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Caretaker Defamation
I was parked in front of a fancy hotel in North Carolina last spring off loading luggage and when I started the truck back up it blew out a truly impressive cloud of white smoke. In idle it continued to emit blue/grey white smoke at such an alarming rate that I worried for the health of my fellow wedding guests, who were mingling just inside the open door leading into the lobby. I quickly pulled away from the front door (forcing even more white smoke from the exhaust pipe) and parked in a nearby lot behind a row of vehicles that I felt certain did not emit smoke of any kind.
The white smoke can be indicative of a blown head gasket (very bad) or a blown rear seal (also bad) and is not the sort of thing you want to happen to your vehicle while on a wedding road trip that requires you to drive 40 miles between rehearsal dinner and wedding and reception. A friend recommended I take it to a nearby mechanic and have him pour in some of that engine additive seal sealing gunk (and something similar for the radiator) and I had nothing to lose so I did this, and the truck responded favorably. It got me back to Virginia. But that trip marked the last of the road trips for the Mazda B4000. It could only be used locally until I either had major engine work or off-loaded the truck. Except that besides for a noticeable engine skip in the 50 mph range it just kept on running pretty well, so I test drove it up to Philadelphia a couple of days after Katrina hit New Orleans. And no problem. So I drove it to New Orleans in Oct and it did ok so I drove it back up to Virginia and NYC this last week, and now I am driving it back, and, all systems go. I'm not at the halfway point yet but have high hopes for my unlikely success.
In Virginia, on the grounds of Mt. Prosperous, always f-ing off, always working, I had the heating system worked on in both the houses, received delivery of a replacement window (that I had ordered 3 months previous and had given up on ever receiving), attended to a burst hose bib on the bighouse, aired up the tires of a bicycle, and performed complicated banking maneuvers at a Front Royal, VA branch of the bank that handles my NC business as it relates to the rental house there.
In Woodville, VA. I remedied a wood stove problem which was bewitching the radical feminist octogenarian play-write, and only laziness and lack of interest kept me from fixing the pervasive underlying problems of the entire Rappahannock County.
Deep in the bowels of NY City's Lower East Side I met with one of my curmudgeon underlings, inspected his ongoing work, purchased one of his flower arrangements, and fixed his damn semi-circular bathtub shower curtain rod assembly, while he looked on, in sheer awe of my methodology.
If only I could relax when on vacation, instead of always feeling that need to reach out and fix the crumbling infrastructure of others. Such an attitude, however, would be a direct defamation to the essence of the caretaker.
Email From NOLA IIz
NY City. At a Deli near Central Park I paid $17 for a few small bags of ice so we could keep beverages cold at the little get together we were having off of 5th Ave. Across the street from this large 5th floor apartment is, well, every damn thing, it's NY what do you think?, but notably, there is a bodega that sells the cheapest damn corkscrew you could ever imagine, and upon every use a piece would break off of it until yesterday, the day after the party, I was reduced to using the blunt end of what was formerly the sharp screw part of the device, to push the damn cork into a bottle of wine.
As I double parked in Jersey City the afternoon of the party, waiting for Otis's most delicious, delivered vegetarian chili, I was witness to a twenty minute sidewalk cell phone tirade by a young woman who informed me, her man, and every available ear on the block about what a complete low-life shit he, her baby's daddy, was.
I do not approach NY these days with the relative gusto of my youth, and so yesterday, the day after the party, I took advantage of this large space, with steam heat so ample that the windows are always open, and laid around, watching the miserable Saints, and then the miserable Cowboys, on TV. The small two person elevator opens right into the apartment and I would go down periodically to smoke a cigarette and wander no farther than the immediate block or two, and every time would see a restaurant or shop or notable building that, I swear to God, wasn't there two hours previous.
An affluent looking man, with grey burr-cut hair and an ear ring and an overcoat looking like it might cost close to what I've spent as down payment on New Orleans ghetto property, was mad at a bus driver double parked in front of his vehicle, inside of which sat his grandson, and this man in the truest tradition of the holiday season, went so totally ballistic, foaming at the mouth, red-faced, veins popping, that the young gangbanger walking in front of me turned around a couple of times with a look of shock, or maybe it was train-wreck anticipation.
I went around the corner after that and stood out front of the grocery store and listened to hip-hop coming from a vehicle across the street. Two teenagers were dancing and then all of a sudden they started to beat the shit out of a homeless person, throwing him to the ground and then kicking him in the kidneys and side of the head. The homeless person lay apparently dead on the sidewalk while passersby stepped around him. After two full minutes laying motionless the homeless person jumped up, danced in place, and then ran off around the next corner, following his friends who had pretended to beat up his pretended homelessness.
I could have gone to Starbucks for coffee this morning but I prefer not to shop at coffee houses where they blank stare you if you go in and order, "coffee." So I went to the Dunkin' Donuts across the street and stood queued behind a few morning commuters and right after I ordered ( by saying, I would like a large coffee), the woman beside me said, at full volume, (and as far as I knew, apropos of nothing)--You owe me an apology. And then she reiterated several times that one of us owed her a damn apology. All five of the workers behind the counter and the five of us queued up glanced at each other to see which one of us was shitheel of the moment. It was one of the workers who had inadvertently taken someone else's order before hers. There was profusely sincere and soothing apology, from every one of the workers, and then a heartfelt--you have a nice day--and the woman almost cried, and said, thank you so very much. Apparently because she was so happy to be even in the proximity of the merest insinuation of the possibility of actually having a nice day.
Seasons Greetings from NYC, woohoo.
Email From NOLA IIy
I had enough beer in my bladder to wake me early Thursday morning for the drive up to NY. The late night beer drinking was part of my ingenious plan to beat the snow/ice storm predicted for the morning hours. But I kept coming back to bed after trips down the hall and then I decided to just go ahead and pretend there would be no ice/snow storm, take my time, have breakfast.
I had gone the previous evening to a high school band concert with Lorina. Her ex-boyfriend and current bandmate, Morton, was there too, and he sat on the other side of Lorina (it was the double ex sandwich) and yacked incessantly and since I can't laugh but so much, at anything, even if it really is funny, I just let Lorina manage her ex and tried to focus on the high school musicians. At times the two of them were almost cute together. We had another fight afterwards where I reiterated my disdain for the majority of her male friends and then left her pissed off and she left me a testy comment to one of my posts. I thought about deleting it but truth is truth and that's that. Embarrassment is short lasting.
She called me in the morning after my failed attempt to get early on the road, just a tad sheepish, and I said, sure, let's have breakfast. Over breakfast she asked me did I want to delete that comment and I said I will if you want me to, but in the end we decided to leave it.
The snow that started coming down midway through breakfast was sticking to the street immediately. I was going anyway. Lorina said Chester Gap might be a bit challenging and we said goodbye. But the more I thought about Chester Gap the more chicken-hearted I got so I decided to wait out the storm. I drove over to tell Lorina this and ended up getting snowed in with her.
The next morning scraping ice off my windshield and the radical feminist octogenarian play write (for whom Lorina is caretaker) came out and ask me a for a favor and I went in and did a light maintenence job on her wood burning stove, which is her sole source of heat.
Drove back to the bighouse and an outdoor pipe was burst but I dealt with it and packed my bags and left. The roads were fine. But Chester Gap appeared, unlike the surrounding area, as if a major winter storm had hit it. Ice coated every limb and twig of every tree. As it melted in the midday sun is was--uh--shiny.
I took a little bump when I shouldna had oughta and after wolfing a Mickey D got back on the highway going the wrong direction. It took me a while to figure it out, and a while longer to correct it. But I got into Jersey City all good, and drank some more beer, with Bill.
Today I am heading into the city to hike the Park, attend a party, and then crash heavy at the party site, which is in a building near the Park and 5th Ave and the MOMA. My friend is going to tear down and replace the building with another one. So various of us, Nykers, and visiting guests too, are sort of occupying it occasionally as needed. And the friend stays there when doing business in NY, instead of paying 600 a night for a hotel room.
So tomorrow night will make the 5th different residence at which I have slept since leaving New Orleans 10 days ago. The weird thing about places out here on the east coast is--they all have operable utilities, and hot water flows from the pipes on even the coldest days, which have been many.
Email From NOLA IIx
I was cruising down St. Charles last week looking for the Bultman Funeral Home as landmark to a nearby destination and got a call on my cell. I can't drive with my reading glasses on and I can't see a damn thing, up close, without them. So if I answer the phone without saying hey Biff, hey Susie, or hey, I told you not to call me anymore, you will know I don't have my reading glasses on and am just winging it, hoping for the best.
Hello?
Jim? This is Julie (Julie a man). He is one of my employees. That's right, my caretaking empire is so out of control that I now have employees of my own.
Look Jim, it supposed to get down in the teens tonight (in Rappahannock County, VA.) and I'm worried about the cottage (because the heat went out). He did not want to be responsible for the catastrophe of frozen pipes on his watch and I gave him some soothing instructions and said, don't worry about it Julie, just do those couple of things for me and I'll be there day after tomorrow, and take full responsibility for any catastrophe. So I've been around here almost a week now and its been in the teens every night and everything is fine, no frozen pipes. I am a cool cucumber about potential catastrophe, except when the planetary alignments are less than ideal and then I may let loose with a non-traditional stream of profanities. It is an immaturity of mine I just can't seem to control sometimes. Crapshit, fuckwad, dickbutter. The planets are cool by me right now, that was just a little example.
Julie said, I got a couple of mice since you've been gone. That's two in like five or six weeks since my return to New Orleans, and I've removed three cute little broken-necked carcasses just in the week I've been around here. I'm not bragging I'm just saying, sometimes it takes the boss to get things done.
I throw them out in the bushes by the back door, as snack food for the foxes, or skunks.
The one I retrieved this morning got the blunt guillotine so good that his eyes literally popped out of his head, and they remain on the kitchen floor, even now, because I don't do eyeballs. Everybody these days, if you want to make the big money, you got to have things you just don't do, and by not doing these things you don't do, you give extra weight and importance to the things you do do. I don't think this is necessarily right or good but I'm trying to swim in the mainstream a little more these days. Be like my successful contemporaries.
I have postponed my trip to NYC by one day so that I can be here for the heating guy. He's late. I'm afraid to even go and get lunch because I don't want to miss him. I'm getting hot under the collar. It is really really hard to get tradespeople to come out here. For the sake of propriety I don't think I should go on about this. Hunger and impatience go badly together. Did the planets just shift, is there a realignment happening?
Email From NOLA IIw
As you may or may not be aware, Wednesday is biscuits and gravy day at the diner in Little Washington.
This morning the long central table was occupied by a woman's group exchanging Christmas presents.
I'm sitting alone at a table for four, facing the door, and an old local curmudgeon comes in and sits at another table for four, facing me. He glances at the table full of women and the beginning of a rueful smile comes across his face. He is midway through the complete facial machinations of the rueful smile when he makes eye contact with me, watching him watching them. With our hearts melting a little we extend to each other the old curmudgeon's nod, and I throw in an abbreviated rueful smile while he completes his.
Me and him only have them for entertainment and so we watch as they exchange gifts and open them for our pleasure. Christmas ornaments and other decorations, a sweater, some wine, some chocolate, and a dish towel is what I saw exchanged between the ten or twelve perhaps office workers.
I let my one eye go cocked and so have no exact vision but more just a sense of things, the pitch of voices, the movement of diners. I refocus for a moment and the old curmudgeon across from me is also refocusing from his own squiggy-eyed state. Both of us out of our altered states we make indirect eye contact and he's thinking of a thing that is not actually a single thing but a pure emotion based on a bunch of things from the giant pile of emotional rubble that makes up his life. Me and him are synching now and we both know it. Looks like he may have gotten a little hot sauce in his eye because I cannot think of any other reason why his eyes, which began clear, are now just slightly red around the edges, and glazed with a film of water.
I make the hasty decision not to hang around this girly-fest a moment longer. I get up hurriedly and pay my bill and then my respects to the two waitresses, and walk out into the wintery chill of a rural Virginia postcard.
Email From NOLA IIv
I survived the party in McLean, VA. because I did not have a single appletini. I got there early and was in charge of stringing lights through the bushes on either side of the outdoor fireplace. I also retrieved wood for the various fires both inside and out, and stacked them neatly, lincoln log style. I hung the electric wreath on the face of the outdoor fireplace and let me tell you, when the sun went down and the fires and candles and lights were lit, it was pretty damn festive looking.
My friend, Mr. BC, alerted me this morning to a Wall Street Journal article on the ongoing architectural theft in New Orleans. Without going into too much about this let me suggest that if you see work happening on homes in your area, and there appears to be any sort of removal of architectural details, even on nearly demolished homes, perhaps it would be a good idea to take a picture of the "workers" and their vehicles and if you know for a fact that the workers are not permitted and you have a baseball bat and you want to accept me as your coach then rest assured that the signal I'm giving you is--swing away. When I return from my brief east coast sabbatical maybe we could form a team. We could be the Batboys (if the female team members said it was ok).
At the party I talked to a bunch of giants of industry from the DC area and all the cooler ones that seemed interested I invited down to New Orleans for a little unique relaxation in a city that would welcome them and appreciate the dollars. "I always wanted to explore the antique..." one woman began, and I interrupted with, "Magazine Street is up and running, come on down."
I talked also to an artist looking for inspiration and considering a trip to New Orleans and I told the artist--artistic inspiration is not an optional part of New Orleans, it is only ever a matter of how well you can process all the incoming data, which at times can be overwhelming.
As the party ended I ran into a guy smoking a cohiba by the outdoor fire and it turns out we were almost classmates at the University of Texas, from where I dropped out 26 years ago. He said he wished he had but instead he went on to become a giant of industry. Nice guy and we swapped Austin stories and we parted with him reminiscing yearnfully for an OT special at Dirty's. With jalapenos right? Of course, he said. Apparently his company bought Hibernia bank New Orleans right before the flood hit. We did not discuss whether the company's plans for the bank would be beneficial or not so beneficial to the future of New Orleans. Sometimes I like to put on my little Pollyanna wig and just be happy, and hopeful.
Email From NOLA IIu
The Inn at Little Washington--"When you are a couple of perfectionists who decide to open a grand restaurant in a sleepy rural village seventy miles from any metropolitan area, you're either crazy or truly inspired. Reinhardt Lynch and Patrick O'Connell gambled that what they could offer in Virginia's Washington (pop. 178) would be enough to persuade diners to make the hour and a half trek into unknown territory. That was 1978; twenty-six years later, with every kind of award and accolade tacked to their office wall (like the unprecedented Zagat 29-29-29 rating and the James Beard Foundation's Restaurant of the Year)..."
When I stay in Rappahannock County I reside on a 40 acre property, as caretaker, up on a hill surrounded 360 by the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains, about five blocks from The Inn.
I eat breakfast across the street from The Inn, at the Country Cafe. The waitresses call me "dear" and the Wednesday special is biscuits with sausage gravy.
My fellow diners are old curmudgeons like me, or town workers, cowboys, mechanics, retired newspaper men, an occasional politician, a foreigner once in a while, and high school students. Unlike the diner on Bourbon St. in New Orleans there is not, to my knowledge, a single transvestite on the list of regulars. Not to say there aren't adventurous spirits in the area because more than few talented artists reside in Rappahannock and I personally know or sort of know a handful of wife-swappers, drug addicts, a pornography production assistant, and a farmer/rocknroller/schoolteacher who doesn't talk to God Almighty but talks to Nature Spirits and drinks by the eye-dropper-full, essences of nature distilled in brandy.
The tabletops at the diner are covered in Fall-themed vinyl, with pictures of pumpkins, mustang grapes, and leaves turned to color other than green. This late in December it surprises me that more Christmas decoration is not up because last year the Christmas theme lasted from early December to late July. Sometimes I would sit next to the baby Jesus.
Now I am at a loss to tell you anything else.
Tonight going into McLean, VA. for a semi-formal Christmas party. Of my ilk there, will be me. I get to be the novelty guest, which is fine. Better than being a curmudgeon, all the time.
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."