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Email From NOLA IIn
Houses left vacant here in New Orleans are being occupied by rodents.
Hurricane winds or those created by the many helicopters flying overhead post-K caused roof damage on the front part of M's house on Dumaine and a couple of rains thereafter caused part of her ceiling to fall down in the front room. An opportunist or two then came and tossed the place and the subsequent effect is that of an interior tornado.
The back shed got crunched by a tree and another tree rests on her roof and knocked down the back chimney stack. I've been over there cleaning up a bit and throwing debris into the street for the cleanup crews to pick up. There are three separate half billion dollar contracts for the cleanup and the estimated accumulated garbage so far disposed of now equals three years worth of normal garbage pickup. And believe what I'm telling you--that is the tip of the garbage iceberg here in New Orleans, and I don't know if 1.5 billion dollars is going to cover it or where it will all end up going. So that will be an ongoing aspect of this catastrophe, although, let me just awkwardly insert this, possibly competing with the crippled mail system, and non-functioning utilities for top spot on that list of things you never thought you would see disrupted for this long in a major city, in a first world country.
I pulled a rain damaged couch away from a rain damaged, mildewed wall and there was a dead squirrel behind it. I don't really like squirrels any more than I like other members of the rodent family and in fact the cementing of my dislike for squirrels began in the Dumaine house many years ago, when I had to climb over their dried, dead carcasses while doing renovation work in the attic. At night you could sometimes hear them obviously clad in army boots galloping around the wood framing of the attic. So I wasn't as grossed out by the dead squirrel as much I was pleased to see the demise of it.
When I started dragging the couch a little farther a live rat the size of Amsterdam scurried out and headed for that small hole in the floor. I do not remember that hole being there when I formerly shared occupancy and wondered if it was a hidey hole or an in and out transfer hole for some of M's less than law abiding mentees. I let out a loud yelp like a jimlouis and then went through all the dance moves of revulsion. So, you see, I do dance, you just have to get me in the right mood.
I went out on the front porch and saw something that shocked me almost as much as the live rodent. It was a thing that used to swarm these streets in such great number that you could barely keep track of them or identify them as individual things. You might successfully identify one or two, or very possibly even 15 or 30, but sure as you thought you had a handle on their number, three or four or 15 or 30 new ones would show up.
It was a young black boy pushing a bicycle with flat tires down the street. I bet he heard me yelp like a jimlouis. I hope I wouldn't have to kill him for it. He asked me if I had a bicycle and I said no but that I was looking for one. Then I remembered that little pink bike with the ghetto-retrofitted seat that I had thrown on the junk pile and said, hold up, I think I got one, if you wanna look at it. I climbed up on the refuse pile and shifted some framing lumber and yanked that bike out by the handlebars. It had more air in the tires than the one he was pushing and I said this one has some air in the tires and you can have it if you want.
He nodded his ten-year-old head and took the bike to the curb and laid his own bike down in the street and started what I could only assume would be the making of one useful bike out of two. I had a pair of grip pliers (vise-grips) to spare and I said, here, you can have these too. I can have them? he said. I said, yes. He worked there on the curb for a long time while I moved in and out of the house, tossing some light weight items. When he realized the certainty of his need for it, he asked--can you help me?
Oh you tricky, conniving, little bastard, with your clean cut appearance, and sincere, straightforward demeanor.
What took him so long to ask? I wondered.
He was trying to loosen the bolt and remove the seat stem on the pink bike, with one pair of grip pliers.
I think it stripped, he said.
Yeah, maybe, I said. We need another pair of pliers, let me see if I can find some. I went up in M's house, past the little mice scurrying over the looted potato chip bags supplied during the flood by drug dealers with time on their hands, and searched around and found a very nice pair of channel locks and came out and unscrewed the nut from the bolt, only cursing once, or possibly twice. He was trying to lower the stem into the female opening so the seat would sit lower, but the female opening was sort of crunched and in the end it wouldn't go much lower. Instead of putting the nut and bolt back I crunched the collar and locked on the grip pliers, to let the kid know I was a ghetto-credentialed bike mechanic, and said, it's not great, but maybe it'll work.
We were done with each other now. He would go on his way and I would go on mine. I was picking up my tools and already feeling a little lonely when that conniving little bastard hit me hard, below the belt.
Thank you, he said.
He then drove off up Dumaine toward the river, away from the sunset, on his new pink bike, holding on to the handlebar of his original bike. The original bike was now a ghost-ridden outrigger, almost useless, but not quite.