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Two Lists, An Update
I waited as long as I could today before popping the top on my first Red Stripe. Twelve forty-six for the record. I went out to the front porch to watch the tow truck manage that car with no wheels onto its’ flatbed. It was anti-climatic, as most things are.
Things that haven’t been anti-climatic:
1. The Redwoods of Northern California.
2. Coney Island.
My desk is one of those six foot long cafeteria tables with the imitation wood-grain top. It is full of stuff: a cell phone, some cashews, a box of checks, some hand lotion, some baby powder, a couple of antique bottles, an Y Tu Mama Tambien DVD, three empty Red Stripes from yesterday and today’s one, half full. Okay make that four empty Red Stripes, a checkbook, a computer game called Alone in the Dark, floppy disks, chapstick, stamps, an extra mouse, an MP3 player, two sets of headphones, a letter opener, a PlayBortz, some packets of hot sauce from Taco Bell, a Steve Earle CD, a Lucinda Williams CD, and a pile of uncashed payroll checks which sit glaring at that last bill from the IRS, and a full Red Stripe.
This is my last week of work in New Orleans before I depart, probably via Austin and Dallas, for three months in the Virginia countryside. I’m out at English Turn doing call-back work on homes we’ve painted over the last several years. Most of these days won’t last until noon.
Kids steal cars and bring them out to the road that leads to the English Turn construction entrance and then they set them on fire. There’s still a crispy Volvo out there, been there for months, finally someone pushed it off into the weeds. Last week there was a Firebird up on the Intracoastal Canal Bridge, burnt as well as a car can be burnt.
There was a good bit of press over the beautiful teenage girl who last week got stabbed to death by two other teenage girls who thought maybe she too pretty, and popular. But there’s been six or eight murders here since that happened, one of them in the Iberville projects the guy ended up on his knees, shot to death, that’s how they found him, and onlookers speculated that maybe he was praying before he died.
Another murder yesterday (one of two in the city) on Banks Street, this time at Galvez, the Banks Street toll rises to several in a six block stretch for the year. One man emptied the 30 round clip of his AK-47, piercing the windows and doors of cars parked on the street as he chased down the victim, eventually putting at least one round in the young man’s head. A .45 handgun was found on the victim. The Banks Street area church people who planted crosses in the neutral ground, thereby claiming the turf between Broad and Dorgenois, and Dorgenois and Rocheblave, apparently succeeding in squeegeeing the crime to an area three blocks away. You can do that here, claim turf, and with some success I might add, but always, always, at the expense of some other adjoining, less civic-minded neighborhood. The other murder on Sunday was from a stab wound. The victim was a paraplegic as a result of previous gunshot wounds to his body.