View current page
...more recent posts
Limestone Magnificence
I wasn't sure if the airport bus still ran from the corner of Tulane and Broad so I left my house three hours before my flight and walked up Rocheblave across Canal and zigged over to Dorgenois. There were a few little dudes hanging out in front of that store at the corner of Palmyra with whom I purposely made no eye contact or in anyway let on that I was aware of their presence lest they think I was hunting for drugs. I fit the profile.
This was nine o'clock in the morning and although it was an unreasonable thing for me to be thinking I still felt somewhat secure in my walking. The two recent murders in this five block stretch had not left a psychic residue that I could feel unless you suggest that this writing is proof to the contrary. Over the years dozens and dozens of people have been murdered in this area which surrounds the Courthouse/Parish Prison of New Orleans. The killings were happening when a young Louis Armstrong ran around this neighborhood and they continue to happen. That the situation hasn't improved in one hundred years is just a fact I am laying on the table like loose change. You can put the change in your pocket or you can toss it in a cup, where you forget about it and don't care all that much when your kids steal it.
Standing on the corner by the pay phone I waited for the bus I wasn't sure would come. The Chinese restaurant was to my back next to the bright yellow Bail Bond office next to the brand new Taco Bell/Pizza Hut. Straight across Tulane Ave. is an original 50's style MacDonalds. Caddy cornered from the corner on which I stand is the Courthouse rising up in all its soot covered limestone magnificence.
Some fellow riders approached and I asked one of them did the airport bus still stop here and she told me yes it did but I had better wave it down when it came or it might pass right by. It was only a few minutes later when the woman said "here it comes" and I was on my way. It cost a dollar fifty which I thought was a good deal considering a cab ride would be twenty dollars.
Before I was on my way, before any fellow riders had approached, I was standing alone. The three lanes of traffic between me and the median are travelling north. Stopped at the red light protecting Broad St. is a red high end SUV. The clean cut well dressed young man in the driver's seat is bobbing his head to loud rap music vibrating from his car stereo. An attractive young woman moving towards me in the crosswalk pauses in front of the young man's car and does a little dance. He just looks at her. She smiles at him. The light is staying red longer than I thought was normal.
The woman said, "you heard your friend was killed?"
"Who?"
"Cal."
"No, when?"
"Two days ago, in his driveway."
"I haven't been seeing him much," the man said.
"Yeah, he's dead," the woman said, moving towards me now on the curb. The light turned green and the young woman waved at the young man but he did not wave back.