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NO Road Block
I came to a road block this morning, midway up the on- ramp for the Earhart Expressway, near Clearview. Regrettably, it appeared as if it was time to pay the vig on my relatively good borrowed luck, driving around with a 10 day temporary break tag (inspection sticker) that’s almost two years old. And just a week away from driving the car to Austin, where it will probably stay if I can find something better. I had my seatbelt on, which looks good at a roadblock, and I was getting my papers and license together as the two cars in front of me were being motioned off to the side of the road. Their papers obviously were not in order. There’s three cop cars on one side of the ramp and two on the other. I idled forward a little just as the cops are turning away from me, acting as if I did not exist. There was the glimmer of good fortune in this, and even when the cops did appear to be looking right at me, still they did not like me for anything, and so clearly I am one of the freebirds of today’s random process. I kept moving on up that ramp and onto the Expressway, driving the exact 50 mph speed limit, a mature, perhaps even borderline senior citizen with my papers still in hand.
I say senior citizen because getting up early on a Saturday to shop at the Walmart Supercenter in Harahan strikes me as, well, elderly behavior. But the AC on the car is busted and if I wait too late in the day the driving conditions and heat can contribute to a road rage-like mentality that results in nothing less than boorish behavior–the least of which would be my fervent wishing of bad things on perfectly, or not so perfectly, innocent people.
But yeah, I’m a Walmart shopper. Where else can you go and get a tube of toothpaste, a battery operated box of Glucosamine Chondroitin, and a USB cable any time of the day or night, all at a low, low price?
Later, my neighbor comes knocking. Behind him I can see a long black Mercedes Sedan blocking my driveway. I’m ignoring whatever it is he is saying while squinting at the tinted windows, hoping to catch movement inside. “Who the hell that belong too?” I insisted he tell me. “Oh that’s me, that’s what I’m saying, my boss left it and I was wondering if you could follow me up the Bayou a bit and then bring me home?” I have to tell this neighbor exactly what I’m thinking which is–“That sucks.” I do it anyway though.
Right before we get back here he’s telling me about this renovation outfit he used to be part of and this job they did at St. Philip and Dorgenois. I know exactly what he’s talking about and I ease him around a little before telling him just what I think. “Well what the hell happened with that?” It was a defunct turn of the century police station located on one of the deadliest corners in the 6th Ward. The idea was to turn it into a youth center with a neighborhood cop shop inside. It was a good location for such a place and was a beautiful red brick building with limestone trim before they ruined it by painting it a color like coffee with two creams. They got city backing and money and still f***ed it up. First long delays–which at the time I had read in the paper were due simply to the fact that the firm doing the renovation did not realize how difficult it would be. Then when they finally finished it, there was no management plan in effect and so whatever the hell goes on inside that building now is having little positive impact on that corner. And no cops moved inside. “Yeah man, that’s my old neighborhood and I had high hopes for that deal but that was a total bust. No impact whatsoever on that neighborhood. In fact, two weeks before the John Mac school shooting a few blocks up the street, a 16-year-old kid shot a cab driver right in front of that building. And ya’ll stole the job away from a woman with better vision, but unfortunately fewer contacts at City Hall.” This guy has heard me vent before and I doubt he took it personally but between this guy’s bungling of the community center and the Pentecostals scorched earth method of neighborhood improvement (the torn down dancehall was once briefly slated to be an Aids Hospice), I am fit to be tied. I should talk though, master renovator/bater/slacker that I am. Lucky for him we were in my driveway now so I just went inside and waited for my nephew and his wife to arrive.
Anyway, lucking through that road block this morning was a sweet way to begin the day, and starting next weekend I’m driving to Austin for a week, so I got that going for me. There’s a corner near the University in Austin where 25 years ago, in love, I etched one of my nicknames, and that of my girlfriend, in wet cement. I might see how that’s holding up, and maybe have one of those burgers with alfalfa sprouts and avocado, next door.