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Birds, Rats, And Asswipes
I'm sitting in the truck again, in Metairie, early, before work. The lights are on in that trailer next door to the new house I'm working on. The old man and his wife are starting their day. The man can barely walk but still rides his bike around the neighborhood. Later, I'll watch him step in a mud puddle created by my brush and roller washing on the side of the house. I can see five or six more trailers parked in driveways up the street.
The earthen levee holding back the lake is a block behind me, and the 17th St. Canal, which separates Orleans Parish from Jefferson Parish, is about ten blocks to the east. The Canal runs perpendicular to the lake levee and is defined by concrete flood walls. A portion of this criminally under-engineered east side fell down after Katrina blew through in August, the wind of which took off many a roof shingle, and knocked down a few houses here and there, throughout New Orleans. If the west side of the flood wall fails while I'm sitting here, I'll be pretty quickly under eight or ten feet of water, that is if I don't have sense enough to move to the second floor of the job site. They say they got a little water over here, maybe a foot or so, but I have yet to ascertain from where the water came. The United States Army Corps of Engineers built our flood protection system. The United States Army Corps of Engineers is a federal agency.
There are good reasons our god of federal matters, George W. Bush, came here and talked a lot of shit in Jackson Square a few months ago. I can't myself enumerate them but... Oh, crapshit, that's not my thing,, political commentary, so let me just say--it just as well that incompetent fuckhead stays out of our affairs and stays forever more, the fuck away from us. If I say fuck one more time it will be a fucking trifecta. George W. Bush fucks up everything he touches, and there it is ladies and gentlemen, the trifecta.
I think the latest excuse as to why some 200,000 homes in the New Orleans area are rendered un-livable is that some flunky Corps clerk filed incorrect information, and all the subsequent sub-standard construction can now be explained away. When I talk to people out of state they shrug off the woes of New Orleans under blanket statements like--Well, you got all those corrupt politicians down there stealing your money, what do you expect? Why should our tax dollars go to support your fucked up situation, line the pockets of bad people? Let God Bless America, put Christ back in Christmas. Can you get me one of those Chocolate City T-shirts? Not all people who express such views are limp dick Rush Limbaugh Republicans, but what the difference would be I cannot say.
Work day done, weekend begins, although I'm too tired to stand up, much less trip the lights fantastic.
The Clothes Line Laundromat on N Broad is open but not selling their famous snacks, or for that matter, laundry detergent. I left my two trash bags full of dirty clothes on the Clothes Line floor and drove to the Spur which sells no beer on N. Broad. They are out of detergent too but got some on order for Tuesday. Galvez and Canal then, they got it, and, they got it going on. Pretty good chicken and biscuits out of there too. The Laundromat, that's where I'm at now. My washer and dryer, in the kitchen at Rocheblave, need gas and electricity to work and are just ornamental, shiny white objects at this point, six point five months after the flood.
M., I'm just going to assume you're not reading this, in Oregon, and will discuss with my usual selective candor, your rat problem, on Dumaine. Any problem can be solved, let's start with that.
I read a book about rats recently and so I can say that your rats are completely normal, not mutants, or in anyway acting out of character. It is selfish of me but you know I love it when the good news and bad news are the same. It is in a way comforting, and descriptive of the human condition in general.
So I got two rat size traps from the Gemplers catalog because I was so happy with the kill rate or their mouse traps, in my pursuit of the Virginia country mouse, but let me state the obvious, that little Virginia country mouse wouldn't amount to a pimple on the ass of a New Orleans rat.
I set the two traps in the Dumaine kitchen and came back a couple of days later and one trap was sprung, and licked thoroughly clean of its peanut butter bait, and the other trap was, uh....missing. But I later found the second trap, about six feet from where I had placed it. It was behind the dryer. When I picked it up it had not a rat in it but a half eaten mouse, which to add insult to injury and death, was nearly sliced in two by the overkill strength of the metal spring bar.
So I think the the rats are recognizing the new objects and are staying away due to this suspicion and the mice are just digging in cuz they stupid, and springing the traps, maybe getting caught, maybe not, and then the rats come and eat the caught mouses, and finish up with a little peanut butter dessert.
I think I'll go over today and start gutting your front room and check those traps, and see about finding you that general contractor info you asked for so you can have better ammunition to fight Allstate for the money owed to you, but which they are trying to fuck you out of, because, yes, you in good hands with Allstate, only thing is, one of those hands is flipping you the bird, always has been.
The Unlucky Pigeon
I park the truck sideways across my driveway, and close to the front steps so I can plug in the extension cord that runs from the CyberPower converter in my truck and into the house through my bedroom window, where it powers up my devices, and occasionally that single strand of Christmas lights I use for a night light in the bathroom, when I am feeling especially festive.
Today when I got out of the truck after work a Red Tail hawk flying six inches off the ground shot up Rocheblave toward Bienville and in it's talons was an unlucky pigeon.
Chauffeur came over with his grandson, Darius, who I the other day thought was his cousin, and they said howdy and looked at the new trailer they will both be living in once it is inspected and powered up and unlocked. It will sit there as the locked property of FEMA until the same pole that controls my house, and the Sculptor's, is switched on. Chauffeur said he called Entergy but he may have misinterpreted the importance of our pole in the equation and ya'll can hold your breaths but I'm just getting more and more used to the idea of living without electricity. For the Chauffeur and Darius' sake I hope it happens though, eventually.
I went to the Spur (gas station/convenience store) on N. Broad, between here and the Dumaine house, on Sunday, to get some beer to take over to my nephew's, Uptown on Carondelet, for the Superbowl. I walked past the counter by the front door and to the back of the store and stared and stared and stared and then turned around and walked back and the counter girl said, you looking for beer? and I said, you know I am. She said, you look just like everybody else coming in here looking for beer, you look like your feelings are hurt. She was so exactly right about that and I told her so. I went to the Spur at Galvez and Canal and got my twelve-pack of Heinekin and headed Uptown.
The kid from N. Tonti, Raheim, came by before the game on Sunday and we played Around The World some but I was so good, circling his world 'till it made him dizzy, that finally he said you wanna play that spelling game, which is Horse, but which I played with him the other day as Cat. I said, sure, and we played Cat and Stop and he beat me twice. On the third game I was about to crush him with my superior round ball skills and he tried an over the backboard trick shot and swished it home and I said I'll bet you this game you can't do that again, and of course he did. I don't care. I didn't want to win anyhow. Winning is for losers.
There are now more stoplights than temporary stop signs in the neighborhoods of Louisville (Bienville Corridor), Mid-City, Esplanade Ridge, and Bayou St. John, and that is progress. I said no way that Spur at Galvez and Canal be open this morning at 5:55 a.m., on the way to work, but I was wrong about that and I got coffee and carrot cake for breakfast before heading out to Metairie to caulk and putty and paint wood as quick as my boss could nail it up.
I'm getting my cold water bathing techniques down to a fine art and someday I'll tell you about it, except for one particular technique which may come under the heading of--More Information Than You Need.
I think that 85-year-old couple, The Smith's, are back, and camping a good bit of the time at their very fine house around the corner, on Bienville.
Raheim came by, ostensibly to humiliate me again, but he couldn't see me sitting here in the truck so he went back around the corner. The setting sun made the little studs in his ear lobes, sparkle.
The Crusty Sidekick
As I remember portable hoops were in the last couple of years banned from the streets of New Orleans, because of the criminal element's propensity for using them as a way to kill time, and each other, during the down time between drug deals.
A little bit overly sensitive to the perceived disadvantage of being a woman in a male-driven world, my new partner in crime, while helping me to steal one of these hoops from a next door neighbor's yard will be goddamned if she going to take the lead from my maleness as how to carefully relocate this hoop to a chained up position next to the telephone pole in front of my house. She is to me in this sense very much like a man overly imbued with his sense of maleness, and will throw out her back, or rip her flesh on rusty nails in her pursuit of the alpha-station, a station I will gladly relinquish to any woman, or man. She got the can-do attitude though and this is a thing only to my benefit, and hopefully hers.
I really think of this caper as a Rocheblave reclamation project, and the hoop will be gladly returned to the owner, should that owner ever show up, after now five months of absence. In the meantime Ima work on my three-point shot, and the delivery of my explanation as to how that chain they had around it got cut clean in two, leaving out the part about my purchase of a very effective pair of discount ($12.95) bolt cutters.
This is why New Orleans will never get the help it needs, because we all criminals here, and will abuse any assistance you send us. All of us. And one other thing. If you take George Bush's advice and bring your family here because you believe what he said about this being a "heckuva place to bring your family" I give you fair warning--we will eat your children. Crawfish are prohibitively expensive this year.
Before the hoop theft I stole a piece of plywood from the Sculptor's property and jumped the Chauffeur's fence and stole another piece from his property. With a 97 cent can of Walmart spray paint I made two signs that say NEED POWER, and leaned one against the Sculptor's house and one against the telephone pole in front of my house. I wrote the same message on the plywood boarding up one of the Chauffeur's windows.
Later, this guy came by looking for the Chauffeur and so I called him and said somebody looking for you. It turned out to be an old friend who was temporarily working with FEMA trailer delivery and he was front man for the actual delivery process, now happening after 3 months of broken promises. The two of them hugged. The trailer came and then a plumbing crew came and then right at sundown a crew of men came to block it up, tie it down, unlock the cabinets, and pull out the side extension. We toured the inside in between these visits and it pretty nice in there. Chauffeur had to test the bed with imaginary sexual maneuvers and I said well I'll be leaving you alone now.
Between the initial delivery and the plumbing crew, Chauffeur brought out his sorry ass basketball and bounced it once but it didn't bounce back. I went in and got my new ball and we shot around a bit. I said, Chauffeur, when I jumped your fence this afternoon I finally got a look at that hoop you've been saying we could set up and it's got a whole bigger than a basketball in the cheap plexiglass backboard. Chauffeur just shrugged.
A kid is down at the corner banging a fireplace poker against a metal pole at Iberville and Rocheblave. I already know how this turns out so I just sit tight, shoot poorly, and wait for it to happen. My game is coming on and I turn around after setting the net on fire with a high arced three-pointer and the kid is coming up. I toss him the ball and the the three of us begin shooting. The kid is better than Chauffeur and almost as good as me, which frankly, is not that good. But the kid is only ten or so and the hoop is at regulation height. He's got a white wave cap on his short cropped head and imitation diamond earrings in each ear lobe. He wears a clean un-tucked dress shirt over baggy jeans and an easy smile shows big white teeth.
When the plumbing crew came they gave our game a wide berth and Chauffeur went and talked to them while the kid and I played. I did not ask the kid too many questions because that is no way to get information from a kid. I did slip in a few casual questions though and know that his mama works, not too far away, he lives on N. Tonti, has electricity but no gas, that old woman with the dog is not his mama but just a friend, and he goes to school in Jefferson because there are not that many area schools open for ten year olds, in New Orleans.
He showed me a couple of his favorite shots--The Crusty Sidekick, and, The Twister, both of which he missed. He at one point posited that perhaps his wave cap was too tight and might be adversely affecting his game. I concurred. He went away around the corner for awhile and I glanced over there once and saw him talking to the old woman in the housecoat and she was wiping something off of his face. He came back without the wave cap and we played Around the World a few times, until I got so smoking good I was shooting and swishing them home, with my eyes closed. The kid expected no bones from me, which is good, because I wasn't giving any. I beat him, but just barely, and his spirit, when he walked away, seemed pretty well intact.
The Closure
By many reports he was a good kid but last night somebody shot him dead anyway, in front of his old school, Life of Christ Christian Academy, on Dorgenois, in the 7th Ward. He was back in town helping with the rebuilding process at the school.
Also on Thursday, 3 tornadoes ripped through Jefferson and Orleans Parishes. The one in New Orleans started at Veterans and West End Blvd and traveled diagonally towards Canal Blvd before heading out into the lake. Homes in the Lakeview area that were decimated five months previous by Katrina were decimated in new ways, by 125 mph unnamed winds.
Three of my former young neighbors on Dumaine, are reportedly in jail, or still in jail for Pre-K crimes. One for his murdering, in Louisiana, and one, who once popped mean wheelies, for something in Houston, where he evacuated after spending the flood week with M and thirty others in M's Dumaine house. S, who one of you drove around in your BMW, was released on bail in Houston, jumped it and headed west and was then picked up in South Central Los Angeles, where he also had warrants for crimes committed during his many trips there over the years trying to evade warrants (attachments) in New Orleans.
We buried my mom on Wednesday, in Dallas, as part of that ceremonious process meant to bring closure to the bereaved. My cousin, the monsignor, spoke, as did a new guy pastor of the Methodist Church, who didn't know mom, but took good notes and delivered kind thoughts, and at the grave side people testified as to their connection to Clifford (there is no conclusive story as to why my mom was named Clifford, and no one wants to embrace the last thoughts relayed from her to me on the mattter--that she was named after a horse on the farm) and it was good, all of it.
If I gained a needed closure though, it was only in part by the many kind thoughts and heartfelt hugs. In equal part my closure on the life of Clifford Louis was gained from the passing of the backhoe operator parked at a comically discreet distance from the grave site.
The street light is on in front of the Dumaine house and somebody tarped the roof while I was gone and cut down the tree from the Esnard Villa property which had blown down and landed softly on M's roof. I was over this morning setting rat traps while unsuccessfully avoiding their dominant scurrying about.
The chauffeur got his temporary electric pole set up across the street from me over here on Rocheblave and waits patiently for his promised trailer, where he hopes to live with his seven-year-old cousin, who is causing problems at the home of his family. Chauffeur is being asked to leave his current temporary residence over by the Bayou St. John.
It's going to get a little chilly during the nights this week, in New Orleans.
Clifford RIP
The generator just shut off at the Bienville house where Killer used to live, the backyard of which backs up to my Rocheblave side yard. They have been steadily renovating both sides of that double shotgun for months now. Killer been long dead.
An old lady in a housecoat walks a dog down Rocheblave to the Iberville corner and disappears to a world of viability that may or may not exist outside my view.
A cat I have never seen likewise appears and disappears.
I started smoking again Saturday morning. I apologize to the people who were proud of me for quitting but I feel like I will quit again so feel free to be proud of me again in the future.
I was just at the lake with my nephew throwing the football and drinking Guinness while his son tried to make me be Eli Manning. I resisted. I don't want to be Eli Manning.
I have been more or less geographically rejected by the Mid-City Association and will not in the future ever refer to my neighborhood as Mid-City. I have in fact only been doing so recently as a convenience to outside readers who may need a little geographical crutch to picture my area. This exclusion makes me not even a little bit sad. I live in the Bienville Corridor or my self-named Faubourg Louisville, and don't want to be, nor did I ever, want to be, associated with the politics of Mid-City.
I haven't heard or seen a car on Rocheblave, Bienville, Iberville, or Dorgenois, all of which I can see from where I sit in the passenger seat of my truck in my driveway, for thirty minutes now. I am not disturbed by this at the same time it seems notable to me.
The Baptist church parishioners of that church on Bienville between Galvez and Claiborne were out front again this morning, sitting in folding chairs, and there was ten-year-old drummer backed up against the church building, but I could not see in my passing other probable musicians. I wish I has the guts to sit in with them, if they would even begrudgingly have me.
I was yesterday helping the chauffeur measure dimensions in the catastrophe that is his home across the street and a van from the Victory Fellowship people, who either are the people from, or are just associated with, that really cool church at the corner of Broad and Iberville, and let me tell you they give out plate lunches in styrofoam containers that rock the world of free food, and this cute young woman pulls up to the curb and says, want some food? and we say yeah. Victory Fellowship, thank you.
Speaking of great free food, some new friends got married to each other in the Irish Channel last night, in front of their home and thirty guests, and the groom is a fellow former Dallas boy with barbecue skills and had enough beef and pork barbecue, cole slaw, potato salad and baked beans to allow me three full plates over the evening and I was stuffed, except when I got home, when I wished I had taken a to-go plate.
This week stop lights have been powered up at Tulane and Broad and at Canal and Broad and at several of the intersections of Orleans Ave., between Broad and Claiborne.
There are notably a few pickup basketball games happening at area courts.
Despite the lack of what George Bush considers a master plan, people all over the city of New Orleans are rebuilding. At the wedding party last night a man described his innovative ways of just pushing ahead without insurance money and then presenting his work to the insurance representatives as a way to get the money owed to him, given to him.
It's almost February here and it hasn't been very cold this winter and as the sun sets on Rocheblave, I swat mosquitoes.
My mom died on Friday.
Trailer Envy
If you have been waiting on a trailer to live in and you wonder where it is, it is in Metairie.
All up and down those streets between the Lake Ponchartrain and Veterans Blvd. and the parish line and Bonnabel Blvd. the homes have trailers in front of them. I mean a whole bunch of them do.
I really don't know to what extent people are actually living in them (I have yet to see someone enter or leave one of them), but they are there, and unlike the few trailers dotted around New Orleans proper, they are hooked up to sewage, water, and electricity, all ready to go. I think many of the people who got them just couldn't resist how easy it was to get them and that in itself has nothing to do with how difficult it is for quite a few New Orleanians to get into trailers. Unless you are a conspiracy theorist and if you are you should give it up because believing in things you can never prove will only lead you to nocturnal outbursts as reported back to you by the person sleeping nearest. "You said 'shit' in your sleep numerous times last night."
Probably you could argue that people in need are people in need and Metairie residents are just as needy as some poor New Orleanian without a house, without insurance,or a pot to piss in. It's a good argument and you came to the wrong place if you're looking for someone to argue with. You should go home or into the other room and argue with your loved one about something that has nothing to do with what you are really mad about, have make up sex, and get back to me. Please don't tell me anything about the fight or the sex. I'm already bored and your frustrations and the heartfelt delivered explicit details about your love life might just push me over the edge.
I tried to buy beer at the Walgreens on St. Charles today. You wanna hear about frustration? Walgreens doesn't sell beer. Which to me, by itself, is worse than any conspiracy theory I could come up with, and let me assure you, I could come up with one regarding why Walgreens doesn't sell beer.
I'm spending a little more time Uptown than I normally would, and not just because this is where all the sex kittens are, but because I want to feel the pulse of the apoplectic Uptown hordes, and, I'm feeling it. Diagnosis. Simply, ya'll bitches need more beer, period. In Mid-City we may not have electricity or gas in most of the homes but we have a new convenience store opened at Canal and Galvez. If a store at that location tried to pull the "no beer" bullshit it would be the fuel for a neighborhood bonfire the next night. As for the Mid-City Walgreens, where that is? Jeff Davis and Canal? Ya'll can open up or not, I won't miss you or shop with you. Selling all those over and under the counter chemicals and getting uppity about a little alcohol...well...you make me want to...shop at Rite-Aid.
Here We Are
The city council passed a few resolutions the other day and one of them allowed for licensed electricians to do the final inspection on their own work, the practical end result of that being electricians now have new reasons to ignore your calls. Or the two city inspectors can now say no I think your electrician is handling that and the electrician will say no I already filed for you down at City Hall, you will need to wait on one of the two inspectors. I have friends and family Uptown so I'm not exactly suffering. I can take hot showers and do laundry, watch a little bad football and commune with humans inside of structures with gas and electric service, surrounded by structures with gas and electric service. And little or no debris in the streets and only an occasional blue tarped roof to remind you of the fact that there may have been a storm that passed through here sometime recently.
Then I cut across town along Louisiana Ave. all the way to Broad St. Take a right and across the Broad St. Bridge and a right on Iberville and I'm back to my quiet little neighborhood. Along the way their is spotty business openings--one Rally's burger joint, a carwash, and two or three corner stores, one of which, and I kid you not, doesn't sell beer. Because of some damn religious platform I am told. But those businesses are all there is along the Louisiana Ave. route and I'll clock it for you someday but we're talking about a four mile swath, more or less. Some stoplights that didn't work a month ago are working now but for the most part the route back to Mid-City is temporary stop signs at intersections or an occasional flashing yellow (which nobody understands and those intersections would be better off with nothing.) Speaking of nothing, if you coming down Iberville there is a missing stop sign at the Dorgenois corner so you better stop or the rare passing worker vehicle will broadside you.
I don't really live in Mid-City. I am on the downtown side of Broad by a couple of blocks. It is sort of a no man's land. Even before the flood. Vacant lots aplenty, parking lots, commercial buildings and ramshackle housing. When the master planners start using phrases like "infill development" to describe the future of my neighborhood, I can only say--yeah, I hear ya.
I told you previously about the Port-a-toilet with the Katrina insignia, DB(dead body)X 3, which was sitting at a corner along Claiborne Ave, near the Superdome exit ramp, and that toilet has been moved and is now partnered with two others in the neutral ground of Louisiana Ave., across from the Rhodes funeral home, which no longer has coffins in the debris pile out front.
Holy shit, my electrician called me back. He said he'd already been part of the do-it-yourself inspection process (which he may have already told me and I just didn't get) and that my property was inspected and filed, but that wouldn't mean diddly squat shit until they reconnect that fuse to the transformer in front of my house. I've made calls, talked to Entergy workers on the street, emailed Entergy, and...
I get mad sometimes, I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
One other thing. On my recent trip to Texas people kept saying I had no idea so much of New Orleans was still dysfunctional. Well, word up, mthrfkrs. Don't take the profanity personal. Just me acting out. Getting rid of the madness. I am totally cool, totally happy, totally chill, except when I'm not.
I'm going to leave you with this. Over in EditorBville, up lakeside Iberville from me a few blocks, in true Mid-City, EditorB and wife Xy are living full time in the top floor of their house, which is powered up, but surrounded by darkness at night, except for the two nearby houses also partially powered up, and full of representatives from the new Mexican work force, and they got a new fridge delivered the other day, EditorB and Xy did. They weren't home when the guy came by the first time and had to make numerous calls to figure out what was up. But the guy came back and delivered it and when EditorB signed the paperwork he noticed a scribbled note on the bill which the delivery guy had written to explain to his higher ups why he didn't make the delivery the first time. What he wrote was not out of slackness or carelessness but simply a genuine observation.
"Entire Block Abandoned."
Singing In The Shower
Yes I did take care of some business yesterday. I made so many calls my cell phone minutes have plummeted down into the hi and bye zone.
Talked to really nice woman at Entergy and she gave me my account number which I seem to have no handy record of and I used that number to set up online billing. Which is a really handy thing to have going on and I anticipate freeing up a lot of time previously wasted on licking stamps when comes that future day when I actually get a bill from Entergy. I would expect that to happen some time shortly after I get the electricity turned back on at Rocheblave, which has now been missing for one week shy of 5 months.
I did some emailing to Entergy as well. Told them about the streetlight being out in front of my house and I received a prompt response and here it is:
Dear Mr. Louis:
Thank you for bringing this information to our attention. A service request has been issued on your behalf to have this streetlight repaired. Our normal commit time to repair a streetlight is three (3) business days. These lights should be repaired by April 3rd. Entergy is still experiencing an extreme back log of street lights in your area. We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing in your area at this time.
Did that say (3) three business days or (3) three business months?
I am not so much missing the streetlight per se, but the streetlight being on is a real sign that you are at least connected back to the grid. Up to the pole in front of your house anyway.
I'm doing some other stuff regarding my New Orleans viability that more or less feels like a dance, to a dude that doesn't really dance, except in the bathroom, which is like singing in the shower, except nobody can hear you do it, unless you grunt when you dance, and if you do, you shouldn't.
I'm going back to work Monday, with my old boss, who has sorely been missing me, and I'll get back into a groove, being a house painter/trim carpenter, and everything gonna be cool in this world gone whack. The truth is--New Orleans really is a heckuva place to bring your family, for a camping trip.
Sharon's Eyelid
Shooting in New Orleans, on Orleans, at N. Dorgenois, and at Orleans and N. Rocheblave, on Sunday, during the first authentic and majorly attended second line parade since the hurricanes. The shootings occurred 3 blocks west of M's house on Dumaine and 3 blocks east of my Rocheblave house. 3 wounded. All regret the violence and see it as a bad start, but nobody that's lived in New Orleans for very long could have expected this problem to just go away. For a second line this was a very big one ( a few thousand perhaps in attendance, many driving in from host cities, Memphis, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta) and almost exclusively black and so to some perhaps emblematic of a "black problem" that we can, once it's safely inside the quotation marks, sort of not deal with, cuz we white people. But all of us in NO, black or white, are f-ing up with attitudes which demand anything less than a Draconian or at least innovative response to the absolutely palpable violent crime that has existed in New Orleans year after year.
And Ray's been trippin' a little bit but I'm not trippin' to hard on him.
I'm giving Ray a pass because this is just too big a thing for one mayor to be handling by his lonesome with only a somewhat conniving city council behind him. Should chill on those chocolate references though, I think.
Alas, I am again not in New Orleans, but in Austin TX. now, after a week in Dallas helping to get my mother placed in an assisted living facility in the suburb of Arlington, which is home of the original Six Flags, and the Texas Ranger Baseball stadium known as The BallPark, and soon also new home of Dallas Cowboys football (stadium 2 or 3 years away). And the Hurricane Harbor water park, and the wax museum, and excuse me for leaving anything out. Like a brother and sister in law and another burgeoning Louis clan in the form of great nieces and great nephews.
I'm at Jose's compound off of Cameron Rd, just down the road from the construction project on the grounds of the former Austin airport, which will be the Dell Children's Hospital. And then some mixed-used stuff coming in behind it. Jose's got another nice used truck over here that could be my next truck, a 96 Toyota with 4wheel drive. Even used, not real cheap, but Jose worked his magic again and talked the guy down almost 2 thousand dollars. I think I'm going to run the Mazda a little longer. He may want to give the Toyota to his father in Mexico.
I'm not really in the mood to talk about much. Seems like an awful lot of shit going on these days. Sharon's eyelid?
Lear Jets And Cigarettes
Sometimes you wish you could jump on a Lear Jet and bop on down to Miami for a few days, to clear your head, but why even waste your time imagining such unrealistic things? Oh, because fact is stranger than fiction?
No babe, you go on, I can't make this one, I say into the mike on the stage of that imaginary world, as the palm trees and sand and leggy nearly naked women fade to darkness.
I am on a mission of filial importance, in Dallas Tx.
My mom fell down in the bathroom of her new home in Arlington but there is an emergency cord in there so she pulled it and the staff came and got her and she went to the emergency room and had X-rays. She's been eating Blue Bell ice cream every day for years so the calcium rich cream might be given credit for saving her from broken bones. Just bruised.
As the baby and chief long time miscreant of this family I benefit from not being taken over-seriously. I could not be part of the invading force that moved her out of her home and put her in this facility. There is nothing in my past to imply that I could be part of such a team, even though, in the recent past, whenever she asked was I on that team (of six children conspiring against her) I would always say, yes. When I left my mom's room yesterday, she said, "will you take these people with you?" She was motioning with a dismissive backhanded wave, at my sister, and my sister-in-law, who have lately been taking the brunt of her discontent because they have been doing the bulk of the frontline work. My sister has been holding up admirably, except for that out of the blue crying jag at mom's former house in North Dallas, yesterday.
I started smoking again when I returned to New Orleans, in October, because all the other kids were doing it. I took to it eagerly, like a fish seven years out of water. I don't know how people do that controlled smoking thing, only smoking when they drink, or one cigarette after a meal type thing. I gots to be sucking on them all day long, from daybreak to midnight. My biggest goal was to keep myself to just a pack a day, which I did, more or less.
Now I am two days into a cessation attempt and I'm using some of that nicotine gum this time, although I have always been a proponent of cold-turkey, no anti-smoking aids, because that's how I did it last time, seven years ago. I'm at least two weeks away from being really confident about my possible success, but have high hopes, which is better than a sharp stick in your eye.
If you are in New Orleans though, and smoking happily, but are on a budget, let me suggest you bike yourself over to Terranova's grocery on Esplanade, near N. Lopez, across the street from the still boarded up Circle K, because cigs are only three dollars a pack there. At the Chevron, Canal and Broad, near my Rocheblave house, cigs are four dollars a pack. At the Royal St. Grocery in the French Quarter, they are four dollars fifty a pack, and at bars everywhere, they are five dollars a pack. If you travel to NY they will be seven a pack. So, smoke em if you got em, but be a smart shopper.
New O Logic
I have four months to prove the viability of my neighborhood AND there is a four month moratorium on renovations in the flooded zones? Man, fuck you.
Shuffle Shake And Roll
I'm in Texas and yesterday I was cruising for chicks in the halls of a co-ed dormitory in Arlington. Me and this other guy actually. I trailed behind him for awhile to pick up on his methods because he'd been around the place longer. He was an actual resident and I was just a visitor. He's got one of those fancy new candy apple red walkers, with the wheels and the handbrakes and the seat you can store stuff in or in emergencies I suppose you could even crap in it. I haven't had any coffee this morning because I'm staying at my brother's house in the Lake Highlands area of Dallas and there are two Jack Russell dogs here and one of them doesn't like me and I'm afraid to leave this room, until other people get up. So my mind is not clicking very well. I'm just staring at the screen a lot. So I'll keep this short, take a shower, and then maybe, if no one is up yet, make a mad dash for the front door and drive somewhere for coffee. Spent most of yesterday helping my sister and two sisters-in-law arrange my mom's new room at the assisted living facility in Arlington. We brought in some of her furniture from her house and pictures and milk glass and books and, most importantly, Blue Bell ice cream for the mini-fridge. She is not happy but we, three of her six kids in attendance, are. Because the place is nice, and the people, both residents, and staff, seem pretty cool, and even if this is a mistake, it is clear to all of us that it is a much lesser mistake than the one we were making by letting her stay in that big two story house in North Dallas, by herself. Anyway, I met beau coup babes yesterday. I don't think its too late for me to enter the world of big time player-dom. I'm going back today. May try out one those lines from my friend with the candy-apple red walker. Shuffle shake and roll, shuffle shake and roll, turn to resident, smile broadly, say "hiya sweets," then, shuffle shake and roll on by.
Sherbet
A dove flew down from the highwire, into a field of lilies, where children played happily. Then the sun went behind a cloud. But it came out again and shone on the children's faces and they were still happy. A hawk came and chased the dove but it was ok because the dove got away. The children shrieked, happily, in the field of lilies. And there was nothing in the world to hurt them, ever.
Just An Idea
Another new friend went out of town so I am out of the ghetto and up on St. Charles Ave. in this little condo, house sitting, resting, getting over a cold, watching football, and preparing for my exit to Texas, tomorrow, where I will visit friends and family and possibly inhabit yet another home devoid of its intended occupant. My mother is being moved to an assisted living facility in Arlington, Tx., today. It is going to break her heart when she realizes this is happening but it can only be an improvement over the extreme autonomy she pretends to enjoy now, as an 88-year-old woman alone, with Alzheimer’s.
Finally there are more black people coming back to New Orleans and although the numbers are small compared to the Pre-K population, the essence they are projecting on the street corners, and in city hall and school board meetings, and in local businesses, and in the recovery efforts, is a thing so positive to the future of New Orleans, that I am uplifted and at the same time a little weary by the memory of what we as a city and we as individual citizens are capable of as in regards to neglect of our fellow man.
Some members of the new majority (white) population are bemoaning the idea of that very small percentage of the New Orleans black population regaining its power on the streets and exercising its control over the whole city, as they have in the past. We should all be against such a thing happening, but the idea that your opinion alone is a positive force, is just dumb. Without any personal grassroots effort to improve the thing you see as a problem, you are not going to solve anything, anywhere.
People are opining that the projects should not be reopened because they are synonymous with gangster crime. This is an insult to the majority of the occupants of any given project in New Orleans. The conversations always range from—there is too much government assistance or there is not enough. I am not a big fan of projects because I think they separate the poor into concentrated blocks of buildings historically overly imprinted with the idea of failure and squalor, no matter how well the majority of the people living there are getting on with their lives.
I don’t think government is the answer to our problems but I think government assistance to people who show concerted effort towards improving their lives and the lives of others is a good thing, or could be a good thing. Unfortunately, “government” is also synonymous with failure and dysfunction in this country, and in this city especially. So be the anarchist, which is what many of you pretend to be with your disdainful attitudes toward government, and take control of what you can take control of.
Get a piece of framing lumber from the debris pile on any given block in New Orleans, sharpen one end of it by using a piece of broken glass wrapped on one end with duct tape. Attach to it a scrap piece of plywood, or siding, or sheetrock, from same debris pile. Get a fat permanent marker or a can of spray paint and write the words “free tutoring.” Pick up another piece of heavy lumber and drive that bitch into the ground in front of your house. Wait. Adjust your schedule as necessary and tutor your new mentees according to their needs, relative to your abilities. An ex-girlfriend and I did this, except without the sign, me for a few years and her for ten, she at the same address, right up until she got boatlifted past floating dead bodies after the flood in September 05. For a week she had thirty neighbors with her in that house on Dumaine, just high enough above the water.
By doing this will you single-handedly change the world? No, you will not. Will it be easy everyday and seem like a good thing? Nope. Will you stop crime in your neighborhood? No, not really. Will you prevent each and every one of your mentees from growing up to be murderers? In our experience, no. Will area gangsters stop throwing giant dead rats over into your side yard, kicking in the quarter panel of your car, ice-picking your tires, occasionally threatening to kill you? I would say it would benefit you not to expect that. Will your mentees never steal from you? They might occasionally. But will you positively impact the lives of one or two or ten? Fuckin A’ right you will. Will you make a difference? Yes, you honestly will. Will it look and feel that way? Not very often, but what else is it that you are doing here that prevents you from giving up some of your time, from the comfort of your own home, to take that chance of giving something back to a city that has given you so much enjoyment. Could we change for the better this world of New Orleans if a thousand of us did this, around the city? I guaranfuckintee we could. We could actually change the world. And without any government assistance.
I’m not likely to be a permanent resident of New Orleans in the future so you can just discount everything I’ve said. You need to know and your mentees need to know you are going to be around for awhile. But if you are staying, think about it. At least volunteer somewhere. Good luck to all of us.
The Posturing Of Us
I sure am a glutton for punishment and to prove it I went to my third city council meeting yesterday. The chauffeur again snuck up on me sitting in my truck here in the Rocheblave driveway, where in the daytime under the bright sunlight you hardly even miss the electricity we have been missing for four months, and said, you wanna go? and I said, no, not really. He said he was going to ride his bike down and I brought a bike back from Virginia and what could it hurt to have a bike ride to City Hall? Chauffeur’s bike has no air in the tires so we went in his van instead and split the five dollar parking fee in the lot across the street.
We went inside the chamber of City Hall and took seats, one apart from each other because guys who aren’t gay are always trying to prove they aren’t, to each other, and to anyone else who would point us out and say—look at those two gay guys sitting right next to each other in this nearly empty hall.
There had been a protest of 9th Ward residents and activists out front and we decided to go watch a bit of that, since we were 20 minutes early and these things never start on time anyway. A well-spoken woman with the most amazingly beautiful and gleaming parted down the middle afro was at the mike and I heard most of what she said but to tell you the truth was a little distracted by the way the sunlight was refracting off the tip ends of her full afro, as the wind blew it one way and then the other.
She was stating that the 9th Ward is not receiving the same recovery attention as other parts of the city with the implication that racism could be at the core of this. She also stated that the 9th Ward is perhaps the single largest black neighborhood in America, not to be confused with the 6th Ward (Treme) which is often considered the oldest black neighborhood in America.
We went back to the chamber after several more speakers expressed their discontent, and took our seats.
Mayor Ray Nagin wasn’t there (although the mayor of Pittsburgh was) and so at large city-councilman and president of the council, Oliver Thomas, led the proceedings, with what looked like a white tipped phallus to his right but which closer inspection proved to be councilman, Eddie Sapir.
We had to stand up and listen to a prayer from a local pastor who by tonal quality of his voice alone could prove God’s existence, and then the pledge of allegiance (can we sit down now?), and then (please, can we sit down now) a recorded version of the National Anthem complete with the hokiest big screen multi-media presentation I have ever seen.
I forget what is Greg Meffert’s title but he is Ray Nagin’s chief brain in charge of big stuff and the council members grilled him very much in the fashion of a senate investigating committee and he held his own very well I think, even though the white tipped phallus had him stuttering a little at the end by trying to get him to say was he or was he not speaking for the mayor. It was a trick question and in no way benefited any of us who were there to get some hard facts about just what the fuck is going on in this crippled city.
There was a surprise visit from Governor Blanco and she at least spewed out some facts which may or may not actually lead to beneficial changes for the future of New Orleans. Time will tell if Blanco will lead us to any positive changes here.
The chauffer I can tell sort of likes the appearance of importance that is implied by all the council members whispering to each other and taking cell phone calls while other speakers are on, and would periodically take calls (what the hell man, that phone of yours ain’t got a vibrator function?) and tell the person he couldn’t talk now, he was in a meeting.
I had to leave before Governor Blanco finished because I was having a minor depressive meltdown. I have been doing so well for awhile. I had just yesterday told my nephew’s wife that I haven’t cried in a few weeks. I wasn’t about to cry but I was getting a good dose of the material which fuels that sense of helplessness which leads to the wet boo-hoo.
The chauffeur had stepped out before me and was in the ante-chamber talking on his cell phone when I stepped out. There are often big-time city players out in the hallways during these council events and chauffeur likes to overhear and sometimes engage these people. I went to the bathroom and a guy I don’t know but have seen in the newspaper over the years was washing his hands in the gentleman’s room to the right of the ante-chamber. He was talking to a man who was zipping up his trousers and said, laughingly, “is this perfect or what, here in City Hall the hot and cold water taps are reversed.”
I went outside into the perfect sunshine and made a call, and told someone’s voicemail that I couldn’t meet with them today about a possible job because I was just too busy. I didn’t know where the chauffeur was but I felt like walking so I thought about walking home. I called the chauffeur to tell him this and he said he was ready to leave too, and came out front 30 seconds later. We drove over here to Rocheblave and he immediately got engaged with a hardwood floor guy who may do some work to his flood damaged buckled wood floors.
I keep forgetting to eat so when I started getting dizzy I drove over to the Broad Street Discount Market for a po-boy. It was too crowded so I headed back over to Rocheblave and noticed those people out front of that pretty church at Iberville and Broad had lunches set up on a table so I went and got a couple for me and the chauffeur. They each weighed much heavier than the Red Cross lunches, which recently barely seem to weigh more than the Styrofoam container they come in. The lunches consisted of six or eight barbecue chicken wings, carrots, instant mashed potatoes, and some cooked apple slices. And they came with a can of Welches grape juice, which reminded me of the communion wine served at the Methodist church of my youth. After lunch I tilted back the passenger seat in my truck and took a little nap. The chauffeur came over and when he saw me laid back like that he said, “man, I want to be just like you when I grow up.” I said, “chauffeur, don’t aim too high.”
More Water
Traffic is picking up here in New Orleans, even in the devastated areas. The devastation is not what you might expect, after all the hype. It's not the debris piles, or all the shut businesses, or the occasional gravity-defying leaning structures, or the diminishing water lines that even a month ago, before a couple of cleansing rains, more clearly marked all the empty structures around here. In part, the devastation is most defined by the recovery. There is already a house on Napolean Ave. that has been raised five feet, and sits now on concrete pilings, surrounded by so many houses just waiting, for what? None of us know. There are houses in Mid-City with their electricity turned on but they are invariably surrounded by many many more structures that most people would consider un-livable. There is that so-called unaffected strip of land following the Mississippi River which includes Bywater, the French Quarter, and Uptown, and many of the restaurants and bars in these areas are open, but most of them are cash only, and almost all of them have something from their previous menu that is not available now. And when you leave these areas, to go back home to the campsite formerly known as "your home," you are assaulted with that mix of relief and what what? You can stay busy if that makes you feel better or you can just slack and the end result, to my slacking self, seems about the same.
The area Universities and colleges, Tulane, Loyola, Xavier, UNO, Delgado, are starting up in another week or two, with a general 50 percent cut in staff, and a few of the many area high schools are up and running, and a charter school or two are schooling the few children here...and then a pipe burst under the house at the cottage on the Virginia property for which I am absentee caretaker, and I'm dealing with that now...water, water, and more water.
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.