. Even – and I realize this is blasphemous – stay in for a night. With musicians who set down roots at a given venue for an extended but still temporary run, it’s known as a “residency.” This April/May, then, it’s decided that I will be embarking on my long-awaited New Orleans Residency.

(And even though my wife will laugh hard at the laundry thing, I’ve already identified a drop-off wash-and-fold place in the French Quarter called Suds Dem Duds).

Then certain, let’s call them, welcome realities crept into my planning. My span of selected spring dates, not by coincidence, overlaps with Jazzfest, only the greatest live music festival experience in existence. I mean, I’m not not going to go to that, right? (and hell, why not parts of both weekends!). And the tranquil week before Jazzfest, it turns out that’s French Quarter Fest, a plethora of po-boys, partying, and a 4-day parade of music on Bourbon Street and beyond (all for free – seriously, can you beat New Orleans?!). But I also wanted badly to branch out of the customary N’awlins flow, and see some of the surrounding areas for which you’d never normally have the time. Like Cajun Country. Such as Lafayette, located in south-central Louisiana, the heart of “Acadiana” and the epicenter of cajun and creole heritage. And hey, would you look at that: they’ve got the Festival International de Louisiane, a 5-day music and cultural celebration, with their 40^th anniversary edition falling conveniently right within my dates.And I’m obviously not going to be doing this all on my own. In fact, months ago I began sketching out the likely events, places and dates, and mapping where I might optimally be able to slot potential co-conspirators. Which, as of now, seems to have fallen into place quite nicely: my perhaps frighteningly-detailed, multi-tabbed and cross-referenced trip spreadsheet currently includes a series of Residency visitors from combinations of family to representatives from multiple friend groups, along with some potential cross-over, with, at present, 8 different segments of dates and between 15-18 people in all. I’ve almost definitely gone too far.

There’s music lined up from start to finish (of course). But also an airboat tour of the Atchafalaya Basin, North America’s largest swamp, containing nearly one million acres of bayous and backwater lakes (along with plenty of alligators); a view of the Seven Sisters Oak in Mandeville, identified as the largest registered southern live oak tree in the country; a trip across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the world’s longest bridge continuously over water (spanning almost 25 miles); a stop at the Tabasco factory on Avery Island, where the McIlhenny family has exclusively made tabasco sauce for five generations; and a visit with my cousin and his cherished horse Dusty in Baton Rouge (my friend Zing, after reviewing details of his portion of the trip, offered “I can’t wait to meet your cousin’s horse, by the way”).

I’ve got reservations at some of the most prestigious, old-school restaurants in New Orleans (Commander’s Palace and Brennan’s), modern standards (Pêche and Sylvain), new openings (Delacroix and The Husky), the famous Friday Lunch at Galatoire’s (where guests can be known to stay through dinner), along with a series of venues plotted for slurping raw and char-grilled oysters (what could top a Crescent City oyster crawl?). There’ll be stylish cocktail lounges and stanky dive bars, fine art and history museums, brown bags of crawfish and go-cups. Maybe even time for some decidedly non-local stops like downing a Hurricane beside the Pat O’Brien’s courtyard fountain and dousing myself in powdered sugar falling from Café Du Monde beignets (I’ll have touristy guests, after all). And I hope to make one more trip to old-world Mosca’s in Westwego for their inexplicably succulent oyster pie. Oh, and did I mention a composite music plan (or plans) for pretty much every day and night? In truth, it’s become a rather imposing schedule. But as my friend Cek, among the last group of planned visitors, always likes to say, “You can’t go off itinerary unless you have an itinerary.”

The onset of the trip is still over a month away, but my thoughts have already progressed to the proper preparation for this unusual and, for me, unprecedented stint. Should I adopt a short-term program of strict diet, exercise and rest to pre-compensate for the perilous gluttony and debauchery to come? Or would it be better to start staying out late gorging buttery culinary delights and rum- and whiskey-based highballs to prepare my body for the expected gastro and sleep-deprived onslaught? I’ve spent actual time considering this.

For now I’ll just be biding my days, thinking over and then over again how best to fill, or leave un-filled, this long-considered sustained stay in and around New Orleans, that in some ways I’ve been dreaming about since that illicit pre-college beer in town with my dad. I’ll be hitting refresh on the numerous live music calendars for updated show announcements, delving into NOLA.com’s “Best Of” lists of the city for new discoveries, and shuffling activities in my spreadsheet to maximize what someone fortunate to be in the most magical city I know might do to optimize their “local” time.

And, as much as anything else, bingeing on some incredible New Orleans tunes. Say, like one by the inimitable Dr. John, indisputably one of the Crescent City’s all-time greatest artists, and someone who often bedecked himself in feathery Carnival finery (as in the video here). Not every day in New Orleans need be Mardi Gras, but as an anticipatory pre-Residency song it’s hard to resist a funky number with a title as on-the-nose as ‘Goin’ Back to New Orleans.’ Likely best consumed along with a very much of-age adult beverage. I know how to ask for that.

*A lagniappe: note the late cameo appearance in the above video by Pete Fountain, the legendary Dixieland clarinetist who my dad and I saw perform together literally dozens of times; once on our fateful, first school stopover, and then generally both Friday and Saturday nights for each of his many college visits thereafter. My friends dubbed us Fountainheads.