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Email From NOLA IIt
The point of going on the road, aside from the obvious one of reaching a particular destination, is to put behind you all that is in front you. And by doing this gaining useful perspective about your past and present and maybe even an insight or two about your future. And if you are really lucky you may even get to trade in your perspective and insight for valuable cash prizes.
So a hundred miles northeast out of New Orleans and I'm still seeing broken toothpick pines trees along the side of the road. What a storm. Fifty miles later I'm still seeing it but is seems to be thinning out considerably--the evidence of K's jackbooted footprint.
I stopped in Mississippi and had Mexican food. Scary cheap looking place on the outside but nice interior and salsa not great and chips burnt but still I start having this optimism about my coming meal, with a complete disregard to the obvious signs which would normally lead one away from optimism. From left to right the plate consisted of chile con carne, enchilada, rice, crispy taco standing up wedged in rice, tamale. The left side of the plate was cold and the right side was hot. Hot tamale, cold chile con carne. Carne just means meat, I think, but I've never had chile con carne that was chicken. Cold cubes of chicken with an orange glowing sauce on the sweet side. The enchilada was warm, almost edible, the rice was mushy, the taco was average but the taco meat was not of a color found in nature. The tamale was, as already mentioned, hot, but looked sort of canned and was covered with the same orange-glow sauce which decorated the con carne. Do you want to take that with you? the waiter said motioning towards my half-eaten plate of food. Naw, thanks.
I thought this Mississipi community a hundred fifty plus miles from New Orleans must be the beginning of a world unaffected by Katrina but on the way out of town I noticed all the blue, temporarily tarped roofs.
About 200 miles out of New Orleans and Mississippi starts looking kind of pretty, and hilly. Starting to forget New Orleans. But 300 miles out and I am seeing many a trailer being hauled southwest, all of them resembling the many trailers already starting to show up in driveways and on sidewalks, vacant lots and park ground, in New Orleans.
Four Hundred miles out and not so many trailers to be seen, but my heat goes out in the truck, and that reminds me of New Orleans.
Five Hundred miles out and I'm stopping for gas and I get collared by this dude in a beat Cadillac and he uses the prop of his duct-taped radiator hose to bum five bucks off of me, which sort of reminds me of New Orleans.
Six hundred miles out and I'm driving with gloves on my hands and a skull cap on my, uh head, and a gravel truck passes then pulls in front of me long enough to ding my windshield, twice.
About 650 out, in Tennessee somewhere, and I stop for a cheeseburger, with hashbrowns, coffee, and a slice of chocolate cream pie. I was reshuffling my Ipod in the parking lot after eating and good thing too because it gave the waitress time to bring to me my jacket, which had in it my secret decoder ring, and various top secret documents. The jacket used to belong to a New Orleans street kid.
Seven hundred miles and I know I'm going for the whole shot, 999 miles, door to door. I get behind a tractor trailer full of dirty socks, which is bad news, but the heater started working again, which is good news. I passed the truck and my heater went out.
There is snow on the ground (but not the road) the last few hundred miles and I almost think it not wise to take the New Market/Luray route because of the two mountain passes but it's the shortest route and me so tired. When I see no snow or black ice on the road I bump the one hitter to take off the edge created by the many different energy drinks I was using to fuel my purposeful progress. I did a bunch of winding up and down while forwarding the Ipod selections because I'm tired of all those songs already. I coasted to a stop at the top of the hill at 4 a.m. and went up in the bighouse and crashed hard, leaving my body once but its the only one I got so I came back.
It's cold in Rappahannock, Virginia. You know what that reminds me of?
Do I miss New Orleans? Not at all.
The reason I don't miss New Orleans is because I don't, actually, ever leave it.
Email From NOLA IIs
Frost this morning. Think it got close to breaking the sub40 barrier inside the house last night. Saw my breath when with mittened hands I broke through the sleeping bag/blanket cocoon on top of my air mattress, at 6:30 a.m. From this time/space, it's a long way/time from nightfall, and the cold of last night is a fading memory.
Three more older people found dead in their homes this week, one in the 9th Ward, two in Gentilly.
BellSouth is mad about the new municipal wireless Internet proposal and has rescinded its kind offer to the city of New Orleans police department of a non-flooded building, to replace the many flooded when the levee system failed. When the levee system failed. When the levee system failed. That will show the city a thing or two. I think I'm going to kill a kitten today, to celebrate.
Do I have a non-sequitur? Better believe it. I think we've been locking up the wrong people in this city all these years and if we locked up more levee board members and state senators and corrupt local business owners and judges and an occasional cop or two and redirected the money wasted on and stolen by these many fuckups, to our schools, and to cutting edge programs for those most in need, there might not be the level of desperation here that existed in the hoods Pre-K, and lead to that behaviour we are famous for, rampant violent crime. And if I could teach the world to sing...
There is a noticeable rise in area suicides and mental health care providers are slowly moving into the area, looking for the pulse, before there ain't one.
I changed my air filter on the truck yesterday and evidently I had never done that on this truck because I had to consult the owners manual to even find the housing for the air filter. A square air filter?
I'll change the oil today and then I guess I'll putter around and decide do I leave for east coast tomorrow morning, or Thursday morning.
I stink, and I need to address that sooner rather than later.
One of the trash piles on Iberville has amongst it, a sizeable amount of unopened condom packets and I guess the trash pile could pass for a planned parenthood clinic. The condoms don't remind me of safe sex though and in a city that is largely devoid of children, I don't even know if I would advocate birth control, by means of condom or otherwise. There some children on the island though and when I went to the free opening of the zoo a couple of weeks back, there were beau coup healthy white children, and a good many pregnant mothers, so, in the words of Bob Eubanks, some of ya'll been makin' (unprotected) whoopee. Good for you.
I was until recently getting along a little better with the sculptor this go around, as she comes in from Baton Rouge to look in on her property across the street, periodically. Her front door, behind the locked metal grate, blew open the other day and I called her and told her this and she asked could I go close it for her and I said how do I get past the metal security door and she told me how. I went over and closed the door, first locking the bottom button lock, and then called her back, and she went off on me for locking her bottom lock, for which she has no key. I responded, sculptor, how the fuck was I to know that? She relented a little, but begrudgingly, and I said those button locks are no real challenge to open with credit card or other stiff flexible devices and told her don't sweat it, the electrician (who was coming over later) would surely be able to figure it out. I looked out a little later and sure enough, he had been able to figure it out. And she should know those button locks are no deterrent because several years ago, when I, and other neighbors, had watched her dishwasher being stolen, for which I was also greatly reamed, I had inspected her back door and it was secured only by a single button lock. I told her that was as good as inviting theft. She now has both the bottom and top locks of that back door, dead bolted.
Eh, minor annoyances.
I'm going to annex to Louisville a couple more streets in all directions because who's gonna tell me I can't? I'll tell you who's gonna tell me I can't--nobody, nobody gonna tell me nothing. Go ahead and ask me why. Ok, don't ask me why. I'm gonna tell you anyway--because THERE IS NO ONE HERE TO TELL ME ANYTHING.
Me without adult supervision. I don't know if that's a good idea.
Email From NOLA IIr
Today I walked in the cold rain to the paper box at Canal and Broad and there were plenty of papers but I forgot to bring quarters so I had to turn around, walk back to Rocheblave, and repeat the process. I think someone has captured Mr. and Mrs. Rottweiler, and the five puppies. Which brings the population down by seven more in this ill-managed newly formed burg of Louisville. I'm not saying it is hard to see me having a future here, but as the days pass in southern mid-city, it is getting harder to see any future at all. I hear there may be a grocery store opening in January, pretty much smack dab in the middle of Mid-City, so that could imply a future, I guess.
Also, there was no cop on guard at the trailer full of drugs outside the gutted Rite-Aide, nor was the generator running. I am no more interested in an unguarded trailer full of drugs than I am a guarded one. So maturity catches up with you whether you want it to or not.
Yesterday the diner on Bourbon was shut and I suspect there is some lack of willingness to open the place up for early breakfast, by employees, who, if I'm overhearing anything correctly, have issues with the management. I walked on down to the Cafe du Monde for some of those powder-sugared, square donuts, and a black coffee with chicory. I was reading in the paper about the SWAT cop rescuing people in the 9th Ward two days after the flood and was getting that light welling up of tears thing happening, you know, just a little bit of sympathetic emotion coming on, so I put down the paper and it went away. But every time I so much as glanced at that picture of the little girl kissing that SWAT cop on the vinyl covered arm of the communications headset running along the side of his face, I got that feeling again, so I just gave into it, and, now I'm wetting my face in public, behind shaded reading glasses at least, which only once did I have to take off to press shut with my open palms the unreasonable tear ducts of me.
I had previously checked my email and there were several forwarded emails from one of the caregivers of my mother, in Dallas. Mom is locking them out. She is washing her Depends. She is stockpiling disposable containers. She is leaving the bathroom heater on all day and night. She fell on her ass, when the brittle stalks of the nandina bush she uses to support herself walking out the back door, snapped. She evidently did not suffer severely but I'm not sure that is conclusive. She is fighting mad about the railing my brother is having installed by the front door. She thinks we are trying to steal her home from her. She reports that she is depressed and lonely. The six of us siblings are united at last on the necessity of moving her into an assisted living facility. That move will either kill her, or improve her quality of life. So that's what we're looking at.
The lone remaining email was a link sent by Lorina, in Virginia. It was an article from the Orion online about the dwindling Louisiana wetlands and the obvious and definite doom that spells for the future of New Orleans. Board it up and move everybody out was the author's suggestion.
I called my mother later in the afternoon and, as always, over the phone, she sounds pretty good to me. She still my mom. My sister is in Dallas, visiting from California, and I talked to her as well and she said they were having amazing conversations, her and mom, but we had to talk in that surreptitious way whenever mom came back in the room and she ain't no dummy and picks up on that so we kept it short and said we would keep in touch.
I picked up some earrings for Lorina, at the French Market, as she instructed me to do, and later called her to say I don't think they're exactly what you had in mind but she said she didn't care, thank you. I called her back later and filled her in on all my little pitiful everyday minutiae, mostly just emotional crapshit, and she was pretty patient with me. We checked our calendars and picked a likely day when we might see each other in Rappahannock, to where I am soon departing for a brief pre-Xmas visit. We agreed that we could have dinner or a drink on such and such a day. She wanted to be sure I understood this so she said, you know we can't have sex, and I said, of course, I know that. I told her that even without the boinking I would still love to see her. Could probably stand it.
Some parishioners of the Baptist Church on Bienville, between Galvez and Claiborne, were yesterday having service on the sidewalk in front of the church, folding chairs instead of pews.
Email From NOLA IIq
Governor Blanco of Louisiana is trying to cover her tracks of apparent Katrina-related incompetence in recent documents turned over to a Senate investigating committee and even though some of her claims of competence are based on memory rather than actual documentation, it is still evident that bottom line blame resides in the oval office and what I'm saying is--President George Bush is not only killing our soldiers, but our citizens (good job Brownie?)
Some of you may have heard of the young New Orleans citizen who stole a bus during the Katrina aftermath, picking up stranded New Orleanians and then evacuating to Houston. The young citizen is back and was unfortunately busted recently for heroin possession, with intent to sell. No one is perfect. Good luck to you young man, and thank you for your efforts when it really counted. Don't lose hope, many of us are thinking of you.
Nobody wants Fema trailers in their backyards and Jefferson Parish residents are worried that proposed trailer parks in their community might be used to house people from the New Orleans projects. Presented with the supposition that not all people from the projects are bad people a group of JP residents at a recent forum responded with derisive laughter. Racism is a hard thing to kill. Maybe we should dress it up in something George Bush recognizes and let him have a go at it.
A wild but healthy stray dog came up in the Dumaine house while I was working there yesterday, but retreated when I yelled at it. When I advanced to shoo it farther away, the dog met me with sincere eyes that said, come on man, I'm just trying to get along here. I relented and apologized with soothing baby-dog talk. A note to local animal rescue people who are putting out food for stray animals: Thank you, but in the past, we did not feed our many stray dogs, we just let them eat our cats.
The yard birds survived and there is beautiful rooster and hen pair residing sometimes in the Dumaine backyard. The rooster can be heard to crow in the afternoon.
Yesterday at Elizabeth's in the Bywater I had lunch and before lunch went into the men's room and put my hands under something I haven't felt in 5 weeks, hot water. I'm not saying it was better than my worst orgasm but it touched something in me pretty close to that.
The town is so small now that walking to Elizabeth's I passed a man walking with his girlfriend who I'm sure people tell--you know, you look a little like Ben Affleck--and I had passed him two days previous in front of the St. Louis Cathedral and remembered him from that brief passing, and I guess, vice-versa, because he smiled at me, and I smiled at him, a little awkward, but noteworthy, at least according to me.
New Orleans is the safest major urban area in America right now. Bring your kids, bring your dreams. We don't have but a small fraction of our schools up and running, but we gonna work something out.
Email From NOLA IIp
People are referring to that contiguous strip of New Orleans that more or less follows the Mississippi River, and escaped the flooding caused by negligently constructed floodwalls (the failure of which caused the greatest civil engineering catastrophe in the history of America), as "the island." So Bywater, parts of Marigny, all of the French Quarter, and the majority of Uptown (which includes the Lower Garden District and Garden District proper, and all the mansions of St. Charles, and surrounding streets) are The Island, and if you go out for a drink or a bite to eat and then reach a reasonable point of satiation, someone might say--are you ready to leave the island? and for me the answer is almost always, yes, vote me off, let me off, are you using that pirogue?, see you when next the tide is right.
I suppose at some point it won't feel so weird to be on that strip of commercially viable earth and in fact I should be grateful for it and I am ocassionally, and try to be the rest of the time.
I've had my electrical work done and am now just back to waiting, for inspection, and power up, and later maybe, gas service. It could be the end of January when all that happens.
I saw yesterday that my check for seventeen hundred dollars, mailed to Allstate three weeks before Katrina, for resumption of a 70k homeowners policy with a half million dollar renters liability rider attached, cleared (over two months later), and so presumably I am insured against further catastrophe, if that catastrophe is fire, or some mishap befalling my renters, who are no longer here. That seventeen hundred dollars is almost three times the amount of the previous year's bill. So, thank you Allstate Insurance Louisiana. Apparently, criminals have been allowed back in the New Orleans area.
The head guy from the Pentecostal church came by the other day and broached the subject of selling my house to the church, to replace their flood damaged parsonage. We discussed no price and even if I don't end up staying here I just don't know if I can see myself without some physical connection to New Orleans. Of course, there is so much that I can't see that will eventually happen, with or without my heartfelt consent, so, I said we can keep in touch, and we exchanged phone numbers.
The levee board is saying that even though their post levee inspection lunches are better planned than the actual inspections, which cover 125 miles of levee in 5 hours, that their maintenance crews are out there almost every day and can recognize problems so we should all feel safe. They're talking about those guys mowing the grass, who, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't invited to the fancy lunches, twice a year. Apparently, criminals will always spew ridiculous bullshit in the New Orleans area.
I was sitting on my porch having a Red Cross lunch with a couple of the electricians and the one guy, from Florida, has been here since about three weeks post-K and is making decent money and said he couldn't eat his Red Cross lunch because he had been spoiling himself with filet mignon every night for the last week, so he gave his hamburger/mac casserole to me. About thirty minutes later a friend drove by and dropped off for me and the friend of my choice, two oyster po-boys. I went across the street because the electricians are working on the sculpter's house too, and I said to the Florida electrician, sometimes payback is a mthrfker, and sometimes it is an oyster po-boy, and gave him the white butcher paper wrapped extra sandwich, dressed, no pickles.
In another state, previous to his moving to Florida, the electrician had been married to a woman (mother of his two children) who was running a meth business out of their home and one day the feds came and busted down their door, and he is on record as saying--"It's about time." He sat in jail for five months while the state tried to figure out if he was a willing or unwilling participant, and then was released, with probation, which he has already finished. His wife got 18 years. You could tell he needed to tell the story more than he has told it thus far, and it was a compelling story, much more so than this brief description of it. I said to him--you must feel great overcoming that part of your life and he said great was just how he did feel about it.
Relatively speaking, there aren't too many people here, still.
I guess I'm guessing this won't be the last national catastrophe which I experience and am toughing myself up for it, which is the reason I'm giving for not accepting the kind offers of hot showers from a couple of sources, but expect it will be the first thing I do when I return briefly to Rappahannock County, VA. later this week. I will end by plugging the JOEY WIPES company, with their patented "molecular odor encapsulator" synthetic cloth wipes. Thanks Joey, great product.
Email From NOLA IIo
This morning the male dog sits smack in the middle of Iberville St. as I saunter with an exaggerated menace to my step up that same middle (on my way to the newspaper box at Canal and Broad, which this morning will be completely empty), both of us knowing the liklihood of vehicular intrusion is nominal. He isn't going to let me come right up on him so I wish he would quit acting so casual. Go on and get up and saunter your potentially threatening self over to the sidewalk. God gave me dominion over all this. Nowhere does it say--and stray dogs shall inherit the earth. The puppies are fat. People from animal rescue teams are going around leaving aluminum basting pans full of food and water and all the wild animals are fat. The skinny neighborhood cats have bellies that almost drag the ground they so puffed up with animal rescue kibble.
The male dog is big enough to hurt me--he appears to be a Rottweiler mutt--and I don't want to push this imagined superiority thing too far. It is just play acting really, me being the one that is superior. I kid no one, least of all myself. Even though I am the one doing all the moving I say, ok that's close enough, please step to the curb. He doesn't right off, but he does eventually. The puppies are outside the fence for the first time that I have seen. They are on the curb, all five of them. All five of their fat selves. The runt barks at me and the other four perform excited circular maneuvers and fall all over each other. Mrs. Rottweiler is standing in a sort of passive aggressive crouch that says--I am afraid for the welfare of my family, they grow up so fast you know....
I keep moving and cut diagonally through the gap in the blown down fence and walk behind the Rent Your Life Away establishment with the vinyl siding half blown off to expose its original turn of the century paint peeled wood, glancing to my left to see the cop on guard in the Rite Aid parking lot (who guards the portable trailer full of drugs, outside the gutted store). I keep moving through the wide gap between the two buildings, where the dumpster used to be, next to which would often be a thrown away rent a couch, occupied by free spirited downtrodden budget wine enthusiasts. Not today though, or 35 yesterdays. I approach the paper box and put two fingers in my jacket pocket and get two quarters, anticipating the day's headlines. And...turn dejected circles in New Orleans, Louisiana. I circle the box twice more, to rule out hallucination.
I walk back the way I came, without a folded newspaper under my arm, which for me has been seeming like my passport to let the drug watching security cops know that I am not sauntering with lack of purpose or ill intent near that trailer full of drugs. Back on Iberville, Mr. and Mrs. Rottweiler are nowhere to be seen, the puppies are alone. I stand on the opposite curb and take a picture, but I'm too far away I know, so I move into the street and one step closer at a time, take pictures, which, when later viewed, all came out blurry.
I diagonally enter the newly mowed football-field-sized vacant Pentecostal lot and come up on my house from the rear. Mr. and Mrs. Rottweiler (she is not a Rottweiler by the way) are checking out the aluminum basting pans on my block and then they go in the wide open house of questionable repute, across the street from me. The house is still full of its moldy, flooded contents; the house sits four feet lower than mine, in a neighborhood that took four feet of flood water. Mrs. Rottweiler comes out and looks over at me sheepishly.
You don't have to look that way Mrs. Rottweiler, don't you get it? There's seven of you now, you are the new majority, you could rule this neighborhood, briefly known as Louisville.
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.
Email From NOLA IIm
There was a map in the Times Picayune recently that show the developed areas of New Orleans in the mid 1800s and that map can pretty well be laid over the post Katrina map of areas that stayed dry or relatively dry, and those areas that flooded.
So the Urban Land Institute is recommending that the rebuilding of New Orleans follow that same footprint and yesterday's paper has another map, one drawn up by the ULI and it shows this Rocheblave neighborhood and the Dumaine neighborhood as falling inside that area they consider to have minimal or moderate damage and this is their recommendation--"Should be repopulated immediatedly and services restored to current needs."
I called another electrician and they said they just merged with somebody and have 23 licensed electricians coming in from St. Louis and, can I call you back? (yeah sure), so I'm still trying to arrange for electrical inspection of this property and possibly two others. And there is rumor of more city inspectors being hired or, accepting the volunteering of outside inspectors, so things are really amping up, sorry about that last bit.
I finally heard from M, owner of the Dumaine house (and wherefrom Email from NOLA began) and she is still in the southern Pacific Northwest but has allowed me to work off some debt (for a couple years worth of taxes and insurance on the NC house we own together) and so I have started cutting away the tree that fell on the back shed and dismantling that shed and hauling it and its contents to the street, each trip each way 140 feet, carrying the debris through a 24 inch gap between the house and the cyclone fence separating properties, and so it is a little slow going but the pile in the street is growing and today or tomorrow I should finish it. And it is true what M always felt would be true--her backyard is greatly improved with the removing of that shed. But I can see why the quotes for removing it were kind of high. Lucky it is the sort of work I am best cut for.
I have heard from or about virtually everybody on my Find Katrina Victims list and so there that. They all fine; one or two, predictably, have discovered the criminal justice systems of their host cities.
There are still a few cadavers being found under the debris in the Lower Ninth Ward, now, almost three months later.
Those wild dogs I refer to are based in the first riverbound block of Iberville, below N. Broad, and they are a married couple (I'm not talking about Benji from Hell). They live mostly now under a house across the street from where their owner used to live, and ostensibly, will live again. Anyway, they got babies, Katrina pups from the looks of them. Or maybe born two weeks after. Somebody or multiple somebodies leaves food and water for them. They are so damn cute playing inside that fenced parking lot, come here little puppy, come here, let's play, but no, they gotta run away and hide under that house. There's four or five of them.
The Chevron at Canal and Broad opened a few days ago, and luckily for them the gas prices finally fell to pre-Katrina levels and so they didn't even have to change their signs, $2.49 for regular. Also that dude that has all the laundramats and car washes in the area has his Broad St. Car Wash open. And the Car Repair place at Galvez and Bienville was open when I got here on Oct. 2Osomething, and shortly after, Santos Car Repair opened (it where me and my nephew get our brake tag state required vehicle inspection) and the Midas Car Repair place on Canal between Dorgenois and Rocheblave, between the used car lot, which is also open, and the Rent-a-Harley place, which is not, I think, open. But that's it for now, as far as I can see. I mean those are the only places open within 10 square blocks of me. The open/closed business ratio would probably stay about the same if I extended the geographic parameter to 30 square blocks, or more, and excluded the French Quarter.
I walk around the St. Louis Cemetery #2, now, like its my own private park. Dammit, I should have annexed the cemeteries when I incorporated Louisville. Yesterday paid respects to Dominique You, Jean Lafitte's lieutenant, in the 1812 Battle of New Orleans.
When I work Dumaine I walk over to the truck at the shut Shell Station and get my Red Cross food. I get a little squirt of that quick evaporating sanitary hand gel, a stryofoam mystery plate and a couple bottles of water. Yesterday there was a whole car load of fully made up debutante chicks huddled inside a Land Rover in the Shell parking lot and possibly one from their group was obtaining food for some needy people they know. Or possibly they were on a treasure hunt, like that movie? William Wyler? I don't know, but the one where the debutants are on a treasure hunt and the last item on the list to obtain is a homeless person. It sort of felt like that, looking in at the pretty debutants looking away as I looked in.
I've got me a nice little home though. The temperature dial on the old school-style, non electronic thermostat for my central heating and cooling system, located in the side hall of my house which you would think was a shotgun if I didn't tell you it had a side hall, sits at 50 something this morning and that is fairly comfortable. It doesn't show any number lower than 50 but the dial will bottom out at a location to the left of the 50 and implies a number as low as you want, but probably only 40something at the coldest thus far. I have yet to see my breath, and it has really warmed up again during the days, but not muggy. Lorina and I can't decide if not talking to each other at all or talking to each other a little bit is the best formula for our respective healthy futures, so we hedge toward the potential mistake which best suits our needs, and that is talking a little and my point of mentioning this is I wanted to thank Lorina for not giving me shit about my cold weather complaining in this subtropical New Orleans climate and compliment her on the finesse with which she dropped her own weather report, "yeah, its getting a little cold here too, got down to 19 last night" (in Rappahannock, Virginia).
I locked my keys in the car again yesterday, on Dumaine. I walked back over here to Rocheblave to get my spare key, six blocks each way, and did not pass one single citizen either way, along the broken glass littered sidewalks of N. Broad St. Cleanup crew people on side streets and a few worker cars or trucks moving up and down Broad, but that's it.
One last thing. There are two, pristine condition tennis courts, hidden away, near here, in this area that has always had a bit of the armageddon feel to it, and as long as anyone doesn't think I'm including myself as anyone, I would like to end by saying--tennis anyone?
Email From NOLA IIL
All right, here's the deal. All the ground inside the borders of Canal to St. Louis and N.Broad to N.Galvez is now Louisville. Let the history books show that on this day at such and such a time this ground was annexed by that skinny white boy on Rocheblave. His intentions are unknown, his abilities in question. As namesake and aggrandizer of this newly self-incorporated neighborhood let me now pay my respects to those who came before me, and welcome those yet to come. Hello, how are you? Welcome, or, get the hell out, as the case may be.
Entergy sold some gas futures to finance the hiring of some workers and now promises to have the whole city energized by the end of December, and maybe into January a little bit for gas. It's cold at night (weren't you complaining just two days ago about mosquitoes and mugginess?) but not so cold that it could kill a person, so how much brighter do you want it?
I yesterday met the oldest living resident of the newly self-incorporated New Orleans neighborhood known as, Louisville. A Mr. Smith. He lives "around the corner," as any self respecting New Orleanian does (who is that? oh that's old so and so, lives around the corner).
Mr. Smith, you think I'm making that name up, but ask yourself, what the hell do you know?
Mr. Smith came and stood in the sun, below my porch, while I sat preparing to sharpen a chainsaw. I'd never met him before but he was aware of me and how could he not be what with the high profile of my visibility gut renovating this house, over a period of time greater than it takes to build a 70 story skyscraper.
People talk and he was aware of my movements a little bit, that I had taken work out of state.
I was worried about your place, he told me. (It sat vacant for a pretty good while after I renovated it, with some pretty decent fixtures worth stealing, a whole set of brand new appliances, and fresh window glass just begging to have rocks thrown through it)
I was too, I told him (It is nothing short of a small miracle that nobody messed with my place during the times I was gone--several months, two separate times--previous to having a renter. It could also be testament to the value of greasing the right palms.) Probably just lucky though.
Mr. Smith is 85-years-old and has lived in this neighborhood, now this is even before it was Louisville you understand, all of those 85 years. Me and him have the only houses in the vicinity that took little or no water, and, also, the only houses without the spray painted symbology signifying that the house was checked for dead bodies or animals, after the great flood of 05.
People don't understand how or why people stayed in their houses, when such a hurricane as Katrina was imminent. Many reasons, I think. Being too poor to leave, being too lazy to leave, being too comfortable to leave, or, being in a position where you could not justify turning your back on neighbors who were staying because they were too poor, or lazy, or comfortable, and, I think, as for the many old people who died here, by drowning or starvation or stress, and a good few elderly affluent people near the lake died that way, not just poor people stayed, it was I believe because they'd seen what a hurricane could do and the odds, frankly, are a lot better that you are going to survive it, than be killed by it. Have you ever spent 20 hours in bumper to bumper evacuation traffic? Neither me. Also, people outside of New Orleans just really don't get how empowering it is to survive the crime here. How immortal it makes you feel when presented with run of the mill challenges, or run of the mill crime, or Category 5 hurricanes. So a lot of old people stayed, both rich and poor. Some died, some were saved.
You stayed?
Yes.
Holy shit, what happened?
The helicopter couldn't get very low because of that two story next to me and so I had to ride up in one of those baskets and it was a long way up.
(Jesus, I'd watched those rescues on the television and it scared me, even from the comfort of my best friend's leather easy chair, in the basement of his mansion). Were you scared?
Mr. Smith just shook his head in that way that means, yes.
He told me some other things but they relate to another story, which you are not going to hear, today. Then he said:
That building there across the street (he's talking about the chauffeur's very slow to be renovated place) used to be a bank. Some men from Chicago were told it would be easy so they came down to rob it. They're running out the bank and the cops come and there's a big shootout. A man, lived around that next corner, at Iberville and Tonti, come out of his store and he was going to try and help stop the robbers but the cops thought he was one of them and shot him dead.
Holy cow, when was this?
Thirty, I think, but maybe '29.
There were poor families in the area, lot's of kids, and some of us would help a little, feed the kids maybe, but these three little girls were playing marbles underneath the house over there and found a satchel with $8,000 in it, this was after the robbery.
Wow.
The family returned the money. Nobody ever talked to them after that.
Because...? ( I'm a little dumbfounded by this last bit but I guess I get it)
Because they were so foolish (for returning the money). And you know, the bank gave them exactly nothing.
Mr. Smith's wife came over and complained that she couldn't find him and they bickered a little bit and they were just visiting from the Houston area, to where they evacuated, to see what was up. I told them the city was predicting maybe another month for electricity to be back on and she said, to Mr. Smith, well that's it, I guess we'll go on to California, and he didn't say anything and then finally said--for awhile. They bickered a little more, with a finesse and patience born from years of practice and then she started walking off and he followed. He turned back to me, smiling. We've been married 61 years, she was born in the neighborhood too. He pointed, and said, just around that corner.
Email From NOLA IIk
I'm not starting another day but I'm getting ready to. Last night the mosquitoes won, and today, this morning before dawn, they are flitting around with pride, and little medallions around their skinny necks, which say--I am a winner.
I can smell carbon monoxide coming in through my opens windows, as if their were a Mazda truck parked in my driveway, acting as generator. Carbon monoxide and deet aromas mingle to become the olfactory hallucination/realization that is me smelling me, unhappily.
I went to the corner of Canal and Rocheblave yesterday morning to get my newspaper, and the box was gone. I didn't cry, immediately. They got one at Canal and Broad though. There's plenty of time and reason to cry in the new New Orleans, you don't want to do it all in one sitting, especially first thing in the morning.
Streets lights shine on the parallel block of Tonti, from Canal to St. Louis. And the one block of Iberville, from Tonti to N. Rocheblave has a streetlight also. And the 300 block of N. Rocheblave has streetlights. I have seen three properties along a one mile stretch of Bienville, between N. Broad St. and the St. Louis Cemeteries (#2) with interior lights on at night.
It's five oh five now. I'm going to break curfew and go get a paper. I'll be back...
That was close, I was sure that cop was going to U-turn and shake me, like in Treme yesterday, but he didn't, and I just tip toed through the wide river of water gushing out of the barricaded Rite-Aid store and got my paper out of the box. Two different people over a twenty year span have reported to me that they had dreams of me back lit by post-apocalyptic scenery. If this isn't it, then it's a pretty good warmup. I met some wild dogs as I ambled down the middle of Iberville, between Broad and Dorgenois, but I know who they are so I just barked back at them and said they better get out of my way by the time I got to them. Scared 'em good, boy. They are waiting outside that house they used to live at, and that son-of-a-bitch never did keep them from roaming anyway. This morning they got Benji from Hell with them. Sometimes he's a free agent and other times he runs with them.
That was unrealistic of me, having, getting used to, and expecting what was essentially, my own private newspaper box at the corner a block and a half away.
The chauffeur still comes by occasionally with a styrofoam lunch from the Red Cross, as payment for using my bathroom and keeping his dog in the backyard while he works. But as more trucks show up on more different corners, the food is getting thinner in quality. Chauffeur, you need to get your ass back down to City Hall and bring back some of that good food they giving out over there, because this ain't no good, I said, looking at yesterday's processed chicken patty and bland, mushy, carrot medallions. This is New Orleans, even poor people eat better than this, yes they do. He just laughed. I'm dizzy with hunger half the time and drinking water like its something I imagine has calories. I am weaning myself from the convenience of the Red Cross though (saw and heard another of the mobile Red Cross trucks yesterday, hawking by bullhorn riverbound on Bienville., "come to the curb for hot food,") and even though I have had some political differences with Red Cross upper management over the years the rank and file are doing good work here, so thank you very much, and in fairness, some of your dinners have been very good.
I still get an occasional breakfast at the gay diner on Bourbon, because it is the closest authentic diner to my house (Robin's, 1.5 blocks away, flooded bad, and Betsy's, 2.5 blocks away, also flooded bad) but stretching the dollar more likely has me having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and instant oatmeal for breakfast and then hitting an all-u-can-eat buffet on the Westbank for my one big meal a day, where for six bucks I can eat 12--15 slices of pizza or trip the lights fantastic at that Chinese buffet, for nine bucks, which includes a two dollar tip, unless I get that grumpy waiter (they bring your drink and take away your empty plates) and he only gets a buck. Yeah, and gas, and the one dollar toll for the bridge across the Mississippi. I am trying to mindset towards buying local, just never leaving New Orleans for shopping sprees in Metairie and her ugly twin sister, the Westbank, but I'm not there yet, nor is the city apparently very close to meeting me halfway with quality budget fare (something more than the Red Cross trucks, I mean).
Yesterday morning I ate at the diner on Bourbon and then strolled the streets of the mostly touristless French Quarter, nodding at passersby, and smirking lovingly at the staggering drunk party chicks pretending not to be drunk at 9a.m.
I sat on a Clarkson Bench between the locked up Jackson Square and the Presbytyre where a young goth dude engaged me in brief conversation before he was interrupted by this 12-year-old street kid who was pretending to be sixteen. I ignored the street kid until he couldn't stand it anymore and he said could he look up close at my little Ipod device (which I got to replace my Rio 5gb player that I dropped in a bucket of bleach water), because he'd never seen one. I said, sure, but I didn't take it off from around my neck. He wanted to hear something so I let him stick the ear buds up inside his ear canal and he then signaled me when he wanted me to forward to another song. The Nina Simone version of Strange Fruit scared him. He gave me back the ear buds and went to bum change from the grumpy.
The sun is up full, but its still very early. I had my peanut butter sandwich and coffee, and out the window I can see the light is different and the cold front is on its way and I'm pretty much ready to be a little cold instead of this very muggy mid November weather we've been having here.
Oh, look, today's paper says I can now stay in my 70119 home, what? Oh, only parts of the 70119?
What-EVVer.
Superior officers appear to be genuinely chagrined that some National Guardsmen got busted looting liquor from a rich person's home in the East, on Monday. And some people cried at the mayor's town meeting yesterday. Don't feel bad. Loss of control is the only control we got.
I always knew that if the Guard and/or an increased police force were to ever invade New Orleans, to rid it of its unimaginably violent crime, and I often wanted them to, that I would necessarily be a minor victim of that invasion.
I went and visited Claude Treme's grave at St. Louis #2 yesterday, which is a thing you couldn't really do when the Iberville projects were occupied, because what's the point of seeing a bunch of historic dead people in tombs that no fucking nobody is taking care of (no diss to the groundskeepers, who are keeping it free of trash) only to be scoped by someone from the upper apartments of the Iberville, scoping you as victim, wait boy, wait right there and Ima come and fuck you up; I could never really see the point. But I was there yesterday and then I went to the nearby Treme neighborhood and walked around a bit, but boy, this ain't Pre-K, and you can't just stroll through neighborhoods, sightseeing. Of course, most of the neighborhoods I've reported from over the years, you couldn't or shouldn't have ever done it, then, or now. Especially if they are deemed as important neighborhoods and you are not known, and everybody, everybody, is concerned about looting. So I'm just walking back to my truck and a cruiser stops angled in the street, pointing itself right at me, walking the curb. The angle implies urgency. I'm already bored by implied urgency. But I'm a good little citizen, what can I do for you officer? He wants to know who I am and, by tone, what the fucking hell am I doing here? Really, literally, I was just walking, not staring, not gawking, but I was circuiting the neighborhood somewhat, so somebody probably called the cops. There is a noticeable distrust of outsiders here so I told him who I was and where I lived. You could tell for a second he thought I was making up my address, but in the interest of moving things along, I asked him if he would mind if I showed him my ID. Seemed like a good idea to him. Then I got to become James, which is fine by me except that it reminds me of doctor's offices and, well, being hassled by cops. I even had the name of a neighborhood activist to drop and the cop Q&A'd me a little bit but I just said, hey, I don't know her that well, I just met her. I don't chat with anybody, about anybody else (unless they buying me a beer, and frankly you better just throw in an oyster po-boy). The cop seemed both amused and impressed that the activist had spread glitter all over her front porch, to discourage the crack afficianados, who were not impressed with her nascent ownership of the property.
Is that right? You spread glitter on your porch? Is that what he said? Because I can see that I guess, like, it sticks to them, identifies them?
Anyway, the activist's house got blown completely down by the wind of Katrina. So I was looking at it, and the neighborhood, and then walking back to my truck.
Why'd you park over there?
Because the street was blocked.
He nodded. I was giving him all the right answers. He was trying to be a little more friendly now. Had to run my license though, which is cool with me, business is business. I'll say it again, I like cops, when they are doing their jobs, even if I am a minor victim of that work ethic. Conversationally now, just between pals, he asked me did I have anything attached to me? I just will not unnecessarily lie to cops. I said, I'm really not sure, you better check it out. That could be construed as smart alecky but I think he could tell that although I was a little put out by this, that I was really trying to be a good sport, and he was trying, too. You know, it takes a while to run a person, NCIC? The cop driving never even got out or looked up at me. Just doing his job. Chilling, I hope, until the true very bad motherfuckers start moving back, and open up new markets. I'm standing on the sidewalk trying to make as much eye-contact with as many passing motorists as I can--hi, nice to meet you, finally. After about five minutes, cop says, James? Your social? I gave it to him. Shortly, he got out of the passenger seat and extended to me my Louisiana license, and said, Thank you. I said, thank you, right back at him, and you can call me a sycophantic, suck-up, bitch ass punk for saying that to a cop, but no, I am not really, I was just being sincere. What I left unsaid was--"for not searching me, copper."
Email From NOLA IIj
The gunfire I heard on Friday night was possibly the cop shooting that guy who in a struggle took the cop's knife and threatened him with it, over on Poydras by the Superdome, about eight blocks from here (or closer, as the crow, and sound, flies). Which coincidentally is very near that green portable toilet with the spray-painted (Katrina-related) dead body count I mentioned in yesterday's post. As correction I should say the toilet painting spelled out DB X 3 (with the arrow pointed up 45 degrees) and not 3DB, with arrow, as I stated yesterday. Of course, now, if the db markings were meant to be cumulative, it could read DB X 4.
Things are going well in New Orleans. I want to be the first to state that I am completely satisfied with the federal government's response. Looks like we can take it from here though. Thanks, thanks very much, thanks again. You were great. Those were difficult times and your courageous and heartfelt assistance was...well...excuse me...I'm tearing up a little...excuse me....
I don't know what to do about surface mail delivery. There is no mail delivery in the 70119, possibly because we were never taken off the "you may only look and leave" list, and I guess, technically, if you want to get all technical, are not supposed to be living on our properties. No one is saying we can't live on our properties though and some are even encouraging us to live on our properties. I don't want it to sound like there is great uncertainty here, because there is not. Things are going very well here, and if it weren't so likely to be used as a bad pun, I would go as far to say that things are going--swimmingly.
I pretty much do all my banking and bill paying online, and I am online thanks to the many unsecured wifi signals floating around here, but having my Netflix movies floating around somewhere in that question mark that is the New Orleans postal system is disheartening. I can go over to that Mid-City branch (at the headwaters? of the Bayou St. John) and give them my ID, showing me as resident of this address ( I knew there was a good reason for not changing my Louisiana license when I moved to Virginia), but that has so far been fruitless. Even in parts of the city that have resumed mail delivery, people are complaining that it only comes sporadically, and in clumps. I'm sorry, not complaining, just reporting, people are reporting that is comes sporadically.
Entergy has been taking a lot of shit but I want to say, Entergy, baby, I love you. If I don't adequately show you that love it is only because I sometimes can't see you, at night, in the dark, but I know you working at it. Honestly, I'm not mad at Entergy. They are doing a pretty fair job, under the circumstances. In fact, with energy costs probably about to skyrocket in this area, I'm saying, baby, no hurry. Get to me when you can. I haven't even gotten that first inspection yet, which I have to pay a licensed electrician to perform. I called the guys that rewired the whole house for my gut renovation and although they said they were putting me on their schedule, I think I probably got an asterisk by my name, because when I asked how much, and the guy said 285 dollars, I responded--two-hundred-and-eighty-five-dollars? I sounded like Gomer Pyle, not that there's anything wrong with that, but, gahh-uh-ahhh-ly, that seems like a lot of change just to file a damn permit, and glance at my undamaged wiring.
Little bit of a cold front coming down this mid-week, we'll see how that feels.
Oh, Jazzfest organizers are threatening to throw the biggest damn Jazzfest ever and are hinting at performers which will blow you away. So, what? The Stones are coming to Jazzfest? Big deal. What else you got?
Email From NOLA IIi
I'm sorry, the dog's name is Splash, not Flash. The chauffeur left him over here again because he had to make a run to Baton Rouge. It seems like really late but its only 6:59 p.m. And he doesn't like to leave him across the street, where his home is, because his home is a shambles, and only partly because of Katrina. He doesn't stay over there (oh, there he is, I can hear him, coming to get Splash. He's probably untying the frayed, yellow, nylon rope from my cyclone fence, and yes, there is the squeak of the gate and oh happy days, Splash is rescued).
I am in the darkness of my home, the one I have really yet to live in for a sequential 2 days as a finished product, now, almost six years after I procured it, in a state which was at that time (Leap Day 2000), somewhat less than pristine.
I've been watching some really bad cinema on the laptops. Sometimes the car battery gets weak and the converter kicks off and so the hundred foot extension cord running out of the truck up to and through this bedroom window is only an orange rubber ribbon, a signal of failure and broken dreams (just kidding with that last bit, the extension cord in fact signals nothing of that sort, just seeing if I could make you cringe, and I did, didn't I?). But when that happens the computer has to run on its own battery. So I have to intermission and switch the DVD from one computer to the other, if say, the computer wasn't fully charged to begin with. A former friend who doesn't speak to me anymore used to set the minimal standard for a movie as whether or not it was in focus; no matter how bad it was, she was gracious enough to admit that, "at least it was in focus." Some of these compilations, four flicks on two DVDs, for $5.50 a pop aren't focused that well. But I love them just the same because they all got one thing in common--big name actors, at a less than big point in their careers. Sharon Stone as a calendar girl, Kelly McGillis as an Army brat bent on revenge, Martin Sheen as a trapper back in the Wild West, Burt Reynolds as Navajo Joe. I haven't even gotten to the Mobster Movie collection ( could this be true? 8 feature films on 2 DVDs, all for five dollars fifty cent)?
Don't forget you have the engine running and the truck unlocked out in the driveway. You seem to have let your guard down a bit in response to your neighborhood's zero population. You need to tighten up and this I'm telling you up front so I don't have to tell you after the fact.
Yeah, I'm starting to see a few little dudes cruising by in their automobiles, windows tinted black black all the way around, driving slow on tires with shiny, glittering wheel covers, some of which do tricks and spin independently of the tires themselves.
Splash, before the chauffeur came and got him, was barking like a good dog at a disturbance over yonder at Iberville and Dorgenois, in that two story, below which was once a moderately famous soul food establishment and then became an apothecary or spiritual church or someplace that sells trinkets and incense and potions which have in common usefulness in both Catholic and Voodoo ceremony. Not a tourist hangout, mind you.
She had come by the other day, that woman who used to call me "Friend," and whose name I forget, and never really tried to learn because her on again off again boyfriend seemed sort of the jealous type, I am too, so I didn't ever try to be actual friends with her, but she was tight with both the working class and the street dudes around here. Was a good example of a normal person who did things in the hood which might, depending on how you look at it, shine an unkind light on her, but she was really just a solid citizen with tastes similar to those you might condemn as crackheads, all disdainful-like because they stole your front door, or your ladder, or your car battery, or anything not tied down. They make friends with you and then steal your shit. It is a frustrating thing. She borrowed my phone but nobody was home. I bummed a cigarette, a thing I have done four or five times in the last month, from various people, because I got tired of that accomplishment, saying I hadn't had a cigarette in 7 years, blah, blah, blah. They make me dizzy.
Well, maybe it was her over there, she said she was staying there before the storm. I'm hiding like the post I am up against my front porch column, looking back that way and a door opens and a wavering rectangle of candle light comes from inside one of the top floor apartments. Probably but not necessarily one with a roof still over it. It hasn't rained here for awhile. There is a beam of car headlight in the street but I can't see the car. People are talking but I can't tell if it is friendly talk or angry talk. Something like the size of a satchel gets thrown over the railing into the dark shadows. I hope she is careful over there because it looks like that place could fall down.
And finally, I did last night hear gunshots for the first time since coming back. And then the weirdest thing, almost instantaneous police sirens, which lasted a long time, as if a chase were happening, but possibly the two were not related at all. But I never in the past heard gunshots and sirens so close to each other.
A few hours earlier there were fire truck sirens going over to Franklin St. because more and more people are burning their houses down, either because their insurance companies had anal sex with them regarding flood damage, and fire policy is all they got left, or, maybe candles are falling over in the many homes still without electricity.
Some military guys drove by Rocheblave yesterday, all jammed into a Hummvee. They had their helmets on, which sort of scared me. Perhaps just dressed up for Veterans Day celebrations.
There is a portable toilet on Claiborne, near the Superdome exit. It has the spray-painted message "3DB" and then an arrow pointing off to a location which could be the Superdome or could be the overpass, or perhaps even, could be heaven. DB stands for dead body.
Email From NOLA IIh
I was a goddamn liar yesterday for saying there's not too many people here.
With daylight the streets are fairly well clogged with workers in this lower Mid-City/Downtown/Bienville corridor--some white, mostly Hispanic, a few black, looking for work, and malingerers like myself, hitting the Red Cross for first meal at 11a.m., but it is after sundown that you get a true count and there's just no one here. Like before, you wouldn't necessarily see people out at night if it were really cold or cold and rainy, but you knew, really knew the people were here, and felt the vibes coming out of the houses, and now, nada, just a few of us doing this occupying thing. And its not cold, its hot in the day and pleasant at night, perfect night air, and people in the hoods would be out, en mass, stoop sitting, corner standing, cruising in their automobiles. Gone. The houses and the projects, dead, unoccupied or mostly unoccupied. The the eight block long by two block wide Lafitte projects and the similarly sized Iberville projects, both located between this Rocheblave house and the French Quarter, are empty.
If at nightfall you turned your back on the 9th ward and kept going west through the 8th and 7th and 6th (which is skinniest sliver of all the wards but the backbone, spleen, liver and heart, of Treme, or vice versa) and all the way down to Canal in the 4th ward, where the Rocheblave house is, you will not see any of that deliciously flavored humanity I may have previously mentioned here, or to individuals, in emails.
So I'm not a liar.
But I am an asshole.
And I just f***ing hate it, you know I do, it is a thing which makes me unreasonably mad, and that is having my driveway blocked. I'm coming back from checking my email in the FQ this morning and I had lingered a little longer than usual because these young travelers, two boy girl couples they were, from either Wisconsin or Norway is my guess, and they were plopped on the sidewalk with their sketch pads doing quick little sketches of the scenery and it made me feel a sense of something that is described by a word I cannot access due to apparent neurological damage. But I wanted to sit there and check them out while searching for products I don't really need, on the web. So I did. They left and so did I and it was close enough to 11 and I thought I would check and see if the Red Cross was still holding court at the Orleans and Broad Shell Station (the Shell station by the way has seen some better days, and hey, this is right across the street from the very first Ruth's Chris steakhouse, which did never let the hood daunt it, although today I read they are moving there corporate HQ to Florida). And people, oh, now its coming to me the seed of my discontent, some nimrod was blocking the entrance to the parking lot, sloppily taking one space that blocked four or five more. So I had to park and walk. I'm standing in line for free food behind six or seven others at a major New Orleans intersection and I'm a little self-conscious I don't mind telling you. But they are literally hawking these styrofoam dinners some days with a guy waving a box at motorists from the neutral ground. And anyway, if contractors are going to be charging twice as much in some cases, I really do need to be saving every penny I got, as I am not seeking any assistance from the gov., nor is my insurance any good for anything (it just a fire policy, and possibly not even that as events have unfolded.) so welcome to hard times but really this stuff is easy compared to the tension that used to come off these streets on any average day or night of the year.
Or at least I think I'm all chill about everything until I run into the cops, or, hired security ex-cops ex security I don't know, they looked sort of official but there were like four of them in some guy's chevy, fully uniformed and with the blue light on the dash. It became evident though, that I was holding on to some tension when I met them head on.
I had just got to my driveway and one of the sculptor's friends, or a hired contractor, has their passenger car parked as neatly as can be right in the nicely swept crumbled concrete across the front of my driveway. I did that heavy sigh thing, said fuck fuck, and then backed up pissed off and sped to the Iberville corner. I was turning right against the one way so I could go the half block to the L of the vacant Pentecostal lot and jump the curb and drive cross country to my driveway.
The cops are coming the proper way down Iberville at just that moment (by the way, great decoy undercover piece of crap car, guys, totally fooled me), and as I'm just starting to turn right these guys pull head on to me to block my progress. There were, I knew, nails in that debris of boards at the corner, but I had for a moment contemplated taking the sidewalk to evade these whothefucks. That is how seriously I was taking them as a non threat. To further state my lack of concern for this roadblock I opened my truck door and stuck my head out, which is a thing I would never ever do to real cops, that is, try to exit the vehicle without permission.
The driver sticks his head out his open door, just like me, and says, this is a one way street. I said there some yum yum blocking my driveway and I need to jump the curb and drive through the vacant lot. I was really pissed (and sort of mean looking I noticed later in the mirror). For backup a cop started getting out of the backseat but only halfway, like me and the first cop. None of us were really into this confrontation. In an effort to not make matters worse I purposely did not make eye contact with the second cop because I was intuiting that he would not take well to the look of contempt I would have for him. All kidding aside, I love cops, for the most part. We as humans are not to be trusted without them. But this was some bubble gum bullshit and I don't know what really was at the core of my discontent but it would not improve if there was going to be a rent a cop hovering every time I was guilty of minor infractions. The driver cop said again, just in case I was a complete moron, this is a one way street, you need to circle the block and come in the right way. The hell I needed to do any such thing and to prove that I said, as a last gesture of respect, I know it's one way, sir. I then shut my door, backed up, and turned back down my two way street and pulled to a screeching halt, in the street, parallel to the car blocking my driveway. I got out in a hurry and headed to my house, while keeping my left periphery alert for the cops, but they just kept on going down that one way Iberville.
After I ate I felt better. Red beans and rice, again.
The other day I was trying to think of that steamed vegetable that I like, but only in New Orleans do I like it and I was at a grocery recently and the man in front of me had two heads of something that looked like lettuce and a dim light bulb went off in my head and I thought, there they are, those things I can't remember, and I almost blurted out--Cauliflower, It's Cauliflower, but I knew instantly that was wrong, and then it just happened, not cauliflower, you idiot, cabbage, its cabbage.
Email From NOLA IIg
Yesterday, the end of the first week of November 05, in New Orleans, it was hot and muggy enough to require a full immersion cold shower and I feel even now, the next morning, baptized by the refreshing water of hope flowing from out of my pipes, here in this mostly vacant city.
I have potential support from many sources and am not in bad spirits, nor, as of this date can I create a list of unmet needs. That there are people suffering far more than I is such a constant in my frame of reference that--although I am not without some guilt for how relatively fortunate I am--I am trying not to waste too much time wallowing in what is mostly a waste of emotional energy.
Every new week brings new senators and activists who take their bus tours of the city and see what it is we are all seeing once arriving--a scope of devastation much larger than we were prepared for. All of them purport to having seen prior devastation, worldwide, and all say the same thing, they haven't seen anything this bad before. I think that has to reflect more on their lack of really getting out and seeing prior devastation worldwide than on the severity of this catastrophe versus others, but still, no shit, the scene here is mind boggling.
It's foggy this morning.
It is going to get cold eventually.
Mayor says eastern New Orleans might have power in six months.
The energy company (Entergy) in charge has filed Chapter 11.
New Oreans' bond rating has been downgraded, making investment here even shakier.
Out of town worker-looters are still a factor but relative to the crime that existed here Pre-K, those little punk ass bitch overpaid fuckers are really only a baseball bat away from eradicating. I wrote on the refrigerators still in the street this morning, "clean.up crew looted here."
I spent a cumulative three hours on hold, for three separate calls to Entergy, on Saturday. Entergy has always been very easy to deal with, very polite and helpful operators, and this is coming from a phonecallaphobic, but the second operator on Saturday was noticeably on edge, very grumpy, surly even, and essentially, just hung up on me. What I accomplished, I think, was having the utilities put back in my name. The renters are now set up on the West Bank. So the good news is I'm not incurring any utility costs, the bad news of course--got no utilities.
But Uptown and the FQ are up and running, only slightly crippled, and these are good things. Hundreds and hundreds of fine structures survived the flood. Being able to park in the French Quarter for morning grocery or breakfast runs is a thing I never thought I'd experience. I am constantly being cautious, taking the first spot I see, and then seeing numerous spaces, closer to my destinations.
I can pick up the Internet via wifi signals in various locations around the city (although I do have one favorite spot).
I know it is a better read when I report on actual characters, and my occasional interaction with them, and like I've said, the FQ and Uptown have quite a few people roaming around, but where I live, and did historically roam, is all but devoid of human beings, and still, completely devoid of operating businesses. Well, I know a couple of car washes are open. And, that newspaper box is selling papers on a nearby corner. And the Rockn'Bowl is opening back up, but, I never really dug it there.
I have run a hundred foot extension cord from the charging device in my truck and down the sideyard and into the bedroom window, and can now power up and use the laptops from the comfort of this air mattress. And although there is no mail delivery, and you have to take your mail and deposit it inside an actual post office, and then, one by one, try to retrieve your mail after giving one of 3 or 4 employees your ID, I do have hopes of resuming my Netflix addiction; I got the email notification yesterday that they had received the three I sent back last week. I was getting a really good turn around time those last few months in Virginia, but if I can get half that good of a turnaround here in New Orleans, I'll be happy. I bought some new batteries for my little clip on reading light because the days not only seem really short, they are short. And then I realized I can use the blank screen of this laptop as a reading light. The obstacles to my well being are simply no match for my desire to overcome them.
Email From NOLA IIf
It was always pretty quiet on this block of Rocheblave. And Sunday mornings in New Orleans were always quiet. I was getting ready to say how completely different and eerie is the quiet here now when a vessel twenty blocks behind me, floating down the Mississippi, gave a long sustained blast on the foghorn. I heard a bird chirp a minute ago. Somebody's rooting around in one of the Bienville houses, whose back yards back up perpendicularly to my side yard. Three crazy Blue Jays flying around, one slid down the slope of my porch railing earlier. They not making any noise though. I hear some vehicles moving somewhere. The cooling fan of my universal charging device plugged into the cigarette lighter makes a little noise. There go that aggressive Blue Jay sound.
Heard somebody say recently that the Monk Parakeets are gone but I saw some yesterday. They noisy too. Just not right now.
There was a muffled thump and a vibration felt, maybe the structural beam of a far off structure crashing down. And finally, a songbird.
The chauffeur went back to Houston for a few days. On the way out he called me and said the Red Cross has set up another food truck at the battered and boarded up Shell station, Orleans and Broad. I do not fit the profile of the beleauguered victim. I was not here for the storm and my house did not suffer any great damage from the flood waters. I have cold running water, and toilet, and even though I am without power I am living pretty much the same ascetic lifestyle I take with me wherever I go. Even on the small scale that describes my assets, I have considerably more value than debt and can afford to be here as an observer and watchdog of my block for some time longer, before my conservative fiscal sense requires me to take a job, here or elsewhere. So I haven't been hitting the Red Cross trucks but the chauffeur has and I have sampled several different styrofoam container filled lunch selections. The best so far has come from City Hall where the chauffeur was last week trying unsuccessfully to find out something useful but came away only with two lunches. It was the lunches provided for the few employees still employed down there. Brisket with gravy over rice and crisp salad with dressing and that stuff I cannot think of its name but its not cauliflower and I won't eat it anywhere else but New Orleans. Its like a relative of the lettuce family, thick, clear leaves, with some fat cooked with it and preferably some spices on the hot side.
So yesterday was my first direct contact with the Red Cross and there was nobody else waiting and I just pulled up, asked Lorina to hold please and went and got two lunches. The woman told me to tell other people because what the deal is--I mean God bless the Red Cross and all, but--there just aren't that many actual citizens living here, on the east bank of New Orleans, in these poorer neighborhoods. The lunch was delicious, chunks of white chicken meat w/gravy over rice, and an apple, two bottles of water and three mini-packs of Oreos. There are no restaurants nearby other than the FQ and Uptown, and nothing cheap and what the Red Cross is giving out is quality and relative to what I was getting pre-K in those same styrofoam containers, from various local sources, I would gladly pay three dollars for, but nobody is charging for, or providing, cheap food here so, such as it is convenient, and doesn't require that I burn a lot of gasoline to acquire, I will gladly accept free food, from any source, any time. Driving down Broad back to Rocheblave a dude walking in the street flagged me and I stopped and he was looking for South Broad and I said you on North Broad. He said I know, I said get in, shifted the lunches and that mornings newspaper and kept on in the direction I was heading. Four or five blocks later we crossed Canal and I said Canal is the North/South divider and three blocks later dropped him at the Carpenter's Union, behind which is a trailer, out of which I can only guess is being conducted the business of business, as regards carpenters. Here, take a lunch I said and he said no, he wasn't hungry, but I said, come on man, they free, and he smiled and took one, saying surely somebody in there would be hungry. He got out and stood there looking in the rolled down passenger window, all beamy-eyed, like nobody had done anything nice for him in a long time. He looked sort of like a blond, middle-age version of that actor who had his heyday in the forties and fifties, Wally Cox. I said, hey man, you are entirely welcome. I was a little bit my edgy aggressive self because I was momentarily pissed off. Nobody should have to be that grateful for accurate directions, a free ride, and a chicken casserole.
Email From NOLA IIe
I hear these optimistic spins on how much of the city is with and how much is without power and the reported numbers imply that there are only about 100,000 in the whole area without electricity and 25,000 to 50,000 without gas, two months after the storm Katrina or enemy insurgents caused the 17th Street and London Avenue flood walls to collapse. Perhaps that is spun to mean that juice and gas is available but not yet running back into homes until they are inspected and this I accept, but let me give you some numbers about as realistic. If 80 percent of Orleans Parish was under water then 75 percent of Orleans Parish is still, effectively, without power. Rounding up (by 25,000) the New Orleans population to 500,000, that leaves 400,000 of us without power. Of course, I would estimate that almost all of that 400,000 are not here and at least a quarter, but maybe half, of that number do not have livable homes to come back to.
The projects are not going to be reopened, not because they couldn't be utilized but because they have proven to be a failed experiment for housing low income people, and neither apparently are the majority of Orleans Parish public schools, a whopping 75 percent of which are failing according to state and federal guidelines for acceptable achievement. There is yet another new superintendent of schools here, been here about a year, and she thinks the state government is "rushing to judgment" in their threats to take over the local school system. I do not mean to suggest that the state government is the right agency for the job but this woman should just be fired immediately and deprived of that juicy pension package that all the superintendents seem to take away from this city. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who suggests that anything short of revolutionary change is necessary here in our public schools is a complete and total idiot.
All my neighbors, 75 percent of whom own their homes (although the total number of homes is only about 8 or 9, in the square block bounded by Iberville, Dorgenois, Bienville, and Rocheblave, have started initial cleanup and repairing of their properties. Without electricity. I am apparently the only one in this square block on full time duty (which in my case consists of a lot of reading and waiting), except maybe there is a worker camping out in that school building run by the Pentecostals on Iberville, near Dorgenois.
The EPA was out yesterday, examining some ancient acetylene canisters somebody left on the refuse pile on my street.
The four refrigerators are still out there too, in front of the bags of insulation. It is on top of the fluffy, pink filled bags that the canisters lay.
People are still writing messages on refrigerators and I'm thinking of writing one that says "I saw you looting." That would be specific to the one cleanup crew that worked this block on Nov. 2nd.
Had a cheeseburger for breakfast at the gay diner on Bourbon St. this morning but today no one seemed gay at all, rather everyone seemed depressed. You would think there might be a titter of excitement about the visit of Prince Charles and Camilla but there wasn’t. Today there was just heaviness.
My nephew, who clearly, now I know this for sure, has never really liked me, is asking me to do a survey of his house in Lakeview today, because he heard that his walls are caving in and he's just curious. I am going to run over there shortly, even though the very few occupying Lakeview residents have hired private anti-looting patrols and are hopping mad about ongoing looting to the second, undamaged stories of some of their homes. I completely understand. Which is why I won't be getting that extension ladder from under your back porch until you come back and escort me over there, nephew. I did not survive 10 years in these NO ghettos to end up shot in the back by some uptight homeowner protecting their expresso maker. I'm just kidding brah, I'm happy to go over there for you. Also, I don't know what the hell yall waiting on. You and the family should get back here. You got the rental place Uptown. There is shrimp. There are oranges. There is beer.
(Some hours later)
I drove to Lakeview, nephew. I did not explore much but went in your house long enough to see the full back to front extent of your flood devastation, Holy Shit. I am very sorry (the photographs don’t really tell it), but I suppose yall past all that, ready to move forward. I forgot to bring my mask and if there is such a thing as this really bad toxic mold mojo working, then you certainly got it inside Memphis, my lungs felt like I’d inhaled razor blades after only about a minute inside. I did not open any closed doors though or venture past the kitchen. I was not eager to touch anything so did not retrieve the rumored six pack of Heineken, but thanks for the offer. I did not really notice collapsed walls though; perhaps your in-law was referring to the next door neighbor’s house, fully gutted now, guts strewn throughout front yard. I turned the pirogue upside down on the back porch because it had collected rainwater. If that is yours we should take it and store it somewhere when you come back, I have for years been meaning to float down the Bayou St. John. Lakeview turned out not to be scary, just like everything else here, sad. The scope of the devastation is hard to appreciate from afar and from looking at maps. I drove for miles today, without even getting close to Eastern New Orleans, or the famous Ninth Ward, and saw virtually no life forms, except for a few workers and a few camouflaged Hummvees driven by National Guardsmen. I did not see any people living in their homes, which is obvious, because as I drove north towards the lake, the water lines got higher and higher on the houses.
There is a heart breaking picture on the front page of the paper today, of a daughter inspecting her 76 year old mother’s attic, a Lakeview resident, a feisty grandmother who stayed in her home but was thought to have been rescued, but wasn’t, and fled to her attic, and died, with a half bottle of water next to her. Another resident who stayed but was rescued said that after the water first entered her Lakeview home, it was only 30 minutes before it was up to her waist (but she floated out on a boat), and then, like your house nephew, probably took about eight feet.
The EPA showed up this afternoon. In force. Four or five trucks. At least two supervisors and six or seven worker drones who rolled the 16 canisters onto the lift of a panel truck and strapped them to its interior. It was touch and go for a minute but I think the dangerous canisters are being transported out of the neighborhood now. All in all about two hours of hullabaloo. This is only conjecture but I bet it only took two guys about 30 minutes to discard those canisters.
I spent money for the first time in New Orleans 4th Ward today. While there are no open restaurants or grocery stores or convenience stores or gas stations, or anything, you make the list, there is a Times Picayune newspaper box at the corner of Canal and Rocheblave, across the street from the blue Postal Service mailboxes with their slots taped shut, and I felt for just those few seconds hopeful as I inserted two quarters and received what for me has always been a very engaging newspaper. Today’s edition was no exception.
Email From NOLA IId
Yesterday, about dusk, I saw the ghost of Shorty, who is the cat you are looking at if you glance to left of this page. I took a bowl of cat food and placed it on the concrete up against the Auto Title establishment, which is next door to me on the other side of the vacant Pentecostal lot, and that ghost ate hungrily and then pranced about with great vivaciousness. Earlier, I had fed the facsimile of K-2 using the same bowl, but from the raised bed to the right of my steps, wherefrom now grows only the dead stalks of a photinia bush. I took the chainsaw to the bushes the other day because they did not survive the toxic soup soaking. And then later, who else could it be but Kitten, with those very exact markings, and always staying close to that Bienville property which had once claimed her. With Shorty, being all black, its harder to tell but also, there is no way to absolutely refute the possibility that the cat I am seeing is actually the original Shorty. Definitely from the same street-cat gene pool, these street cats rarely growing to a size bigger than the appearance of adolescence. And the other evening waiting for the arrival of The Rebirth Brass Band, in the FQ, where they locking the gates of Jackson Square early, I saw three cats moving confidently, pridefully, inside their own private compound. Aristocratic cats.
And this morning I saw my first wild dog, checking out the Rocheblave refuse. I did not bring back to New Orleans my bb gun, or my shotgun, for that matter. Most dogs either drowned or were shot or were evacuated after the levees broke. Cat's just climbed higher. That dog I saw maybe belonged to one of the workers sucking out the storm drains down the street a ways. I keep the chauffeur's dog in my back yard when he goes to deliver his advertising circulars. The dog's name is Flash. He is brown.
Which brings me to this--There hasn't been a murder recorded in New Orleans since the hurricane. I contend that there has not been a two month stretch without a murder in New Orleans for at least twenty years. It would take a lot of microfiche spinning to prove that I guess but for now I'm just throwing it out there casually.
There is uniqueness happening here in a city that was unique to begin. There may be less of the unspeakable happening but no less of the unfathomable. More and more of us are camping inside our powerless homes, eager for the uncertain future, mesmerized by the present. There is talk of a new New Orleans being ruined by bureaucratic incompetence and malfeasance and a master plan designed by carpetbaggers with a Disney vision. But there will be no death to this ground that has been New Orleans, by bureaucrats or by any means, because there has been so much death upon it. It will be the ghosts who decide what happens here. And if its Disney that ends up here then it will be the Disney of your youth suggested to you by your college prof when she said--you really must take some mushrooms and go see Fantasia. You cannot kill ghosts, they do not drown. There will be no method which leaves this place unhaunted.
All day long, from sun up to sundown, I can hear the whirring engines of bobcats with front end claw loaders filling up dump trucks. I will stand in the middle of an intersection in my neighborhood for minutes and not be disrupted in my lolly-gagging reconnaissance by vehicle or any recognizable life form. And sometimes I can't see anything in the way of workers, in all directions, but I can hear that whirring, and scraping of metal front end buckets against asphalt. Other days I can't go a block in any direction without seeing a guy on a powerline, or a bobcat, or sewage maintenance truck.
Bobcat and dump trailer pausing at my block of Rocheblave right now, a discussion is going on. Bobcat guy clearly wants to move down Iberville, no wait, he's making a circuit of the block, just drove behind me, dump trailer pulled by heavy duty Ford truck parking at the end of the block...
They worked for about two hours, five white people, three men, two women, one of the trucks had a vanity plate on front that said "Bama." They left behind as much as they took and during breaks looted small items from houses across the street that were left open, and in one case not being able to force open the front door of a home, forced open a side gate that was duct taped shut, a guy disappeared for a while and came back smiling and said, found me a brand new garden hose, and tossed it in the back of the truck.
I called a couple of electricians today. Inspections will be mandatory to get any power back. First inspection from an electrician and then a city building inspector, the latter of which are coming from a department that has been sliced and diced due to the city having no income. Thousands of us are beginning to wait in line for a visit from one of four available inspectors. Electricians, however, are plentiful, and charging approximately a little more than double what the going rate was Pre-K.
I started writing this in the morning but am just getting back to it now. The sun is setting. Heard the crunching of leaves in my side yard, went out front to investigate. Two more wild dogs, foraging. One looked like Benji from Hell, had a frayed section of rope hanging from his neck.
This is me, reporting from the passenger seat of my truck, dateline, New Orleans.