archive

email from NOLA


View current page
...more recent posts

City Park Hobos 10.12.98
Phillis invited me over for the Saints vs. Forty-Niners game, along with her sister, Evelyn, and Mandy. So this is football with three chicks, two of whom do not understand the deeper meaning of the sport and are of the type to make inappropriate, almost sacreligious comments during the game. Sure is a lot of hand holding, they notice; a lot of butt grabbing too.

Evelyn and I, however, scowled, and moaned appropriately, for the entire game. Niners 31, Saints 0. SF is pretty good but DeBartolo is a punk.

Before the game I took Bryan, Irvin, Fermin, Glynn, Marqin, Terrioues, and Erica to City Park. The first four boys are about 12, Marqin is 9, and Terrioues and Erica are 5. No two of these children are from the same mother and paternity is often a vague unknown. Shelton, by the way, is being
punished again. I heard Mama D yelling across to Mandy on the front porch yesterday--"Tell Jim not to take Shelton nowhere tomorrow. He didn't make his bed and..." some other stuff I didn't hear. Shelton is a pretty cool troubled
fourteen-year-old but the trips are alway easier when he doesn't come. His propensity for troublesome behavior extends well beyond not making beds.

The four bigger boys packed off together, Marqin tried to tag along with them, and Terrioues tried to tag along with Marqin. Erica stayed put and stared out over the pond near the sixteenth tee. I stared at Erica staring.

"Ducks," Erica said.

"Ducks," I nodded.

"I wanna follow them boys."

"Go on then," and that's what she does, looking back once to see if I'm going to follow.

Erica and Terrioues were standing at the curb waiting to be crossed but the big boys wouldn't cross them. Erica started to cry. "Don't cry Erica, it's not as bad as you think." But she wants to see what the boys are looking at. We crossed to the little circular pond with the shiny abstract windmill in
front of the Museum of Art. The boys took off for the big open meadow to the left and started playing football. Marqin stayed behind to explain about the big fish that he and the other boys had seen but that Erica and Terrioues could not see.

Some well-to-do matrons of the arts look down from the steps of the museum and think what a cute picture.

Marqin spotted the miniature train and ran off to chase it, yelling, "the train, the train."

Erica and Terrioues started yelling, "the train, the train," jumping up and down. I cross them over to the meadow, at the far edge of which the train is traveling along.

And they take off across the meadow, following Marqin who has caught up with the train and is running along side it, waving, and laughing at the passengers who are waving and laughing at him. Erica and Terrioues are all the way across the meadow now and have reached the tail end of the train.

Gosh, they sure are a long ways away, engaging in potentially dangerous behavior. I hope they don't do anything silly, or, you know, childish. I sighed with relief when they fell down exhausted, one after the other. Marqin was still near the front, and I think the "engineer" was yelling at him to
stay away, so Marqin fell down too.

Before the park I was out helping the kids clean the street, Rene was bending my ear, going on about something that had nothing to do with getting the street clean, and this guy in a blue work shirt walks up carrying a can of gas, and he's coming on to me, so to speak, wants something from me, I can tell, and so I'm acting impatient, saying--all right man, all right. But he just starts telling me what a good thing me and my "wife" are doing around here, and I'm nodding, yes, thanks, I appreciate it, but what are you really after is what my body language is screaming, but after he was all said and
done it turned out he didn't want anything at all except to say--thanks.


- jimlouis 12-13-2002 2:23 am [link] [add a comment]