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Water Main
I got that pirougue out of my nephew's backyard and took it over to Rocheblave and now have better floating potential in a city below sea level surrounded by suspect levees. The demolition guys showed up that day and parked the large backhoe in my nephew's front yard, in preparation for the tear down later this week. Did they park right on top of the main water shutoff would become a question after I broke a pipe in the bathroom while trying to extricate the claw foot bathtub. "Your house is flooding," I told my nephew and his wife, who were smashing down water-swelled-shut doors with a little sledge hammer, to retrieve last mementos ("holy cow, I didn't know you guys went to Paris for your honeymoon," I said when they handed me a water dripping photo album documenting that fact). For about an hour we dug in the front yard for the water main. My nephew was sure about the location but it would not show up as he dug deeper and deeper. We did find a piece of the collar (ostensibly broken when debris removing bobcats traversed their property) and the lid, and yet still could not find the actual shutoff. The backhoe was parked very close and we contemplated tunneling under the treads to find that damn shutoff.
Today is the final day of my house sitting by the Fairgrounds and Ramona and I went on our last walk this morning and she deposited her poop by the Fairgrounds fence as I looked up the treasure lined street at--tree limbs, garbage bags, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, television sets, sheetrock, rotted framing lumber, shingles, car tires, broken bicycles, stereo equipment, stuffed animals, bricks, pots and pans, and furniture. And this is a neighborhood that did not flood that badly.
I would go into the bathroom periodically to give my nephew's wife an update about the water flooding her moldy, bombed out house which only four month's previous had stewed in eight feet of toxic, swirling, furniture-rearranging floodwater. "It appears to be draining out through the floor in the bathroom and is not spreading through the house much." She appeared to be in pretty good spirits about the whole thing but I wasn't absolutely sure about that so I never turned my back to her when she had the two-pound sledge hammer in her hand.
When it became obvious that the two so-called men in attendance were of no use whatsoever, we swallowed what little pride we still had and told her she would need to drive the neighborhood and be the damsel in distress to whomever she could find. She found an Entergy truck but they pertain to electrical and gas issues and although he was apparently sympathetic to her plight, he could not actually do anything. However, as all of us took turns digging, and postulating about the whereabouts of that shutoff valve, the man from Entergy came driving up the street and then went into the house with my nephew to have a looksee. He made my nephew go into the shooting fountain of water and try the shutoff by the tub, which I had already "turned off?" and rechecked once to make sure I had turned it in the right direction.
While they were in there I hit the main shutoff with the shovel blade and when apprised of this while coming out of the house leading my soaking wet nephew, the Entergy man said--"good timing." He had a couple of wrenches and did the turning, one wrench 90 degrees to the other, and stopped that flow of fresh cleansing water. Nephew and I loaded that clawfoot tub into my truck with the pirougue strapped on top and they followed me over to Rocheblave to unload and then took me over here to this neighborhood where I house sit and we ate at Liuzza's by the Race Track and had the best damn barbecued shrimp po-boy ever.
The Fuse
It is true that I am not exactly the most proactive acting individual around but this morning with the prop of the low-riding dachsund Ramona on her walk in a neighborhood bordering the Fairgrounds, where at one point a nice resident man said, "hey, I've been seeing you around, you live here?" And," my wife will be very upset if you let that dog shit on our grass, without bagging it," I collared an electrician getting tools from his truck and asked him if having no street light was really the sign that you aren't even hooked up to the grid yet. He took the time to walk me down the street a ways and pointed out the transformer up on the pole and explained about the fuse either being hooked up or not. Before he even finished I flashed to that little thingy hanging down loose from the transformer in front my house on Rocheblave (which now I know is a fuse) and said, "ok, thanks, I see what you're talking about." I saw my neighbor, the sculptor, two days ago, and she said she stopped by an Entergy truck on a nearby street recently and begged them to power up our block. They wrote down here address, I'm guessing out of politeness as much as anything else.
I brought a small generator back from Virginia, which, although not powerful enough to run a power tool, is powerful enough to charge up the Christmas lights I strung along my front porch. I also plugged in a string to the plug-in converter in my truck, which runs off the battery, and ran it inside via extension cord to act as multi-colored festive night light in the bathroom. And I have a twelve volt camping lantern. There often seems to be a bottle of whisky on my kitchen counter, which is a kind of fuel too.
There are now open a few convenience stores along the several mile stretch of Broad Street, which is obviously a positive sign. At the same time, they are so far spaced in an area still without much population, that partly what these stores offer is a painful contrast of the function and disfunction of this city. At night in Mid-City there are sections of town with street light and sections totally black. Very few, and I mean, very few, houses have interior lights at night. Still, some of us are camping and lately we are enjoying amazing weather, day and night.
Many of us here travel in and out of state periodically and are hipping up to what is a normal reaction from people not affected by the flood waters. The residents of New Orleans just need to handle their business and quit all the whining. A little whining though is a healthy release for us so please don't begrudge us that. This is not by any means a hopeless situation here but to live here and daily traverse through the operating and non-operating sections of the city is at times difficult to our psyches. I should also mention that many outsiders have been a huge help to this city and thanks to all of you.
I still get politely Q&A'd by cops occasionally, because I look like a criminal, but none of them have beat me up or shot me so I am grateful for that.
I am later today going into Lakeview with my nephew to retrieve the pirogue from his back yard, which floated onto his property when eight feet of lake water visited his neighborhood, back in late August, early September. The demolition crew is scheduled to knock his house down tomorrow. We may try to retrieve the claw foot tub from his, uh, newly remodeled bathroom. He is rebuilding, my nephew is, and his amazing wife and three young children are with him every step of the way.
I have been invited, sight unseen, but not blog unseen, to a New Year's gathering at the home of another Mid-City camper. He and his wife recently had the electricity turned on to the top half of their house. They live in a neighborhood just a couple of minutes from Rocheblave, and are surrounded by darkness. He is Editor B and gots a groovy blog.
Four Months Down
Looks like we're at the four month anniversary of the flood. It's warm here this week so I could be sleeping quite comfortably at Rocheblave but I got a few more days of this house-sitting gig so I'm sleeping comfortably on N. Lopez. Talked to a guy across the street who has no electricity (the only house in this neighborhood without it) and I asked him what kind of converstations, if any, he had had with Entergy and he said 30 minute to one hour holds with occasional in his face hang ups and the last bit of hopeful info they gave him was--weeks, not months. Did you know that weeks eventually do add up to months? His experience with Entergy is pretty similar to mine except that my block is not even powered up at all, no streetlight, which is the signal that you can at least anticipate the reality of your juice being turned on. I could start to get frustrated here pretty soon. My friend says I should be calling Entergy but I don't really agree with my friend about the benefit of that. Lucky for me I got things to take my mind off of this shit. In a couple of weeks I'm driving up to Dallas to help my siblings kick my mom out of her house and set her up in assisted living facility. She doesn't know that's going to happen but all of you do. A bit of advice to all of my mentally ill friends who may wish to visit here. Do not wave a three inch knife at large gatherings of police. You will scare them silly and they will shoot you dead.
NO Merry Christmas Memories
5.18.97--The Dumaine Players
CL, a 20-year-old young man raised by Mama D goes my the name K and while shirtless sports the pucker of bullet wounds across his stomach and back, wounds inflicted during his fifteenth year. More of a ladies man than a street hustling drug dealer, K follows the flow of current events and avoids conflict to the best of his ability. Sometimes seen on the street holding his newborn daughter, K smokes the blunt, raps a few modern lyrics, but mostly stays on the border of any serious business dealings in the area. The mother of the baby is in jail on a charge unrelated to shooting through the front door K's ex-girlfriend across the street here about six months ago. For a man of his age in this environment, K has been plenty respectful of the two white people at 2646. On one occasion at the Magnolia convenience store across the street M found herself laughing at the sexual advances one young gangster was making towards a young girl, and while the young man was inclined towards getting in M's face over this small humiliation, K, with some theatrics, dissuaded the other young man from pursuing his actions. So M likes him and perhaps K appreciates (and is yearnful of, himself) the time M spends with his younger blood relations on the street. Just a week ago M had put out on the front porch some coloring books and crayons for the younger children to play with and when she came out a bit later she found K proudly displaying his colored picture and asking her opinion of its worth compared to his sister's, LL. LL is a 14-year-old honor student.
6.2.97--Surrogate Parent
I proposed a few months ago to some of the neighborhood children (ages 6-12) that if they would clean the street on Sundays I would take them on road trips outside the 6th Ward: to Audubon Park (where I say--come on guys don't pull your dicks out and pee off the jungle gym, go behind a tree or something. Or they call each other motherfuckin' nigger in front of the rich white children), or to the New Orleans Lakefront where I let them illegally swim until the park police come and bust them, or to the beach in Waveland, Miss. where a carload of good old boys drives by yelling out--hey you niggers, or to a local music festival where Shelton, 12, punches out Eric, 10, or this weekend to a festival in the French Quarter where M and I went with three boys and came back with only one. Even knowing that all these boys roam the Quarter on their own and can walk or bike the distance in less time than we drive it didn't relieve me of guilt for leaving the two boys (even though we waiting in one prearranged spot for four hours). But they know I don't mind, even expect them to stray to Bourbon St. to ogle outside the titty bars, as long as they check in once in awhile. So while Fermin hung close, got an outlandish balloon hat from a clown (who wouldn't accept my money but took everyone else's), got his face painted (also for free) and shared a po-boy with us (which is a special treat because I usually make them bring their own food), Shelton and Eric disappeared to do God only knows what. When Fermin tells us he has to go home and take some medicine, we drive back to Dumaine, where I drop him and M, and pick up two more boys, Glynn and Michael, and head back to the Quarter to make at least the pretense of a search. I centrally locate myself (next to that damn clown again) and send the boys off into the Quarter. They go to the river, the French Market, Bourbon St. and back, get free balloon hats each (the most extravagant that clown made all day), and I say so you guys looked for Shelton and Eric to which they respond, oh yes, and we head back home. Shelton and Eric are there, sitting on the porch, and knowing I'll be mad try to sucker punch me with--why did you leave us down there, at which point I yell some grown up stuff at them (although not once did I call them motherfuckin' bitches as their guardians sometimes do), and banished them from next Sunday's activities. To which they respond--what about the Sunday after that? I guess I showed them.
6.8.97--Depravity, With Despair On The Side
Shelton, at 12-years-old, is the oldest boy living in Mama D's house. Shelton is the neighborhood bully and as much as we see him being a bully and can imagine and remember what it's like being the the recipient of a bully's bad attitude, it's hard to see Shelton as much of a threat to the world at large when he's laying on our front porch with his head in M's lap, sucking his thumb and pouring out his worst fears about this most obviously fucked up world he lives in. Shelton is cursed with the gift of insight combined with a seriously lacking education. He sees and interprets everything with amazing clarity. He knows where he's from and where he is most likely to end. And he sucks his thumb.
Shelton spent his first weekend down at juvie. He and Michael and Eric were playing in D's backyard on Thursday (Which D's mom, Y, forbids, because all the people across the street are "animals.") and when D asked the other boys for some candy they had, Shelton told him he could have some if D would suck all three of their dicks. Eric then pulled his pants down and Shelton pushed Eric on top of D and that was pretty much the whole incident. Until the next day when J, Shelton's 12-year-old girl cousin (who is bursting ripe with sexuality and likes to hang around the young gangsters hanging on Y's porch), tell's Y about the incident. So that same day three cop cars show up, and Y's ex-husband's mother, who is a cop in the child welfare division, also makes an appearance. Mama D comes across with Shelton, S and G with Eric, and then Y shows up with D. Mama D tells Shelton if he wants to get his dick sucked he should just stay home and get one of his brother/cousins to do it for him. S, not to be out-done, yells something unintelligible at Eric and then pauses briefly as if at a loss to say something meaningful, and suddenly cold cocks him upside his head. G pulls Eric away in a protective embrace and then leads him back across the street. Y, who I think secretly admires Mama D's parenting skills, starts telling D a thing or two--I fuckin' told you not to take any goddamn shit from any of those boys. Those boys try to fuck you up, I don't care how big they are, you better fight your fuckin' ass off. I told you this before but you're so fuckin' stupid you don't listen. You're so fuckin' stupid you're smart. Everyone agrees that Shelton is the instigator of all things bad around here so he takes the fall. Undoubtedly he will make some new friends this weekend down at the juvenile detention center.
6.15.97--The Adopted Father Of Dumaine
Fun projects for the kids: An empty 20-ounce coke bottle becomes a macabre, lifeless terrarium, in this easy-to-do project for children ages six to twelve. Simply put two live chameleon lizards, with or without tails, in a bottle. Make sure not to puncture bottle as any breach in the plastic will extend the life of your lizards. Pass bottle between children, letting each child torture these fascinating and harmless creatures to their satisfaction. Slick and gooey with bloody contusions, your lizards will soon stick to each other in a myriad of real life positions. Marvel as your children learn to recognize everyday predicaments of life in a vacuum.
Look at 'em making love (that one on the bottom look none too happy).
Look at 'em fight (that one on the bottom look none too happy).
I think they dead (that one on the bottom look none too happy).
As an added fun feature to this project, witness your children as they explore the applications of Darwinian theory. Yes, stronger children really can hold down weaker children and place pulverized lizard parts on their heads...
Note: the lizards were already dead by the time I came to witness this little science project. I did not interfere with their fun until they began exploring the antiquated sewage line access, inside the fence below the porch. It has an eight inch square hinged metal lid and is about ten inches deep. A four inch diameter clay pipe opening can be seen at the edge of the hole, disappearing under the sidewalk. Players: Shelton 12, Jacque 11, Bryan 9, Marqin 8, and Erica 3. All the players are huddled around the hole when Shelton says--Mr. Jim, come see. Grumbling in protest I step down from the front porch and stand over the hole. I see the tops of five children's heads.
You see 'em, Mr. Jim
No
Erica squeals--lookit Mr. Jim, lookit (Erica, the sweet dark angel of Dumaine, father unknown, mother, 17, is hiding out in CA from a local attempted murder warrant). What has her attention now I finally see, oh, how nice, baby rats. And as I watch these children open and close the iron lid, banging on it with sticks and then opening it again to see what effect they are having on newborn rat babies, I wonder what it is going through other people's minds when they query me as to why I have no children of my own.
Shelton! Do not torture those rat babies!
I won't, Mr. Jim.
I mean it Shelton. I didn't come out here to watch a bunch of psycho kiddies torture animals.
I know that Mr. Jim. Ya'll cut out all that banging.
And don't poke 'em with those sticks.
Shelton slaps his cousin, Marqin, across his head. Marqin says,
Why you hit me, Shelton?
Mr. Jim don't want us torturing those babies.
That right Mr. Jim?
That's right Marqin.
We can look at 'em, Mr. Jim.
Just look at 'em, Marqin.
And I'm trying to figure when I will have the opportunity to throw some rat dope in that hole to kill the bitch rat. Fuck a bunch of rat babies.
7.27.97--Going For The Gold
Five more murders last night, makes twelve in five days. One of the murders happened right across the street from H-A's bar in the 7th Ward. H is the Neighborhood Watch cop for this district. P was over this evening giving M some Night Out Against Crime paraphernalia. Party at Mama D's in a couple of weeks. BBQ chicken and whiskey, maybe some stuffed (deviled) eggs. Anyway, P said H heard the shots and when he went outside, there was no one there--except for this young man lying on the sidewalk with the top half of his head missing. Last time there were this many murders in one week the citizens marched on City Hall. I went down with P and M. My brother, Alex, was in town and he came too. Our smarmy mayor set up an image control team outside on the grounds. Had a stage, some inspriational speakers, maybe even a little gospel music, I can't remember. Then we all rushed the chambers. P and M made it inside. Alex and I were forced to retreat and enter from the back and made it as far waiting area but we could see inside the chamber. Again, the mayor had the fix in and had half the chamber filled with city employees and lackeys. But there was enough pissed off screaming citizens to make for quite a show. The mayor never did show up though. Unlike this week, that week's murder count included three white people (employees of the Pizza Kitchen in the Quarter; the killers used potatoes for silencers on their guns). This week, as the boys at work might say, is just a bunch of niggers killing niggers. Punks and gangsters who aren't productive members of society, so fuck 'em.
Monk's wife would not respond to calls from her sister today so her sister called emergency services and they busted the door down. His wife had been living with cancer for some time and today it killed her.
It's ten o'clock Friday night and Jacks closes at eight so I walked over to Kim's on N. Broad, near the corner of St. Ann. I wanted a 22 ounce Heineken. Monk was standing in front of the iron gates that Kim puts up late at night. I gave him a feeble wave as I approached. We shook hands and he told me what I already knew and I told him how sorry I was. He had a lot of gin in him and was looking for more. He was married for 33 years. He walked off with a man I did not recognize in search of something I cannot imagine.
Happiness is the absence of intellectual thought.
Saturday: three more dead last night but one of those might be a repeat in the count so let's just say 14 in six days. One more day to go. Murder cannot continue at this rate but if it did the toll would top 600 for the year. The per capita equivalent in NYC would be 12,000. The actual count in NYC is closer to 1,200 for a year.
But overall the murder rate is down for the year, and all crime in our district ( The First) is down, and the 2600 block of Dumaine is pretty quiet, so maybe I should just cheer up. There is no TV here and if I didn't read the newspaper I wouldn't even know any of this is happening. I wonder if ignorance is an option at this point.
Sunday: some punk shot his lawyer last night. And that makes fifteen.
8.10.97--Slapping The Bayou
H-A's restaurant, bar, grocery store, over on LaHarpe in the 7th Ward burned down last night. The establishment was 90 years old and was known by the original owners' name--Mule's (Mulays). H and his brother co-owned it with members of that prodigious Ngyuen clan.
Things are sleepy and quiet on Dumaine. Temperatures are down but the air is too still and wet. Some of the boys playing football in the street. Sharon stabbed Greg today. The Saints are playing the Chiefs tonight in the Superdome. I'll probably listen some on the radio.
I've been staying inside lately, pondering, stagnating, resting. Reading a couple decent books.--Richard Russo's latest, Straight Man, and some good detective fiction by a Boston writer named Robert Parker.
Mr. Dave, around the corner on Dorgenois, died Wednesday, deserves something of an extended obit but I will have to confer with JW, who sold the house next door to Y.
I'm going outside to see what happens.
Sunday: (I never did go outside last night. There was no place to sit what with all those kids and coloring books). Got up around 6:30, went to look for paper but it wasn't here yet. Came in, took a bath, made coffee and toast, loaded up the one hitter, and drove down to the bayou, parking on Moss, just down from the corner of 3300 Dumaine. I sit at the first set of steps, the Dumaine bridge to my left, and that church with the green copper dome to my right. Early Sunday mornings are so fine in New Orleans; so quiet the sound of repentance. My coffee is good but I burnt the toast. I light a cigarette and bow my head in prayer. That fisherman two hundred yards away might be jealous of my trained fish, which glitter at sunrise, high above the water, before reaching the arc's pinnacle, when they lay flat and to the right (as per training), and come down slapping the water in high fashion. God, I love those fish.
Joggers, bikers, and dog walkers are making their appearances. More cautious than curious, they seem to carry with them an inherent understanding of the folly of running yourself healthy in a place so casual about killing. Reiterated too often in the news is the that discouraging reality that no place in New Orleans is completely safe.
I set fire to the little morsel of weed in my pipe and suck it dry. A little dab will do me. I have to hold the smoke in my lungs longer than I like out of respect for that pedestrian who snuck up behind me. By the time I do exhale, very little smoke leaves my mouth. I guess I got all of that one.
I am completely alone on the bayou when the church bells start clanging what soon becomes a brief melody. Just when I think I might be able to hum along, the notes begin breaking down, slow and easy, until the disentigration completes itself with a single wavering note. Silence.
It's 8:30 when I get back to 2600 and there are five boys waiting in front of the house, ready to clean the street. Only four of them will fit in the Festiva.
So the four boys and I leave out of here for the beach in Waveland, with Michael crying in the rear view mirror.
A white family let the boys play with their nerf football. When I went to return it prior to our departure, the man said--"well you're very welcome, it looks like they were having a lot of fun." I'm not sure, but I don't think he was referring to the part where they were holding each other's heads under water, yelling, "stay down bitch, stay down."
Kacofinny
Ramona enters from stage left as an image of her true self in the mirror by the door, her dachsund claws clicking on the painted wood floor. The lap cat, whose name I would have to retrieve from the house sitting check list, is not on my lap because the laptop is, but under my right elbow she purrs.
I had breakfast in the French Quarter at the diner on Bourbon St. The jukebox was blaring gospel, the waiter called me babe, the tall cook with glasses was a blur of motion. The rather proper looking woman to my right had a tattoo revealed on that sliver of exposed flesh at the small of her back, disappearing downward, oh my God.
A man on the street had asked me for fifty cents but I gave him a dollar. Another man had pleaded with me to tell him what to do because he didn't have any idea. He was from Pasadena, Tx. and had lost his car, his wife, his house, and his dignity. Tough town to be pleading all that but I gave him a dollar anyway, and sent him off to sleep in the shut down Armstrong Park, which you can still slide into.
A man with funny accent hollered at me from his car and then pulled over and I talked to him and his wife. What the hell he was saying I had no idea but finally I got it. "Where is the broke part?" We were still in the French Quarter. He said, "This is so beautiful, where did hurricane hit, we are from Quebec, that's in Canada." I pointed them north and said it may not look safe but check it out, it's safer than it ever was, and thanked them for coming down. "Our friends said 'oh no don't go down there,' but we wanted to see," and I reiterated my belief that everything is fine here for a visitor, and thanked them again for coming.
Coming back from The Island yesterday down the length of Louisiana Ave. from St. Charles to Broad St. and there was still a 16 foot fishing boat resting its hull on the pavement by the curb but the coffins laid out as trash along the street outside of the Rhodes funeral home were gone.
Also I should mention that there are smaller islands in New Orleans, off the main island, and I am on one of them now, house sitting (the caretaker is everywhere) near the fairgrounds, just up the street from Liuzza's by the Racetrack, which is open, and into which I could be in 45 seconds, drinking beer and eating po-boys, if I were to get up from the couch.
I put a couple of small strands of Christmas lights on my front porch on Rocheblave yesterday and cranked the generator cord and raked the back of my hand against the chain link fence and made a few bloody boo boos between my knuckles and wrist. The lights are very understated and the hum of the generator is less than pleasing, not at all as syrupy but every bit as annoying as Silent Night.
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.