if i could make a livin’ out of lovin’ you March 12, 2006
Drove to Lafayette today for Laurence’s Birthday Crawfish Boil. It was the kids, the in-laws, the former in-laws and the out-laws. Laurence used to jokingly introduce us to his friends: “I’d like you to meet my Real Mom, my Step Mom, my Biological Mom, my Surrogate Mom, my Spiritual Mom, my Second Mom….” I got there late, so I managed to slip by most of the adults like two ships missing in the night.
Laurence’s crew from the restaurant, Amy’s friends from work, and the neighbors and their families were gathered in the back yard. Almost everyone had little kids. The young women minded the kids while the young men tried to out-do each other making the best batch of crawfish. The tables were covered with newspapers and plastic. Maxine, a neighbor around my age, started a poker game. I remember thinking right after the hurricane that if I had to be stuck some place and unable to get home, there couldn’t have been a nicer place for it than Lafayette. It’s a very laid-back place, and the people have a very direct way of talking and looking you in the eye.
Jackson followed a little three-year-old girl, Lily, around while she picked daffodils. She handed him a bouquet. He looked at it and threw it down. Then he picked up a few and handed them to her. Lily stepped in a puddle and started screaming. I thought she had stepped in fire ants. Her mother came running over and said she doesn’t like to get wet.
Jackson played with the live crawfish and held them in his hand. Laurence says this is going to teach him not to be afraid of bugs. His parents peeled crawfish tails for him and he ate and ate them. I wondered if he has any idea that the grey-colored live ones are the same thing as the red, cooked ones?
Amy has a friend named Gretchen. Jackson calls her “Gigi.” She’s beautiful, with pale skin and black hair. She’s from Loreauville, and knows all about crawfish.
“She called me a redneck.”
“Who?”
“Amy.”
“When did I call you a redneck?”
“When I shot a possum off the power line.”
“Oh, yeah!”
“I ain’t no redneck. I’m a coonass!”
“Did you eat it after you shot it? Then you ain’t no coonass!”
I left right after dark. I turned on the radio. The choices were 1) country, and 2) western. I sang all the way home.
If I could make a livin’ out of lovin’ you
I’d be a millionaire in a week or two
I’d be doin’ what I love, and lovin’ what I do
If I could make a livin’ out of lovin’ you.
wanton disregard for the law
Sometimes, just for fun, I like to pour myself a cold beer, settle into my big chair with my lap top, and browse the various municipal, state and federal codes, looking for weird laws. Imagine my surprise when I found this, in the Code Of Municipal Ordinances of the City of New Orleans, Chapter 4, Article III (emphasis supplied):
Sec. 34-17. Riders.
(a) No member of any carnival organization shall ride as a masker in public view in a float or minifloat parade unless he is constantly costumed and masked so as to disguise his facial characteristics. This provision shall not apply, however, to the king, queen, captain, maids, dukes, pages, attendants, or special guest celebrities of the organization in question.
Hmmmm. I quickly reviewed my photographs from Tucks. The evidence is incontrovertible. Josh and Kevin, clearly in flagrant and continuous violation of Sec. 34-17, in front of hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses. Kevin I can understand, but Josh is an officer of the court. Frankly, I’m stunned. What started him on his life of crime? Is it a cry for help? Is he planning to violate any laws during the St. Patrick’s Day parade? And what made the city council include this as part of the code:
Sec. 34-21. Animals prohibited.
No reptiles shall be allowed within 200 yards of a Mardi Gras parade route not less than two hours before the published scheduled start of a parade, nor within 200 yards of the actual end of a parade for not less than one hour after the actual end of the parade measured from each continuing area of parade termination.
katrina krewe saturday
I spent Saturday morning with the Katrina Krewe, cleaning up trash at the intersection of Gentilly Boulevard and Elysian Fields. It was very windy and overcast, and there didn’t seem to be as many people helping as in the past. There were two large school or church groups, though. The founder of Katrina Krewe is Becky Zaheri. Her idea is a simple one and it’s great. You just go to her website, www.cleanNO.org, sign up for the e-mail, and you get an e-mail twice a week telling you what location to report to. The days and times are always the same - Wednesday and Saturday mornings, 9-12. She and some others are there when you arrive with a white van full of trash bags, supplies and some other items (although they always need donations). Bring gloves. Here is an album of photographs I took.
The meeting place was outside the empty Blockbuster. The groups of volunteers were spreading out down the Elysian Fields neutral ground when I arrived. I parked in a lot that was full of broken glass and trash, behind the empty Peaches and Baskin-Robbins. The parking lot was full of cars, but none of the businesses were open. All the cars belonged to clean-up volunteers. I decided to join a handful of other people who had started removing junk from around the buildings that formerly housed Baskin-Robbins, Peaches, Radio-Shack and Burger Orleans. They included two public school teachers who were happy to still have jobs, a woman who used to work at the blood center and now works for Tulane, and the women’s golf coach from UNO.
The area was littered with junk, including flood debris and old tires. We piled it on the curb and started sweeping up dirt and debris into bags. There was an old shopping cart. There was a fallen utility pole that had been dragged into the parking lot and left there. There were three dumpsters overflowing with trash. Pieces of the buildings that had blown off were lying on the sidewalk. Other pieces were dangling above the sidewalk. The big signs had blown down from Peaches and were lying in the sidewalk. There was also a dead car on the sidewalk. Burger Orleans will be housing wildlife if someone doesn’t deal with it.
The worst thing to me, though, was all the broken glass. I have never seen a situation so demoralizing that people will not even clean broken glass off their property. Of course, I got all pissed off and judgmental about the property owners leaving this mess for others to clean up, as I swept up pile after pile of glass. When I came home, I got on the City of New Orleans’ and the Louisiana Secretary of State’s websites and tracked down the property owners. I was going to name names here in the blog for all five of you to read, and demand that these people take reponsibility for their private property. Then I realized that there is no telling what those people are dealing with. The entrepreneurs who rented the space and operated Burger Orleans had two other burger joints before the flood - in New Orleans East. The Texas corporation that owns the Gentilly Shopping Center probably has not made any money there for years. I can’t remember if Baskin-Robbins was even open there before the flood.
Every building and business on that corner is shuttered, except for the McKenzies, which I thought was out of business long before the storm. Well, they are open and serving catfish. In addition to McKenzies Pastries and Catfish, the other good news is that a few people are returning to that area. As I drove down Gentilly Blvd, I could clearly see where the high ground is because the buildings are occupied and there is no water line. There were actually people waiting for the bus.
After I left the clean-up, I drove around the neighborhood. Gentilly is an area that was mostly developed in the mid-20th century. The neutral grounds on St. Anthony have arched metal signs, letting you know when you have left Gentilly Hgts. and entered Voscoville, for instance. The houses are small and most are barely up off the ground. Many looked untouched since the flood, but there were many more with piles of insulation and rotten wood in front, with people working on the inside. It was depressing to realize that if I kept driving east I would only see more of the same thing.
I drove back through Lakeview, where there was a lot more destruction but there is a lot more activity. The water was much higher there and it still smells like a wet dog. I hadn’t been to Lakeview since Steve gave me the tour when I returned from Houston. There is no reason to go there since nothing is open and no one lives there. These houses and commercial buildings sat in eight feet of brackish water for 2-3 weeks. The voodoo crosses in this area are sometimes on the roof, because the doorways were covered with water throughout September and they had to be searched by boat. What happens to a house when it marinates in that stuff? The flood waters had scoured away the earth from under concrete slabs, leaving them exposed at the corners. How do you fix that?
So, dangerblond drove herself right through Lakeview and into a little mini-depression. If you stick to Uptown, where they are putting up the sleek, newfangled steel traffic lights, everything looks great. The French Quarter is beginning to look like its old self (still with the broken glass, though. What is up with that?). Marigny and Bywater, if they could keep the lights on, looks like we never left. The West Bank is hustling and bustling. In fact, just keep driving west if you want to see life as we used to know it.
