Terri Antholzner: Flower Child
April 2025For over four decades, the pushcart peddler has been doing her annual spring thing – spreading love, peace, and happiness on Jackson Square.
~ by Doug Brantley
photos by Ellis Anderson and Shawn Fink, courtesy Terri Antholzner
This column is underwritten in part by Jeannette Bolte, PhD
It’s a blustery, overcast day on Jackson Square, the billowing clouds heavy with promise of an afternoon thunderstorm. But in front of the Cabildo, just off St. Peter Street, is an eternal ray of sunshine that has brightened this corner spot for more than 40 years.
There, most weekends between December and May, you’ll find Terri Antholzner greeting passersby with a friendly smile and gentle spirit that has been her trademark since first rolling onto the Square during the early 1980s.
Over the decades, the dried-flower garlands Antholzner peddles from her wooden-wheeled pushcart have become synonymous with springtime in the French Quarter, crowning the heads of generations of locals and visitors alike.
“At times, it’s a lot of college girls,” she says of her clientele. “Spring break is usually really good. And Jazzfest. Or maybe they are in their 20s and 30s; everybody looks so young now that I’m older.”
One of only a handful of sanctioned Jackson Square vendors, Antholzner divides her time between New Orleans and Putney, Vermont, where she spends summers and early autumns picking apples and blueberries at picturesque Green Mountain Orchards, as she has since 1979.
The bucolic scene is far removed from the chaos of the Quarter, where over-amped musicians battle for tourists’ attention (and dollars) with equally amped-up breakdancers, jugglers, and magicians. Even brass bands are amplified these days, all but drowning out the soft-spoken Antholzner.
Either way, it beats a desk job.
Terri’s been picking apples each summer in Vermont for more than four decades
Equally at home in Jackson Square and in apple trees, photos courtesy Terri Antholzner
Growing up in New York, outside of Buffalo, Antholzner felt limited by the region’s long winters and stymied by suburban life and the secretarial job she acquired shortly out of high school.
“I did not want to be working indoors the rest of my life for a two-week vacation,” she says. “So, I figured out how to do it different.”
Her love of nature—and people—led her to a Hudson River Valley, social justice-minded farming community that was part of the broader Catholic Worker Movement.
“It wasn’t really affiliated with the church.” Antholzner notes. “It was more alternative lifestyle, which I was really interested in. It was the early ’70s, and it just felt like we could change the world and do good things.”
The late Kenny Przybylski and Terri Antholzner on the road in 1983, photo courtesy Terri Antholzner
Change her world did upon meeting “partner in crime” Kenny Przybylski while working on the farm. The two formed a fast and enduring friendship and would soon set off to pick oranges in Florida, cherries in Wisconsin, and apples in Washington state, mostly hitchhiking, occasionally hopping freight.
“Kenny was a wonderful traveling companion,” she says of their Bobby McGee-ish days crisscrossing the country on the fruit-picking circuit. “We fit well together. It was an incredible experience and great fun working with all different kinds of people.”
It was in 1982, around Tarpon Springs, where orange groves were being torn out to make way for more-profitable condominiums, that the duo decided to “develop city skills” and head to New Orleans.
“I felt immediately embraced by this crazy, wacky community of people,” Antholzner recalls, ticking off a list of colorful Quarter characters she quickly fell in with.
Artist Amzie Adams was her first landlord in the city; mask maker Michael Stark (aka, “King of the Hippies”) was another.
Terri and friend during Mardi Gras in the ‘90s, photo courtesy Terri Antholzner
“All these musicians and interesting people would stay at Michael’s for Jazzfest. He introduced me to Pete Seager, he introduced me to Odetta. I was really lucky to have such wonderful connections when I got here.”
Among them was Artemis Mathers, who operated a flower shop at the edge of the French Market, where he also sold hats and garlands adorned with dried flowers and ribbons. Additionally, the business included a number of carts stationed throughout the Quarter, one helmed by Antholzner, who also helped construct the headpieces.
photo by Shawn Fink
“He paid us a dollar a garland,” she says with a laugh, “so we’d make as many as we could. I would do 10 an hour; I can almost make them in my sleep.”
Antholzner and her cart secured their prime, permanent position on the Square in 1983 in the lead up to World’s Fair. And it’s from there she’s watched Quarter life ebb and flow since, becoming as much of a neighborhood fixture as those she fondly remembers.
“Gosh, there are so many,” she says. “Really, really funny characters. Ruthie the Duck Lady was always coming through on her roller skates on her way to the Alpine. And Pops, who was dating Ruthie, though they were always fighting. He would take his teeth out and wiggle his tongue, spoofing with the fraternity kids.
“Tuba Fats and his wife Linda [Young] were on the Square. Stoney, who played with Grandpa Elliot. Norman and Lionel Baptiste. Ernie, the shoe-shine guy. All these wonderful old guys. We’d have great conversations.”
Photographer David Richmond captured this photo of Terri and friends - including Tuba Fats - and it was later used in a magazine she still has.
In 1986, Antholzner and Przybylski rented a courtyard apartment (for $350 a month, or about $1000 in today’s dollars), in a Square-adjacent Royal Street complex where Truman Capote once lived, that she still occupies today (though the rent has increased considerably).
Not long after, Przybylski passed away, as did Mathers, who passed his business on to Antholzner and friend/coworker Joyce Bendas-Smith – who later married and moved on from the venture.
Over the years there have been brushes with fame (John Goodman, Minnie Driver) and background cameos in movies and commercials. And her garland designs have seen the addition of fabric daisies and paper roses; a few glass beads here, a dash of glitter there.
A 1980s watercolor by Jackson Square artist Leo Batista, courtesy Terri Antholzner
But for the most part, Antholzner sticks to tradition, which is what makes her now-iconic headwear so perennially popular.
“Everybody looks good wearing a flower crown,” she says. “And I think they fit in New Orleans, because people are more lighthearted and come here to have a good time.
photo by Ellis Anderson
Cover girl, 1991
“I’ll have mothers who say, ‘My mom got these for me, and now I’m getting them for my little girls!’”
And over time, Antholzner has seen the scene morph and change, with the Square’s long-signature artists giving way to a growing influx of psychics and tarot card readers, street poets and henna purveyors—and all that over-amplification.
Looking back, she laments the loss of connected camaraderie she once felt among fellow Square dealers. And mourns those friends and Quarter cohorts who have passed or moved on, all the while embracing the inevitability of evolution and age.
“The Square is fun…most of the time,” she acknowledges. “It’s hectic and noisy, but I love the mix of cultures and diversity. I tell my friends in Vermont I’m going to give up my apartment here and resettle full time up there. But then, I’m like, ‘I don’t know….’”
It’s an empty promise/threat she issues year after year, as she readies to head north for the season, before swooping back into town again a few months later like the solidly smitten snowbird she is.
“This is such an interesting community,” Antholzner says. “I love Vermont. It’s very healthy and liberal and I have many great friends there. But I can’t imagine not being here.
“It’s a crazy and quirky gig, but fun. It’s sort of a romantic thing, there’s an innocence about it. The real joy is when I put a garland on a little girl’s head, and she looks in the mirror and gets a grin ear-to-ear.
“I love that, the smiles.”
Terri with a young customer, Easter 2024, photo by Ellis Andereson
Your support makes stories like this one possible –please join our Readers’ Circle today!
