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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.