Christian Pilgrim’s Progress
Cover Page: I’ve been told by the doctor that it’s good to keep a diary of the happenings in my life and a record of my feelings; I don’t believe her, but anything is worth a try when you’re on the brink of a maelstrom that you feel isolated and insular in, and one where you fear that you might not be understood by whomever you or I confide in, so here goes. The shrink said to write a little every day, but I don’t know that I have that many words in me; oh well, we can not but try. I’m not sure who is supposed to read this; perhaps me when I’m well or maybe it’s just for the exercise of expressing myself; I’m no dummy, you know. Anyway, she says to ‘get it out of me and onto some paper!’ I’m not sure what IT is.
Friday July 16th Okay, hello my name is Christian…. Oh Qwerty!!!! that’s not right, nonononononono let me think about this !@##$$%^%^&&
Monday July 19th Here goes: This is what I recall: from the pillowed nest, the blanketed womb, the coverlet warmth that I’ve constructed in my long overnight, my right eye emerges from the covers to view the clock and my environment. Not much sunlight, just a blue gray haze that signals the breaking of dawn. check. Ceiling fan’s spinning, lazily as an old negress in a sweltering country church, check. The dog is curled at my back as if I were her litter mate and the rest of the bed is empty, check. Twenty minutes until seven, check. Back for more winks, double check. Lost in the DMZ of my REM’s, if you catch my drift, down to mine more dream gems.
I’ll repeat this ritual at least twice more until the sky’s hue changes to Alice blue and the clock gives me no alternative but to rise; swing out to sitting position and there’s my coffee, right where it should be, right where she leaves it, right where she‘s left it. But that’s not the only thing that she’s left. Somewhere in my slumber and her wakening she has leaned into my ear with a kiss and a curse. “Here’s something for you to sleep on…” she whispers, “you know what the doctor says about your drinking, and you know the trouble that you’re having with your penis…
“six beers while we were out last night and another four before you went to bed and that whiskey bottle is down to less than half. Sometimes I think that you’re more interested in getting drunk than having sex.” The words pour acid on my otherwise
Okay, so when I get up nothing is mentioned and everything goes according to ritual; I’ll go shower, shave and shampoo and Daisy’ll make the bed while I let the dogs out the back door and put some fruit in the blender. A morning But there is a boulder that is between us as we pack lunches for work and I drive us into town. She’s has said something cutting, and it can never be taken back; see, that’s the thing about talking and saying things: you cannot take back something once it is said. Sure, I’ve been told that drinking may contribute to my ED and I’ve done nothing to curb my thirst.
I have no defense, at my age I should know better and the child in me decries: ‘I shoulda never told you what the doctor said!’ but, at my age I am aware that honesty is not only the best policy; it’s the only policy, and I’ve dug my own grave with this one: I honestly answer any question asked me.
“So, what did the doctor say?” she had asked. Oh well, at least my TB test came in negative.
Tuesday July 23rd Today After I told Daisy about my journal she said: “I want to play too!” So round and round we went, and round and round until I just said “go ahead but don’t expect me to read what you wrote, after all it is my journal and my illnesses and my recovery thoughts and use your own pages and just slip them into the journal and maybe I’ll look at them sometime later and she said “Jerk!”
(this is Daisy in a completely different font) Tuesday July 23rd Yes, ‘Jerk’ is what I called him! And a silly man as well! He is glued to the computer night and day and is he looking at sports? No. Is he gambling or playing the stock market? No. Is he watching pornography or in some imaginary parallel world? NO! and NO again! He is on the medical sites finding cures for imaginary afflictions! He’s a dear man but his compulsion for complaints physical and mental could try the patience of the frigging Pope! He really thinks there are real doctors that can prescribe and send medication for every little irritation is somehow beyond belief but he keeps getting stuff in the mail to take; powders, pills, ointment, unction and advice. I’d say Lord help the woman that lives with him, but THAT’S ME!!
(Back to Christian)Friday July 30th: Let me tell you about my doctors. On the advice of my MDs and GPs I take a pill for high cholesterol, one to slow my urinary visits to the bathroom, one for my prostate and two for calcium. I wear a knee length support stocking on my right leg to help circulation and at home I have prescription Claritin and nasal spray from the time that I mentioned that I had a sore throat and a cough (both that went away on their own). All of the teeth that I smile with are not my own. I talk to the shrink once every two weeks, not that I can see the good of it; I’ll probably die before I’m cured of whatever I have.
At the MD’s I complained about a sore back and was sent prescription strength Aleve and muscle relaxers; I was issued a blood pressure machine to check my blood pressure twice daily (which I’m lax about) and I’ve been told to soak my big toes in vinegar water to rejuvenate their nails. I’m also told to exercise at least three times a week (I try to), to stay off smoking and to cut my drinking down to no more than two drinks a day if I have to drink at all; no caffeine after twelve noon.
I’m told that I will have to keep up this regimen for the rest of my life. My doctor told me also that I could pass for a man half my age if it weren’t for the lack of hair on my head and if I dropped about fifteen or twenty pounds, at least he never mentions my nervous tic. My indestructible youth has gone with the wind and the passage of time, sometimes I feel that I’m fighting to stay alive and young; and, that being young is the only proof one has of really being alive.
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Thursday August 12th: I know that I’m not writing as often as I should. My neuroses seem to be repetitive in nature and I try to keep them in check. I was in a conversation at dinner the other night when I brought up the fact that according to television, back aches are now so commonplace that I believe that they’re actually being sanctioned-- there are literally thousands of sites on the computer that will recommend remedies-- as in “sure you’ve got a backache, it’s perfectly normal but take this and you won’t feel it!!” and so my doctor sends me pills so that I won’t feel my back hurting and they never questions the cause of my discomfort. Go home. Take a pill. Take more pills. Ignorance (and medication) is bliss.
Did I also mention that cholesterol pill that I am taking? At my last visit my cholesterol level was perfect and I mentioned to the doctor that I was watching my diet (mostly vegan now) and exercising and wouldn’t it be about time that I stopped taking that pill? I was told that the reason that my blood pressure was so great was because I was taking the pill and that I would be taking the pill for the rest of my life. I whined to my dinner companions that I should be able to lead a life free of the medications that I feel are being foisted upon me as long as I watched what I put into my body and how I treated it.
Well, you guessed it; silence around the table until one of my companions (a man older than I) put it in a nutshell, and succinctly as well: “you’ll be able to do that as soon as you’re able to grow younger instead of older.”
Monday August 23rd It appears to me that nowadays man and beast are bombarded by the media with maladies that are unknown to them and that they may have, and that they’d better take remedies for before it becomes too late to go on that biking/hiking/camping trip with their grandchildren, balloons and all. They’re told very explicitly that they have this one life, this one body and your next heart attack (the one that you’re sure to have if you didn’t take this medicine) is lurking around the corner unless you take this medication. The ills that we are contracting appear as fast as the medications to assuage them are presented; their names are so long that they are relayed to us by their abbreviations. COPD, TTP, OTC, STD, CTS, MSD, IBS etc. And quietly (Shhh) at the close of any television commercial for relief of your three or four letter abbreviated lurking demon illness, you’re told the side effects: runny nose, thoughts of suicide, constipation, headache, dizziness, vomiting and/or shortness of breath! My favorite is: “seek immediate medical attention if you experience blurred vision, nausea or an erection lasting more than four hours”. They are trying to make me dependent on the medications hoping to get me hooked on taking stuff like a hypochondriac but I’m looking for a way out before they find more stuff wrong with me.
Which doesn’t take away from my current situation: the curse of the cat people. Note: conundrum number one: nothing that I used to do has done me any good and stopping doing what I did has done me no good either; the one supporting brick in the edifice of my immortal fortress remains to be dismantled and all of my instincts resist. For peace and happiness I have to take the first step to curb my alcohol intake. I guess it’s like the man says: nothing to lose.
But first, naturally, a few days of petulance and pouting; refusing solace as well as my usual excesses of alcohol. Daisy asks me if there is anything wrong, did she do something, did she say something? Of course I know that answering those questions is just what she wants; she wants to talk about this and I’m smart and experienced enough to know that that path is a one-way ticket to ‘It’s All My FaultVille’. No, it’s not my inner child, it’s my inner twenty-five year old reacting: I want to get drunk AND get laid!!!
Instead I beg off with the ‘a lot on my mind’ gambit, which is the lame stall tactic that gives me time to adjust and digest my predicament.
And so, I’ve gone kicking and protesting into post middle age; the one where one feels like they’re seventeen, acts like they’re twenty-five and is treated like an octogenarian. It’s a ‘tween’ stage where reality, philosophy and wisdom conflict with compulsiveness, spontaneity and vigor; and you’re not safe until you embrace an ignored inevitability of there are more days behind me and fewer days ahead and I’m going down slow.
It goes beyond the flip “I never knew I would live this long” excuses. I am now that old. I’m now old enough to know better, I’m old enough to realize that I’ll never be young ever again and that my body is going through the great recession. It can lead to the Great Depression if I let it. Coming to terms with degeneration opens up a whole new can of worms. Is the world conspiring to usher me into decrepitude? There was never any need for this much medical attention until I asked a doctor if there was anything wrong with me. Daisy says that I spend too much time at the SuperDoctor.com and she questions the advice that I’m getting; I tell her not to knock it until she tries it.
At sixty-seven years old with unimpaired mental facilities, I’m stuck in a
typical male dilemma:
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Sunday August 30, This morning I arose from the dead; that is, I awoke and she made love to me and it was good. And so we entered into the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell of my drinking. One thing that has never been in question is the love that we have for eachother; we are eachother, we are friends, lovers and romantics. We share a home and family, we are more or less happy with eachother and the life that we have carved out of this crazy world, and except for the fact that we both are having backaches now, our lives have an established rhythm. Oh, the hospital called to set up chest x-rays and a lower GI; I wonder what that’s about.
September 1st For whoever is reading this in the future: Daisy and I have a small bookshop in the center of town, which to say two miles away. We live in a spacious flat, half a shotgun it is called, and we’re away from the madding crowd that we used to run with. Peace and quiet in the country; alone… together.
We also have a yard for her to tend with flowers, fern and herbs; in this torrid climate it’s all she can do to keep up with the pandemonium. I’m more at home in the kitchen, a reversal of roles if one would look at us as a traditional couple; but our backgrounds have put us in a different kind of harmony: she a country mouse and I a city mouse with rituals and habits exclusive to our backgrounds. We also have critters: two felines and two canines. One big happy family. The doctors say I need a colonoscopy and a CT to measure bone density also I’ve noticed a ringing in my ears that they call tinnitus which they won’t give me anything for and I’m distracted by that noise in my head that make every thing sound static.
I let go of youth in a state of angst, I am betrayed by my body, I ceased looking in mirrors because I don’t like what I see. I take my medicines religiously and I am insulted at my age and the things that I can and cannot do. Daisy is ten years younger than I and has been nothing but patient with me and my whininess, and yet I’m hiding from her. I’m hiding my weakness and preoccupation with aging and death. She follows me around like she thinks I’m up to something
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September 7th and I want to ask someone; anyone: “what would you say, what did you say, what can you say when fleeting youth is treated with pills and powders but never cured? Would you sell the soul that you denied in your past that you possessed to go back to being young? Do you rail against the finalities and weakenings of your strength and agilities? Do you start conversations with your young friends with “when I was your age… or I remember when…?” Oh well, just a thought.
When I go to SuperDoc.com I can ask any question and it only costs $19.95 and sometimes there’s a special offer with the time that I spend and heck, they give some great advice; like yesterday, I was on SuperDoc.com/psychiatry and I asked why all the obituary photos that I see are of smiling people? It’s almost as if they are happy to be dead. Well, my psychiatrist on the Super Doc site told me plenty, I can tell you. Pages and pages! I’m glad that my every medical question can be answered so readily and that my medications will come in the mail and just be directly withdrawn from my bank account.
September 9th: Our shop is a quiet and whimsical bookshop; it makes enough money to support itself but not enough to contribute to our money situations. For this reason we have alternative employment for our living expenses, I spend two nights away from home and she works three days at the same establishment where the rest of the staff is pretty much younger than my grown children. I’m the oldest employee with my foibles and fantasies of immortality and basically the children that work around me are going through conflicts and challenges that I met lifetimes ago. I wonder what they would say if they knew how trivial their youth will all seem in twenty years; thirty?
I’m really sensitive about the dust in the shop, it seems to be everywhere and pervasive. I spend a lot of time dusting things but the dust seems to reappear the next day. I think that people look at me funny, which is why, if I’m not dusting, I sit at the keyboard on the computer and only look up when someone wants to pay for something.
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September 16th: They took more blood tests this week at the Super Doc pharmacy up the street, it was as simple as sticking my arm in a hole and it was over real quick as well; and the screen said that perhaps if I add some antidepressants to my regimen that I might feel like my old self. I tell her/it that my old self is a stranger to me. I felt better when I was drinking. She asked me if I knew what serotonin is. Does she think I’m nuts? She also wants to know if I’ve tried Cialis or Viagra. I told her that I have but I don’t like them because I still finish too quickly and then all I do is feel pain when my erection won’t go down. She wants me to have chest x-rays and an eye examination. I think that I have a lot of thinking to do but I can’t seem to concentrate. The words seem to flow out on the paper without me thinking about them. Maybe they’ll want to read this, but I don’t think I’ll let them; I mean, they’ve got all of my history anyway some where in their computer banks. Oops! I forgot that I’m not supposed to think of them as computers, that that is counterproductive; they tell me that I can only get well if I think of my help as coming from a real person doctor.
I wonder what they would say if I told them that sometimes, a lot of times, when they talk to me I can’t make out what they’re saying and that I can only stare at the computer screen as so much gibberish comes out of their mouths and I don’t understand a word of it? I wonder what they would say if I told them that that happens to me with a lot of people that talk to me, ask questions of me or try to reel me into a conversation?
September 20th Daisy wants us to take a week off before it gets too cool out and go to the cabin by the lake where we can laze about, yippee! I’m all for it and we’re even taking the dogs! The doctors want me in again next week for a spinal tap to check my bone marrow (again) and fluid, it sounds like it’ll hurt. I guess I’ll log in and ask them.
I asked about the numbness that I get in my upper left thigh and they told me that it might be fibro neuralgia or something and that I should spend ten minutes a day sticking a pin in different parts of my body to find out where I might be numb. They warned me that I should not stay away from them for more than a day if I want to get well; mercy me, I told them that I forgot what was wrong with me in the first place. Boy THAT didn’t go over well. Almost immediately my shrink came on and started talking real loud and fast. I told him that I couldn’t concentrate and that I would log on later when the fog in my brain clears. Then it sounded like thirty voices were talking at the same time and boy, that really freaked me out so I pulled the plug on the computer. I can’t think… I can’t tell what is real and what I imagine any more. I’ll be glad to get out of here.
October 1st: Up at the lake
Friday, August 27, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
New Orleans Giving thanks
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Sine Qua Non
Or
Who Loves Ya?
Well, we’re coming up on Thanksgiving and besides the blessing of being alive, in relatively good shape and possessing a somewhat cognitive mind, I can’t think of a thing worth being thankful for.
Except-- (you knew that was coming, dincha?)-- except for the dear hearts and gentle people that live in my life or, I in theirs. The ones who call us friends and that we call friends in return. Friends.
You got ‘em, I got ‘em; I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. If you’re anything like me, you’ve done nothing to deserve them aside from just being yourself. Funny how it works both ways; you know, free to be you and me and all that kind of stuff.
What do you call them? What’s in a word? Friends, chums, buddies, pals, amigos or a ‘peep’ whom you would look to for approval when you take a spur of the moment sheet-shaker in for a sleep over. Oooo, maybe a con-fi-dant? And, what defines a friendship? Harmonic reciprocative symbiotic convergence or…
Someone that would take a bullet for you?
Hmmm; well, well, well, a bullet? I don’t know that friendship, or I, would go that far; pause, deep breath, that sounds more like love, parental contra-interception, sacrificial masochism or in the least filial piety. No, I wouldn’t go that far under incidental circumstances; however, if we were in a food fight in Packastrami or Upper Nuoc Mammou I may concede to cutting the mustard but not just for any Frank… furter.
Two peanuts were walking down the street; one was a saulted… peanut.
Defining a true friendship is unformulated and nebulous in nature at best, just like those last lines. Is a friend somebody whose advice you take? Nah. Somebody whose advice you listen to? You bet, and not only that, it’s the person who you will ask for the advice that you’re not going to take!
A friend will take you on an adventure but probably not on a vacation, a friend is someone that will share bad news with you when they need a mirror of empathy and share good new for the same reason; it’s that same person that will laugh with you when you look silly and stop you when you’re being stupid, or absurd. If you and your friend have a difference of opinion, you will talk of other things, period. A friend doesn’t mind you listening to the Wu-Tang Clan (as long as you do it by yourself). If you want the last slice of pizza and your friend does also, they won’t feel bad about you sharing it.
Perhaps (you or) your friend knows more about something than you do; you know, rumors, gossip, how to tame that outbreak etc; well, when your friend’s (or you’re) talking, it’s ‘shut up and listen’ time, idn’t? Y’all will always listen to eachother in polite contemplation and understanding; that goes without saying, dudden’t? It’s what friends do, ain’nt?
It’s as if you, looking up from your reading, asked: “what exactly do they mean by a ‘stitch in time’: how do you stitch time?” Why, your friend would turn politely to you and reply: “what the !@#$%^&* are you talking about?” (See what I’m saying?) Friendship.
In the world of humor that we have, that bases its funnies on human frailty, your friend will catch you before slipping on the banana peel busts your butt. A friend will pull tricks on you but will never knowingly hurt your feelings; and, malicious mischief will be one bullet that they will take for you. Protection and attraction makes friends friends. A friendship is the best thing that you can have in a lover, relative, child or parent; and yes, somebody is giving me a nickel for every time I use the word “friend” in a sentence. (Not really, it just seems like it.)
Onward. Friends are friends in proximity and at a distance, I have people that I can call my friends that I haven’t had contact with for years. Years. And so have you, if you’ve got any friends at all. Being around your friends make you want to be around them all the more, they have compassion and concern for you. You will seek their endorsement on important matters: “does this dress make me look fat?” semi-colon, immediate response: “you’re not fat!” (Friendship).
Sit down, I’ll tell you a little story:
Girlfriend, once upon a time, back in the day, did belong (belonged?) to a loosely knit and tightly dressed group of women who rallied around a single philosophy; they called themselves…The Slut Sisters. Well, to make a long story longer, time and tide spread the girls out hither and yon where they found nests, neighbors and other lives; but they never did (or do) lose track of one another. When Girlfriend and I started getting closer and closer, about a half a dozen of the Slut Sisters came to town to have a look at me. Word was that I was in for either a pleasant chat or an ass-whupping on a major scale. If I remember correctly, Girlfriend left the room while I was having my ‘chat’, which was an interview nonpareil; that I still have my hide intact is proof of me having the right answers, whew.
Okay, now that we’ve flogged that horse another mile, what have we learned?
Lesson one: Chose your friends like you do your wardrobe: durable, comfortable, reliable and able to adapt to weather changes.
Lesson two: it’s not a good thing if your friends don’t like or approve of your choice of a partner. Friends can be more objective and subjective at the same time and they see things that you don’t because your eyes are clouded by your ‘lover’s logic’ or a film of body fluids. Besides, you never want to say: “I should have listened to my friends”; that’s a bummer, you don’t want to go there.
Lesson three: be true, loyal and thankful concerning your friends, they are a reflection of you and who you are; and hopefully you’ll be proud of their choice in picking you to that exalted station. Friend. Be proud and thankful that they like the person that you are becoming.
P.S. Girlfriend is my friend.
By
Phil LaMancusa
Sine Qua Non
Or
Who Loves Ya?
Well, we’re coming up on Thanksgiving and besides the blessing of being alive, in relatively good shape and possessing a somewhat cognitive mind, I can’t think of a thing worth being thankful for.
Except-- (you knew that was coming, dincha?)-- except for the dear hearts and gentle people that live in my life or, I in theirs. The ones who call us friends and that we call friends in return. Friends.
You got ‘em, I got ‘em; I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. If you’re anything like me, you’ve done nothing to deserve them aside from just being yourself. Funny how it works both ways; you know, free to be you and me and all that kind of stuff.
What do you call them? What’s in a word? Friends, chums, buddies, pals, amigos or a ‘peep’ whom you would look to for approval when you take a spur of the moment sheet-shaker in for a sleep over. Oooo, maybe a con-fi-dant? And, what defines a friendship? Harmonic reciprocative symbiotic convergence or…
Someone that would take a bullet for you?
Hmmm; well, well, well, a bullet? I don’t know that friendship, or I, would go that far; pause, deep breath, that sounds more like love, parental contra-interception, sacrificial masochism or in the least filial piety. No, I wouldn’t go that far under incidental circumstances; however, if we were in a food fight in Packastrami or Upper Nuoc Mammou I may concede to cutting the mustard but not just for any Frank… furter.
Two peanuts were walking down the street; one was a saulted… peanut.
Defining a true friendship is unformulated and nebulous in nature at best, just like those last lines. Is a friend somebody whose advice you take? Nah. Somebody whose advice you listen to? You bet, and not only that, it’s the person who you will ask for the advice that you’re not going to take!
A friend will take you on an adventure but probably not on a vacation, a friend is someone that will share bad news with you when they need a mirror of empathy and share good new for the same reason; it’s that same person that will laugh with you when you look silly and stop you when you’re being stupid, or absurd. If you and your friend have a difference of opinion, you will talk of other things, period. A friend doesn’t mind you listening to the Wu-Tang Clan (as long as you do it by yourself). If you want the last slice of pizza and your friend does also, they won’t feel bad about you sharing it.
Perhaps (you or) your friend knows more about something than you do; you know, rumors, gossip, how to tame that outbreak etc; well, when your friend’s (or you’re) talking, it’s ‘shut up and listen’ time, idn’t? Y’all will always listen to eachother in polite contemplation and understanding; that goes without saying, dudden’t? It’s what friends do, ain’nt?
It’s as if you, looking up from your reading, asked: “what exactly do they mean by a ‘stitch in time’: how do you stitch time?” Why, your friend would turn politely to you and reply: “what the !@#$%^&* are you talking about?” (See what I’m saying?) Friendship.
In the world of humor that we have, that bases its funnies on human frailty, your friend will catch you before slipping on the banana peel busts your butt. A friend will pull tricks on you but will never knowingly hurt your feelings; and, malicious mischief will be one bullet that they will take for you. Protection and attraction makes friends friends. A friendship is the best thing that you can have in a lover, relative, child or parent; and yes, somebody is giving me a nickel for every time I use the word “friend” in a sentence. (Not really, it just seems like it.)
Onward. Friends are friends in proximity and at a distance, I have people that I can call my friends that I haven’t had contact with for years. Years. And so have you, if you’ve got any friends at all. Being around your friends make you want to be around them all the more, they have compassion and concern for you. You will seek their endorsement on important matters: “does this dress make me look fat?” semi-colon, immediate response: “you’re not fat!” (Friendship).
Sit down, I’ll tell you a little story:
Girlfriend, once upon a time, back in the day, did belong (belonged?) to a loosely knit and tightly dressed group of women who rallied around a single philosophy; they called themselves…The Slut Sisters. Well, to make a long story longer, time and tide spread the girls out hither and yon where they found nests, neighbors and other lives; but they never did (or do) lose track of one another. When Girlfriend and I started getting closer and closer, about a half a dozen of the Slut Sisters came to town to have a look at me. Word was that I was in for either a pleasant chat or an ass-whupping on a major scale. If I remember correctly, Girlfriend left the room while I was having my ‘chat’, which was an interview nonpareil; that I still have my hide intact is proof of me having the right answers, whew.
Okay, now that we’ve flogged that horse another mile, what have we learned?
Lesson one: Chose your friends like you do your wardrobe: durable, comfortable, reliable and able to adapt to weather changes.
Lesson two: it’s not a good thing if your friends don’t like or approve of your choice of a partner. Friends can be more objective and subjective at the same time and they see things that you don’t because your eyes are clouded by your ‘lover’s logic’ or a film of body fluids. Besides, you never want to say: “I should have listened to my friends”; that’s a bummer, you don’t want to go there.
Lesson three: be true, loyal and thankful concerning your friends, they are a reflection of you and who you are; and hopefully you’ll be proud of their choice in picking you to that exalted station. Friend. Be proud and thankful that they like the person that you are becoming.
P.S. Girlfriend is my friend.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Katrina fifth anniversary part 6
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Katrina Fifth Anniversary VI
Or
No Rest For The Weary
Could I get away without finishing the epic adventure? Probably. But I wouldn’t have believed that the tale had ended so I’ll go on (and on and on) with the suspicion that someone in the future will want to know what happened after chapter five.
Okay, where were we? We made it up to Shreveport and our asylum where we had respite for two nights and a day. They, the folks that took us in, were a lovely couple in a large house in an upscale suburb and they opened themselves and their home to us as if we were better than kin. We were asked (and received) whatever we needed and we showered and shaved and shampooed like royalty. Kevin, it turned out was somewhat of an introvert; it took him a bit to come out, but with a couple of beers and non-threatening company, who wouldn’t. They even threw a cook-out for us and some other refugees that had landed in their neighborhood. They really went all out for us, no questions asked. Food, clothing and shelter.
We had Molly, the yellow Labrador, with us and Gallivan’s girlfriend was coming to pick her up. Little Trey, the bitty dog that was given to us by some evacuees in N.O. was taken to a refugee shelter where people and pets were treated with respect and he was almost immediately adopted by one of the workers. That left us with five of our own critters and Kevin.
We didn’t want to overstay our welcome and besides, Kevin’s sister in law, the one who had said we could keep the car, was threatening to call the authorities on us and have us arrested for car rustling, so we set up a time to be in Dallas to return the Toyota to her and took our leave of Shreveport (after finding that scamp Bob the cat wandering off in the neighborhood, obviously ready to relocate on his own) and headed to Texas.
We had agreed to rendezvous at the Dallas airport, where we had decided to rent another car for the trip to the west coast. Debbie was adamant that we have a car before returning the Toyota and I readily agreed that our baggage and pets should not and would not be left by the side of the road just because an ex alcoholic was reneging on a promise made in haste; that promise being that we could keep the car, her car (that we got out of New Orleans) as long as we needed it. In our heart of hearts we really couldn't blame her, but it was sort of a pain in the ass. We arrived on schedule and got a bigger and better car and waited and waited and waited for her to show up; we were wasting daylight at the edge of nowhere, and our nerves and patiences were fraying further than they already were.
Well, the sister in law finally shows up. It seems that she was so stressed about the ordeal that she had to go to a meeting before she could get her act together; by the time she showed up Debbie was fit to be tied and I believe that she wanted to rip this woman’s lungs from her body, and, to make things more complicated, she had brought Kevin’s spouse, Kathy, with her, who was there to plead with Kevin to stay in Dallas and not make the trip to California. All the time, it’s hotter than hell and no shade to speak of.
After a tearful reunion, Kevin decided to stay with Kathy and we hugged and left the lot of them and continued off on our own.
The drive to the coast was pretty much of a blur with us getting a motel room for the night wherever, and whenever we were to pooped to continue the driving. We would invariably order a pizza and get some beer and get the critters situated and zone out on television that we, again invariably, had tuned to the disaster reports from New Orleans; we had become media junkies and disaster ghouls. We would sleep and wake up to the awful motel coffee service, get a bite and head on out again, day after day, through Texas, Arizona and up into California. In the back of my head I was dreading the drive through Los Angeles, having had that experience before and not liking it one bit.
We drove up the coastal route, along the beach communities, keeping to our motel, pizza, beer, coffee breakfast, driving routine, never stopping for very long; burning gas and rubber and the demons from my brain.
While I was in New Orleans, I would wake up in the morning and have to wrap my head around the disaster and being there; on the road, I would wake up and it would take me a moment to realize that I was not still in New Orleans. Debbie kept me going and took real care of our charges: Ginger and Rosie the canines, and Phil, Pepper and Bob the felines. For the most part we talked little and I’m sure that I wasn’t good company. Like I explain to people: I really, really needed a long drive to clear my head and so I drove and drove, my copilot and our crew of critters reaching the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, where we rested overnight to get up the energy to go through that most horrid of stretches of highway, the L.A. freeway. I think that I had tried to warn Debbie of the rigors that we were about to face, as it turns out neither one of us were fully prepared for that ride.
If you’ve never driven through Los Angeles in the years around 2005, you have missed the most nerve wracking, patience and driving ability trying experiences of a lifetime and I wish you well. We started out at day break and drove six lanes to four and back top six as fast as we could, mostly to keep from being over run by the other cars, trucks and busses that were hell bent for leather to get wherever they were going ahead of the person behind them and in front of them; it took us until 9:30 in the morning to get through L.A. and in the middle of all that, Phil the cat decided to lean on the power window switch and almost jetison himself; and if that weren’t enough, he and Pepper decided to kill eachother, in the car, on the freeway at eighty miles per hour. I was practically in a froth by the time we reached sane driving conditions and this hero stuff was wearing a bit thin, I don’t know how I knew it or what those around me thought of my demeanor, but I was holding all of my emotions in check for the last week and they needed out. I had rationally explained to myself that I needed to be the strong one, in charge, when I felt the weakest of the lot of us; I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that car with me driving if I were anyone else but me, and maybe not even then.
We stopped, I think that it was in Capistrano, for the night and then up to San Francisco where we had a safety net in place; however, we never did need to strain any of the relationships that I had up there. The Red Cross was set up in town and they got us (with pets) accommodations at an art deco motel on the beach, gave us meals as well as food stamps and bus passes and people were right friendly. The Red Cross had expected tens of thousands of refugees and got less than nine hundred, so we had almost too much attention lavished upon us with Social Security, FEMA and disaster money and volunteers galore, plus we had a brand new luxury size Buick to tool around the area with.
There is one moment that I will never forget; as we were driving into town we had the radio tuned to the public station and they were broadcasting a benefit for New Orleans musicians. We were just getting in, with the San Francisco skyline above us and feeling pretty good about being at the end of our trip and the song that they happen to play at that moment was: “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?” I think that we were crying so hard that I had to pull over because I could not see the road for the tears that we both were crying. We both literally had our long overdue breakdowns, in traffic, sobbing for our lost city. I guess that that kind of took the wind out of our sails and I believe that at that point we both knew without speaking that we could not but return home, no matter what San Francisco or any other place might show us in the form of hospitality. At that point we fully knew what it meant to be orphans of the storm.
So ends part six. That was our journey out of the hell and high water and it got to be only better and better from there until we returned back to New Orleans. Five weeks in California.
Oh, Kevin did make it to California, to his relatives, without Kathy.
By
Phil LaMancusa
Katrina Fifth Anniversary VI
Or
No Rest For The Weary
Could I get away without finishing the epic adventure? Probably. But I wouldn’t have believed that the tale had ended so I’ll go on (and on and on) with the suspicion that someone in the future will want to know what happened after chapter five.
Okay, where were we? We made it up to Shreveport and our asylum where we had respite for two nights and a day. They, the folks that took us in, were a lovely couple in a large house in an upscale suburb and they opened themselves and their home to us as if we were better than kin. We were asked (and received) whatever we needed and we showered and shaved and shampooed like royalty. Kevin, it turned out was somewhat of an introvert; it took him a bit to come out, but with a couple of beers and non-threatening company, who wouldn’t. They even threw a cook-out for us and some other refugees that had landed in their neighborhood. They really went all out for us, no questions asked. Food, clothing and shelter.
We had Molly, the yellow Labrador, with us and Gallivan’s girlfriend was coming to pick her up. Little Trey, the bitty dog that was given to us by some evacuees in N.O. was taken to a refugee shelter where people and pets were treated with respect and he was almost immediately adopted by one of the workers. That left us with five of our own critters and Kevin.
We didn’t want to overstay our welcome and besides, Kevin’s sister in law, the one who had said we could keep the car, was threatening to call the authorities on us and have us arrested for car rustling, so we set up a time to be in Dallas to return the Toyota to her and took our leave of Shreveport (after finding that scamp Bob the cat wandering off in the neighborhood, obviously ready to relocate on his own) and headed to Texas.
We had agreed to rendezvous at the Dallas airport, where we had decided to rent another car for the trip to the west coast. Debbie was adamant that we have a car before returning the Toyota and I readily agreed that our baggage and pets should not and would not be left by the side of the road just because an ex alcoholic was reneging on a promise made in haste; that promise being that we could keep the car, her car (that we got out of New Orleans) as long as we needed it. In our heart of hearts we really couldn't blame her, but it was sort of a pain in the ass. We arrived on schedule and got a bigger and better car and waited and waited and waited for her to show up; we were wasting daylight at the edge of nowhere, and our nerves and patiences were fraying further than they already were.
Well, the sister in law finally shows up. It seems that she was so stressed about the ordeal that she had to go to a meeting before she could get her act together; by the time she showed up Debbie was fit to be tied and I believe that she wanted to rip this woman’s lungs from her body, and, to make things more complicated, she had brought Kevin’s spouse, Kathy, with her, who was there to plead with Kevin to stay in Dallas and not make the trip to California. All the time, it’s hotter than hell and no shade to speak of.
After a tearful reunion, Kevin decided to stay with Kathy and we hugged and left the lot of them and continued off on our own.
The drive to the coast was pretty much of a blur with us getting a motel room for the night wherever, and whenever we were to pooped to continue the driving. We would invariably order a pizza and get some beer and get the critters situated and zone out on television that we, again invariably, had tuned to the disaster reports from New Orleans; we had become media junkies and disaster ghouls. We would sleep and wake up to the awful motel coffee service, get a bite and head on out again, day after day, through Texas, Arizona and up into California. In the back of my head I was dreading the drive through Los Angeles, having had that experience before and not liking it one bit.
We drove up the coastal route, along the beach communities, keeping to our motel, pizza, beer, coffee breakfast, driving routine, never stopping for very long; burning gas and rubber and the demons from my brain.
While I was in New Orleans, I would wake up in the morning and have to wrap my head around the disaster and being there; on the road, I would wake up and it would take me a moment to realize that I was not still in New Orleans. Debbie kept me going and took real care of our charges: Ginger and Rosie the canines, and Phil, Pepper and Bob the felines. For the most part we talked little and I’m sure that I wasn’t good company. Like I explain to people: I really, really needed a long drive to clear my head and so I drove and drove, my copilot and our crew of critters reaching the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, where we rested overnight to get up the energy to go through that most horrid of stretches of highway, the L.A. freeway. I think that I had tried to warn Debbie of the rigors that we were about to face, as it turns out neither one of us were fully prepared for that ride.
If you’ve never driven through Los Angeles in the years around 2005, you have missed the most nerve wracking, patience and driving ability trying experiences of a lifetime and I wish you well. We started out at day break and drove six lanes to four and back top six as fast as we could, mostly to keep from being over run by the other cars, trucks and busses that were hell bent for leather to get wherever they were going ahead of the person behind them and in front of them; it took us until 9:30 in the morning to get through L.A. and in the middle of all that, Phil the cat decided to lean on the power window switch and almost jetison himself; and if that weren’t enough, he and Pepper decided to kill eachother, in the car, on the freeway at eighty miles per hour. I was practically in a froth by the time we reached sane driving conditions and this hero stuff was wearing a bit thin, I don’t know how I knew it or what those around me thought of my demeanor, but I was holding all of my emotions in check for the last week and they needed out. I had rationally explained to myself that I needed to be the strong one, in charge, when I felt the weakest of the lot of us; I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that car with me driving if I were anyone else but me, and maybe not even then.
We stopped, I think that it was in Capistrano, for the night and then up to San Francisco where we had a safety net in place; however, we never did need to strain any of the relationships that I had up there. The Red Cross was set up in town and they got us (with pets) accommodations at an art deco motel on the beach, gave us meals as well as food stamps and bus passes and people were right friendly. The Red Cross had expected tens of thousands of refugees and got less than nine hundred, so we had almost too much attention lavished upon us with Social Security, FEMA and disaster money and volunteers galore, plus we had a brand new luxury size Buick to tool around the area with.
There is one moment that I will never forget; as we were driving into town we had the radio tuned to the public station and they were broadcasting a benefit for New Orleans musicians. We were just getting in, with the San Francisco skyline above us and feeling pretty good about being at the end of our trip and the song that they happen to play at that moment was: “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?” I think that we were crying so hard that I had to pull over because I could not see the road for the tears that we both were crying. We both literally had our long overdue breakdowns, in traffic, sobbing for our lost city. I guess that that kind of took the wind out of our sails and I believe that at that point we both knew without speaking that we could not but return home, no matter what San Francisco or any other place might show us in the form of hospitality. At that point we fully knew what it meant to be orphans of the storm.
So ends part six. That was our journey out of the hell and high water and it got to be only better and better from there until we returned back to New Orleans. Five weeks in California.
Oh, Kevin did make it to California, to his relatives, without Kathy.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
halloween in New Orleans 2010
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Lucky Stiff
Or
All Hallows Eve
Are you awake? Well, c’mon take a trip with me down the lazy Mississippi, the river that’s too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Let’s take Old Man River on down to that easy, sleepy, ne’er do well crescent city…New Orleans. Nowhere, in this country, will you find a city that is more likely to take any excuse or occasion and transform it into a celebration; and that’s what this missive is about.
First off: Our forbearers, in their infinite and ultimately misguided wisdom, transmuted pagan ritual days into religious holidays on a particular purpose and, I think, with the likes of us in mind. They figured that if the kids were going to be jazzing and jamming with the changing of the seasons, (and other natural occurrences) that they could capitalize on it by relating it to the church and to their infinite and ultimately misguided religion. In the course of that, they hoped to somehow rein us in. It is not totally a coincidence that Mardi Gras corresponds with spring plantings as well as Halloween the conclusion of harvest; the church will have us believe a connection to Easter and All Saints day; WELL, fat (Tuesday) chance, we know better. Consequently we celebrate these holidays with abandon. Both Carnival and Halloween call for costuming, consuming and canoodling; how pagan is that? “We need to fete the dearly departed saints and sinners…"THIS BUD'S FOR YOU!! Or…. It’s getting’ time to knock it off for forty days until good old whatshisname rises... "BREAK OUT THE BOOZE!!!" So it goes, and…
That being said, consider that there’s a certain fascination and fixation with death that is pervasive here. Our thing with death is also something that goes un-witnessed in other parts of this country; certainly not to the lengths that we go to in our near obsession. In fact, in New Orleans death is celebrated, revered and as we all know, easy to come by; it’s not uncommon for a spat to escalate into a homicide here, is it? We’ll cry on the way to the graveyard and we’ll dance on our way back; the brass band leads the way and we form a second line behind it. Visitors love to gawk at our cemeteries, we love to light candles on people and we read the obituaries religiously (pun intended). We pay little attention to dying; it’s death itself that intrigues us most. AND…
Compounding that, New Orleans is as welcoming and as friendly a city as you’ll find anywhere, consequently, it’s easy to make comrades here. Something as trivial as a gap in a generation or the diversity of a background never stands in the way of close bonds that allow the symbiosis of personal philosophies to come together like ticks on a hound.
And, until somebody pisses somebody else off, you’re pretty much good to go in the pals, peeps and buds department in any area of this city. However; leave it to me not to point out that there’s always an occasion that the best of us will cop an attitude over nothing and alienate a playmate, but what can you do? That’s the exception to the rule; c’est la vie, laissez faire and laissez le bon temps roulez. To make friends is to lose them, albeit briefly. C’est le guerre.
So what do we get when we mix up that metaphoric gumbo? Bone Shakers on Mardi Gras, black folks dressed as Indians singing “jockimo findo hondo in de mawnin”, vampires, devils, ghouls and demons dressed on Halloween, men dressed as sexy women and women dressed even sexier. We also get twenty-four hour drinking in the streets, red dress runs, swashbucklers, strip clubs, our own running of the bulls (where you get chased by a babe on roller skates with a bat) and the parading of hearses backed by blaring brass bands; all in the thinly disguised demeanor of danger, debauchery and death. Boy, aint we sumthin’?
Our fascination with death comes in different forms: the death of a celebrity (i.e. Lena Horne), the death of an eccentric (i.e. Ruthie the Duck Girl), or of a celebrity and eccentric (i.e. Ernie K. Doe). You’ll read in the news a freak accident and be mesmerized, you’ll see on the telly a disaster that took innocents and your eyes will widen. You’ll hear of animals thoughtlessly killed and become tearily outraged. A death in the family, of a friend and add to that the deaths of strangers, soldiers or someone that you just see in the newspaper and you pretty much have it. A real Spoon River Anthology.
I believe that this addiction to death has to do with the realization that our own time is divided between the days that we’ve had and the days that we have left: our personal mortality. It’s something that we can do nothing about, weaving a spell of finality toward a mirror at the end of the road. If you live long enough, you get old; if you stay old long enough… you die. AND as your days pass you will see people that you know, people that are your friends and people that you are related to… pass The O-bits will call the process “entering into eternal peace or rest, called home, transitioned or departed this life”. Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein quips succinctly: “What difference does it make? Dead. Is. Dead!!”
The difference is that perhaps at some point you’ll realize that you are not dead…yet, and death will become a personal issue; and so will your life. Death will become something that you will not be able to escape or avoid. Life will be something that you think about and cherish. At some point when you hear someone say that they are blessed by being alive another day, your heart will answer ”I know that’s right!”.
And perhaps you will start living like you mean it, like you want to make it last or make it matter. Not that it will make much of a difference.
But, in conclusion, when you costume up this, or any other, season, remember that life is short, fun is the best way of having a good time, loving is as natural as breathing and courtesy is contagious.
And when I die you better second line!
By
Phil LaMancusa
Lucky Stiff
Or
All Hallows Eve
Are you awake? Well, c’mon take a trip with me down the lazy Mississippi, the river that’s too thick to drink and too thin to plow. Let’s take Old Man River on down to that easy, sleepy, ne’er do well crescent city…New Orleans. Nowhere, in this country, will you find a city that is more likely to take any excuse or occasion and transform it into a celebration; and that’s what this missive is about.
First off: Our forbearers, in their infinite and ultimately misguided wisdom, transmuted pagan ritual days into religious holidays on a particular purpose and, I think, with the likes of us in mind. They figured that if the kids were going to be jazzing and jamming with the changing of the seasons, (and other natural occurrences) that they could capitalize on it by relating it to the church and to their infinite and ultimately misguided religion. In the course of that, they hoped to somehow rein us in. It is not totally a coincidence that Mardi Gras corresponds with spring plantings as well as Halloween the conclusion of harvest; the church will have us believe a connection to Easter and All Saints day; WELL, fat (Tuesday) chance, we know better. Consequently we celebrate these holidays with abandon. Both Carnival and Halloween call for costuming, consuming and canoodling; how pagan is that? “We need to fete the dearly departed saints and sinners…"THIS BUD'S FOR YOU!! Or…. It’s getting’ time to knock it off for forty days until good old whatshisname rises... "BREAK OUT THE BOOZE!!!" So it goes, and…
That being said, consider that there’s a certain fascination and fixation with death that is pervasive here. Our thing with death is also something that goes un-witnessed in other parts of this country; certainly not to the lengths that we go to in our near obsession. In fact, in New Orleans death is celebrated, revered and as we all know, easy to come by; it’s not uncommon for a spat to escalate into a homicide here, is it? We’ll cry on the way to the graveyard and we’ll dance on our way back; the brass band leads the way and we form a second line behind it. Visitors love to gawk at our cemeteries, we love to light candles on people and we read the obituaries religiously (pun intended). We pay little attention to dying; it’s death itself that intrigues us most. AND…
Compounding that, New Orleans is as welcoming and as friendly a city as you’ll find anywhere, consequently, it’s easy to make comrades here. Something as trivial as a gap in a generation or the diversity of a background never stands in the way of close bonds that allow the symbiosis of personal philosophies to come together like ticks on a hound.
And, until somebody pisses somebody else off, you’re pretty much good to go in the pals, peeps and buds department in any area of this city. However; leave it to me not to point out that there’s always an occasion that the best of us will cop an attitude over nothing and alienate a playmate, but what can you do? That’s the exception to the rule; c’est la vie, laissez faire and laissez le bon temps roulez. To make friends is to lose them, albeit briefly. C’est le guerre.
So what do we get when we mix up that metaphoric gumbo? Bone Shakers on Mardi Gras, black folks dressed as Indians singing “jockimo findo hondo in de mawnin”, vampires, devils, ghouls and demons dressed on Halloween, men dressed as sexy women and women dressed even sexier. We also get twenty-four hour drinking in the streets, red dress runs, swashbucklers, strip clubs, our own running of the bulls (where you get chased by a babe on roller skates with a bat) and the parading of hearses backed by blaring brass bands; all in the thinly disguised demeanor of danger, debauchery and death. Boy, aint we sumthin’?
Our fascination with death comes in different forms: the death of a celebrity (i.e. Lena Horne), the death of an eccentric (i.e. Ruthie the Duck Girl), or of a celebrity and eccentric (i.e. Ernie K. Doe). You’ll read in the news a freak accident and be mesmerized, you’ll see on the telly a disaster that took innocents and your eyes will widen. You’ll hear of animals thoughtlessly killed and become tearily outraged. A death in the family, of a friend and add to that the deaths of strangers, soldiers or someone that you just see in the newspaper and you pretty much have it. A real Spoon River Anthology.
I believe that this addiction to death has to do with the realization that our own time is divided between the days that we’ve had and the days that we have left: our personal mortality. It’s something that we can do nothing about, weaving a spell of finality toward a mirror at the end of the road. If you live long enough, you get old; if you stay old long enough… you die. AND as your days pass you will see people that you know, people that are your friends and people that you are related to… pass The O-bits will call the process “entering into eternal peace or rest, called home, transitioned or departed this life”. Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein quips succinctly: “What difference does it make? Dead. Is. Dead!!”
The difference is that perhaps at some point you’ll realize that you are not dead…yet, and death will become a personal issue; and so will your life. Death will become something that you will not be able to escape or avoid. Life will be something that you think about and cherish. At some point when you hear someone say that they are blessed by being alive another day, your heart will answer ”I know that’s right!”.
And perhaps you will start living like you mean it, like you want to make it last or make it matter. Not that it will make much of a difference.
But, in conclusion, when you costume up this, or any other, season, remember that life is short, fun is the best way of having a good time, loving is as natural as breathing and courtesy is contagious.
And when I die you better second line!
Friday, July 9, 2010
See you in September
I was going to publish Katrina Fifth Anniversary part 2 but hey, isn't there enough bad stuff out there? So I wrote something a little lighter than storms and seas and sludge and fumes. Bless me, Father for I have sinned.
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
From The Heart
Or
Game over
Okay, enough of this gloom and doom; enough, enough, I say! If you don’t have anything light and airy to say… put it on a blog (I did) and away from the public domain and sensitive eyes.
I know, let’s give presents! What better time of year to give gifts than this; a time of year that nobody gives gifts, unless it’s your birthday? What better time of year to celebrate than the time of year when we still haven’t been flooded or crudded off the planet? Let’s celebrate that we still are living in New Orleans, unless of course, we are not.
Five years ago I wrote the September article that got flooded out of print, and, oh boy, aren’t you glad that that hasn’t happened this year?
So now, I humbly suggest that we all turn to our partners and give gifts that coincide with our anniversaries together. One, two, three, four and more; c’mon work with me here, chose your side of the relationship, back off ten paces and give from the heart. This ought to be fun, right? Here are some suggestions.
After Six months: Surprise them with a roll of duct tape and a bottle of Nyquil; and a card that says “use your imagination, Dear”.
First year: a slab of ribs is an excellent gift because if they don’t know what to do with them then, there is no use going any further in the relationship, is there?
Second year: give your Honey a pet. You should always wait until the second year to adopt a critter. Why? Because the first year should be about you and yourselves. This applies only to the couple who didn’t already have pets upon the initial canoodling and/or cohabbing; in that case then, just bring something alive home and work it out, or you are ready and able to skip the second year gifts and go directly to:
Third year: In the third year (and NOT before) it should be time to talk about the ‘C’ word (no, not that ‘C’ word). The “C” word that I’m talking about here is CHILDREN!
Yeah, you’ve been shakin’ the covers long enough to now discuss the possibility of increasing your personal population; and believe you me, I wouldn’t blame you for deciding not to have any part of procreation. I have a theory that all young things (birds, cats, puppies, chirren) are cute for the sole reason that if they weren’t just darling, there would be more drownings around here than on the Titanic; whatever YOUR perspective, it’s time for the talk.
Fifth year: yes, after you make it the first three years you can skip to the big numbers (five, ten, eleven, fifteen etc.). After all, if you make it past the ribs, the cat and the kid talk… Plus, the fourth year isn’t all that anyway, is it? On the fourth it’s a quiet dinner, asleep by nine, you know who you are.
So, on the fifth year give something big, like say, a hundred square feet of sod, full camping gear and a reservation for a week in Okefenokee or a country turkey roaster (a broomstick, a steel garbage can, fifty pounds of charcoal and a quart of gasoline). Onward.
Year Seven: the seventh year is a tricky one and you’re apt to opt for separate vacations and that would not be a bad thing; after all, how can you miss them if they won’t go away? But better yet, a vacation to a place that neither one wants to go is just the ticket to test your already testy relationship. I recommend shared accommodations at a fat farm, a visit to an insect infested ashram (with no electricity) or two weeks at Betty Ford’s.
Tenth Year: are you still here? Well shucks, here’s a couple of suggestions just to keep things lively; renovate your house orrrrr… go into business together! See, thus far y’all get to go your separate ways for a portion of each day: your jobs, shopping, sporting events and/or quilting bees. Now’s the time to take the plunge and either be at each other’s sides and throats for a really large percentage of each and every day, or put up with contractors, electricians and third world laborers, twenty-four seven, just for kicks and grins. Take my word for it, trips to Home Depot three or four times a week and wondering how you’re going to pay for it all or spending endless hours talking shop and wondering how you’re going to pay for everything are exactly the situations that will make or break a couple’s mettle and cohesiveness. Tenth year… push the envelope; after ten it’s all clear sailing or downhill, one or the other.
Fifteen years: how old are you now and would anybody else want you? Well, if you are still with the same person for fifteen years then now it’s time to do big things for eachother. I call this ‘the year of daring’. After fifteen years, give eachother the gifts of new and challenging things to do, like a Bucket List but younger. Listen, if you’ve made it with another human being for this long, you already know everything about them that they are going to share with another human being; you know the dirty laundry, you’ve accepted the baggage and you are aware of the skeletons in the closets; now’s the time for mid-life crisis gifts: dueling pistols, an electric guitar, tango lessons, a course in Swahili or a cooking class on how to cook ribs. See, at this point it is love or ignorance; and either way, you’ve proven to all your friends, and anyone else that cares to view you, that it is possible to maintain a friendship for a long period of time or that the both of you are full blown bat shit crazy and have found solace in each other’s company mostly because no one else could possibly put up with either one of you.
Better yet, now is the time, yes, right now is the time to turn to that person that you are betting your life and future on and tell them how worthwhile they have made your very valuable time. It’s either that or what?
See you in October….. I hope.
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
From The Heart
Or
Game over
Okay, enough of this gloom and doom; enough, enough, I say! If you don’t have anything light and airy to say… put it on a blog (I did) and away from the public domain and sensitive eyes.
I know, let’s give presents! What better time of year to give gifts than this; a time of year that nobody gives gifts, unless it’s your birthday? What better time of year to celebrate than the time of year when we still haven’t been flooded or crudded off the planet? Let’s celebrate that we still are living in New Orleans, unless of course, we are not.
Five years ago I wrote the September article that got flooded out of print, and, oh boy, aren’t you glad that that hasn’t happened this year?
So now, I humbly suggest that we all turn to our partners and give gifts that coincide with our anniversaries together. One, two, three, four and more; c’mon work with me here, chose your side of the relationship, back off ten paces and give from the heart. This ought to be fun, right? Here are some suggestions.
After Six months: Surprise them with a roll of duct tape and a bottle of Nyquil; and a card that says “use your imagination, Dear”.
First year: a slab of ribs is an excellent gift because if they don’t know what to do with them then, there is no use going any further in the relationship, is there?
Second year: give your Honey a pet. You should always wait until the second year to adopt a critter. Why? Because the first year should be about you and yourselves. This applies only to the couple who didn’t already have pets upon the initial canoodling and/or cohabbing; in that case then, just bring something alive home and work it out, or you are ready and able to skip the second year gifts and go directly to:
Third year: In the third year (and NOT before) it should be time to talk about the ‘C’ word (no, not that ‘C’ word). The “C” word that I’m talking about here is CHILDREN!
Yeah, you’ve been shakin’ the covers long enough to now discuss the possibility of increasing your personal population; and believe you me, I wouldn’t blame you for deciding not to have any part of procreation. I have a theory that all young things (birds, cats, puppies, chirren) are cute for the sole reason that if they weren’t just darling, there would be more drownings around here than on the Titanic; whatever YOUR perspective, it’s time for the talk.
Fifth year: yes, after you make it the first three years you can skip to the big numbers (five, ten, eleven, fifteen etc.). After all, if you make it past the ribs, the cat and the kid talk… Plus, the fourth year isn’t all that anyway, is it? On the fourth it’s a quiet dinner, asleep by nine, you know who you are.
So, on the fifth year give something big, like say, a hundred square feet of sod, full camping gear and a reservation for a week in Okefenokee or a country turkey roaster (a broomstick, a steel garbage can, fifty pounds of charcoal and a quart of gasoline). Onward.
Year Seven: the seventh year is a tricky one and you’re apt to opt for separate vacations and that would not be a bad thing; after all, how can you miss them if they won’t go away? But better yet, a vacation to a place that neither one wants to go is just the ticket to test your already testy relationship. I recommend shared accommodations at a fat farm, a visit to an insect infested ashram (with no electricity) or two weeks at Betty Ford’s.
Tenth Year: are you still here? Well shucks, here’s a couple of suggestions just to keep things lively; renovate your house orrrrr… go into business together! See, thus far y’all get to go your separate ways for a portion of each day: your jobs, shopping, sporting events and/or quilting bees. Now’s the time to take the plunge and either be at each other’s sides and throats for a really large percentage of each and every day, or put up with contractors, electricians and third world laborers, twenty-four seven, just for kicks and grins. Take my word for it, trips to Home Depot three or four times a week and wondering how you’re going to pay for it all or spending endless hours talking shop and wondering how you’re going to pay for everything are exactly the situations that will make or break a couple’s mettle and cohesiveness. Tenth year… push the envelope; after ten it’s all clear sailing or downhill, one or the other.
Fifteen years: how old are you now and would anybody else want you? Well, if you are still with the same person for fifteen years then now it’s time to do big things for eachother. I call this ‘the year of daring’. After fifteen years, give eachother the gifts of new and challenging things to do, like a Bucket List but younger. Listen, if you’ve made it with another human being for this long, you already know everything about them that they are going to share with another human being; you know the dirty laundry, you’ve accepted the baggage and you are aware of the skeletons in the closets; now’s the time for mid-life crisis gifts: dueling pistols, an electric guitar, tango lessons, a course in Swahili or a cooking class on how to cook ribs. See, at this point it is love or ignorance; and either way, you’ve proven to all your friends, and anyone else that cares to view you, that it is possible to maintain a friendship for a long period of time or that the both of you are full blown bat shit crazy and have found solace in each other’s company mostly because no one else could possibly put up with either one of you.
Better yet, now is the time, yes, right now is the time to turn to that person that you are betting your life and future on and tell them how worthwhile they have made your very valuable time. It’s either that or what?
See you in October….. I hope.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Oil Spill in the Gulf part 3
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Not My Problem
Or
Let Them Drink Oil
Okay, here we are on day seventy-five of the awful, awful miscarriage of oil in the Gulf and now the estimates are up to 80,000 barrels a day.
Remember last oil blog’s arithmetic lesson? Well, here’s another lesson: in today’s newspaper it was revealed that thus far BP has set 238,000 barrels of oil on fire. The quote was “Controlled burns have collectively removed…”. That is to say, if you took that quart of oil that you put in your car’s engine poured it in your filled bathtub and set it on fire, here comes the math part (ready?), you would need to do that 533,120 times a day to keep up with them. You can trust me on this, or you can divide the number of barrels thus burned (238,000) by the number of days (75), multiply by the number of gallons per barrel (42) and then multiply by the number of quarts there are in a gallon (4). Viola! Or Voila! Or whatever; that’s a lot of friggin’ oil. Wouldn’t you say?
Environmentalists worry about the hazards the plumes of noxious smoke may have on wildlife. What are the chances? “The fires burn 2 to 3 millimeters of oil every sixty seconds, rising as high as 100 feet and generating massive plumes of smoke”. Environmental groups are suing BP because they have found that the fires are burning sea turtles alive in the process.
So, now we have the spill, the chemical dispersants AND the fires; I’m telling you out there that we sure are having a time way down yonder in New Orleans. Oil is already in the mouth of the Mississippi River, 100 miles away. They’re predicting oil on Miami’s beaches and into the Florida Keyes by mid August and who knows how many storms we’ll have by then. The spill is now the size of the state of New Jersey. Break out the flags and sparklers, it’s July 4th weekend and business in the French Quarter could be worse, but I cannot imagine how. At least we’re eating regularly, but not the local seafood..
So, who’s fault is this anyway? This whole disastrous tragedy? Hmmm. Let’s start by taking into consideration that our dependency on oil and petroleum based products is the culprit. Let’s see. Plastic containers, Styrofoam containers and ‘peanuts’ for packing, my after shave lotion bottle, disposable razors, sanitizer bottles, plastic cups, ball point pens, cheap flashlights, colored markers, the keyboard that I’m typing on, the computer parts as well as printer (and ink cartridges), packing tape, spice jars, soda bottles and mailing envelopes and I haven’t even gotten to my car’s usage and consumption yet. My credit cards and identification are made of plastic, foods that I buy are packed in plastic and I’m sent from the store with my purchases in plastic bags. In New Orleans, where it’s illegal to carry alcoholic beverages in the streets in glass or metal cans, we have plastic ‘go cups’, drink containers shaped like glasses and even plastic beer bottles. AND WE HAVE NO RECYCLING!!!!!
We had an old air conditioner at home that just was not doing it’s job efficiently; when we called around to have it serviced, we were told that it was cheaper to buy a new one and that, anyway, no one worked on residential units any longer. I’m talking about a big steel, electricity-eating thing that was an example of machinery the likes that you will not see again. Our option was to swelter or purchase new. We purchased and indeed the new unit was not expensive (relatively speaking) and when it came time to install the option was to send the old unit to the landfill. The new unit is made of… guess. The unit was not manufactured in this country.
BP is not the bad guy… or are they? Political conservatives would have us believe that if the political liberals had not objected to drilling on land or in shallow water (it obscures the views) that BP would not have been FORCED to drill in deep water. As a student of capitalism I would say that profit oriented businesses (such as BP) would drill on the moon if they thought that they could make a buck and that brings up the theory that BP WANTS to keep the well flowing so that they would have the first crack at harvesting the well’s output with their ‘relief drillings’. What, after all, would happen if the well was closed for well and good? Perhaps a moratorium on the drilling site? How do we know? We don’t know NOTHING (double negative intended) and nothing is clear except that the oil keeps coming out of the well.
Is BP the only miscreant? The only scoundrel? The only reprobate? The only villain? The only criminal? Not on your tintype.
Shell Oil in Nigeria has the populace wading in oil spills, their environment in ruins, their economy nonexistent, their natural resources gone. No fishing and very little agriculture as the result of oil spills the size of the Gulf that are a regular occurrence on their land. Protesters have been beaten and murdered.
Does a poor citizen give a flip about the white man’s oil spill except where it impacts their employment or food sources? As a rural disenfranchised American in northern Mississippi, do I care about a sea turtle or my food stamps? If I get my seafood from the Missouri River do I really care about gulf shrimp?
Do investors put their money behind those that would do good or behind those that will give them the highest return on their investment no matter what their products produce or the effect that that company, in producing that product, has on the environment that we all collectively live in? Would a sane and rational person take a job with a company based on its integrity or it’s pay scale? Therein lies the rub.
Does a working stiff think about making plowshares from oil shares? Do the oil company executives give a flip if a well blows up, workers die and the environment is fouled past their lifetimes as long as it does not affect their bottom line and income? Do you want to bet that behind every great fortune that there is not a great crime perpetrated by great criminals, and in the case of a great oil spill; as Dr. John so rightly pointed out, are not the criminals then put in charge of the crime scene?
Make no mistake that poor people are impacted; they work the rigs, they fish the gulf, they work for the oil company that allows the spill to continue BUT they are also the one who get to clean up the gobs of crude oil that washes up on our shores and can turn a living doing that, wearing plastic suits. Or use their fishing boat to skim oil from their once fished waters using expensive fuel. Or wait in line for handouts from relief groups, in their cars, burning gasoline. As Pogo so succinctly put it in 1974 “we have met the enemy and he is us”.
By
Phil LaMancusa
Not My Problem
Or
Let Them Drink Oil
Okay, here we are on day seventy-five of the awful, awful miscarriage of oil in the Gulf and now the estimates are up to 80,000 barrels a day.
Remember last oil blog’s arithmetic lesson? Well, here’s another lesson: in today’s newspaper it was revealed that thus far BP has set 238,000 barrels of oil on fire. The quote was “Controlled burns have collectively removed…”. That is to say, if you took that quart of oil that you put in your car’s engine poured it in your filled bathtub and set it on fire, here comes the math part (ready?), you would need to do that 533,120 times a day to keep up with them. You can trust me on this, or you can divide the number of barrels thus burned (238,000) by the number of days (75), multiply by the number of gallons per barrel (42) and then multiply by the number of quarts there are in a gallon (4). Viola! Or Voila! Or whatever; that’s a lot of friggin’ oil. Wouldn’t you say?
Environmentalists worry about the hazards the plumes of noxious smoke may have on wildlife. What are the chances? “The fires burn 2 to 3 millimeters of oil every sixty seconds, rising as high as 100 feet and generating massive plumes of smoke”. Environmental groups are suing BP because they have found that the fires are burning sea turtles alive in the process.
So, now we have the spill, the chemical dispersants AND the fires; I’m telling you out there that we sure are having a time way down yonder in New Orleans. Oil is already in the mouth of the Mississippi River, 100 miles away. They’re predicting oil on Miami’s beaches and into the Florida Keyes by mid August and who knows how many storms we’ll have by then. The spill is now the size of the state of New Jersey. Break out the flags and sparklers, it’s July 4th weekend and business in the French Quarter could be worse, but I cannot imagine how. At least we’re eating regularly, but not the local seafood..
So, who’s fault is this anyway? This whole disastrous tragedy? Hmmm. Let’s start by taking into consideration that our dependency on oil and petroleum based products is the culprit. Let’s see. Plastic containers, Styrofoam containers and ‘peanuts’ for packing, my after shave lotion bottle, disposable razors, sanitizer bottles, plastic cups, ball point pens, cheap flashlights, colored markers, the keyboard that I’m typing on, the computer parts as well as printer (and ink cartridges), packing tape, spice jars, soda bottles and mailing envelopes and I haven’t even gotten to my car’s usage and consumption yet. My credit cards and identification are made of plastic, foods that I buy are packed in plastic and I’m sent from the store with my purchases in plastic bags. In New Orleans, where it’s illegal to carry alcoholic beverages in the streets in glass or metal cans, we have plastic ‘go cups’, drink containers shaped like glasses and even plastic beer bottles. AND WE HAVE NO RECYCLING!!!!!
We had an old air conditioner at home that just was not doing it’s job efficiently; when we called around to have it serviced, we were told that it was cheaper to buy a new one and that, anyway, no one worked on residential units any longer. I’m talking about a big steel, electricity-eating thing that was an example of machinery the likes that you will not see again. Our option was to swelter or purchase new. We purchased and indeed the new unit was not expensive (relatively speaking) and when it came time to install the option was to send the old unit to the landfill. The new unit is made of… guess. The unit was not manufactured in this country.
BP is not the bad guy… or are they? Political conservatives would have us believe that if the political liberals had not objected to drilling on land or in shallow water (it obscures the views) that BP would not have been FORCED to drill in deep water. As a student of capitalism I would say that profit oriented businesses (such as BP) would drill on the moon if they thought that they could make a buck and that brings up the theory that BP WANTS to keep the well flowing so that they would have the first crack at harvesting the well’s output with their ‘relief drillings’. What, after all, would happen if the well was closed for well and good? Perhaps a moratorium on the drilling site? How do we know? We don’t know NOTHING (double negative intended) and nothing is clear except that the oil keeps coming out of the well.
Is BP the only miscreant? The only scoundrel? The only reprobate? The only villain? The only criminal? Not on your tintype.
Shell Oil in Nigeria has the populace wading in oil spills, their environment in ruins, their economy nonexistent, their natural resources gone. No fishing and very little agriculture as the result of oil spills the size of the Gulf that are a regular occurrence on their land. Protesters have been beaten and murdered.
Does a poor citizen give a flip about the white man’s oil spill except where it impacts their employment or food sources? As a rural disenfranchised American in northern Mississippi, do I care about a sea turtle or my food stamps? If I get my seafood from the Missouri River do I really care about gulf shrimp?
Do investors put their money behind those that would do good or behind those that will give them the highest return on their investment no matter what their products produce or the effect that that company, in producing that product, has on the environment that we all collectively live in? Would a sane and rational person take a job with a company based on its integrity or it’s pay scale? Therein lies the rub.
Does a working stiff think about making plowshares from oil shares? Do the oil company executives give a flip if a well blows up, workers die and the environment is fouled past their lifetimes as long as it does not affect their bottom line and income? Do you want to bet that behind every great fortune that there is not a great crime perpetrated by great criminals, and in the case of a great oil spill; as Dr. John so rightly pointed out, are not the criminals then put in charge of the crime scene?
Make no mistake that poor people are impacted; they work the rigs, they fish the gulf, they work for the oil company that allows the spill to continue BUT they are also the one who get to clean up the gobs of crude oil that washes up on our shores and can turn a living doing that, wearing plastic suits. Or use their fishing boat to skim oil from their once fished waters using expensive fuel. Or wait in line for handouts from relief groups, in their cars, burning gasoline. As Pogo so succinctly put it in 1974 “we have met the enemy and he is us”.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Hurricane Katrina Fifth Anniversary part 5
Po Boy Views
By
Phil
LaMancusa
Beethoven’s Fifth
Or
Away We Go
I reckon that it’s only fitting that I squeeze a fifth installment out of this subject; after all, I’m sitting in the shop that we opened five years ago without the benefit of customers or cash, just me and my computer.
Business in The Big Easy is anything but easy; Summertime and the livin’ is anything but easy, there are no fish jumpin’ unless they’re already heavily oiled.
After the ‘event’, naturally business was bad enough, prospects were dim enough and economic hopes were not springing eternal enough so, the light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished. We came back to more than half of businesses closed and moved or moving away. The city was a shadow of its former shadow and rather than picking up the pieces and moving on a lot of folks just pulled up their pants and moved out. It didn’t help that landlords were doubling rents and in some cases people came back to find their belongings on the street; FEMA worker’s rent money was being planted in town and the landlords were eager to harvest. The bars and restaurants that were able to open quickly enough did very, very well. When I called from our exile to see about re-employment the question that I had was about whether the beer trucks were delivering; when I was assured that they were, I knew that I could come home and that the city’s recovery was a possibility.
Yes, we did make it out of New Orleans after the storm and flood, albeit six days afterwards, and we left like the proverbial bats out of hell. Literally.
On that Saturday morning after Kevin had it settled in his mind that he could leave his three dogs with a friend that was determined to stay here and after Kevin gave me the keys to the car, Debbie, he and I set off to see if the cars actually existed and whether it was able to be driven as an escape vehicle.
We reached the garage where the gates had been left unlocked and on the first four levels we saw cars that had been vandalized. At the fifth level with Debbie waving and yelling that we were not looters to unseen forces we found some cars left intact and among them was the 2005 Corolla which opened with the keys that Kevin had provided, the engine started right up and the gas tank read full. Getting the car out of there was going to be an ordeal of different magnitude, the street was littered with debris and the water was calf deep all the way to the Canal St. median.
We walked back to Canal St. thinking possibly that we could push the car through the water if worse came to worser and let the engine dry off enough to eventually start it.
I had noticed a water line on the walls of the buildings higher than the level of the standing level and I was assuming that the water was in fact receding; we were told that the level of the water rose and fell with the tide in the lake, ‘swell’, I said, ‘all we have to do is wait for low tide’. A policeman informed us that this was, in fact, ‘low tide’.
We went back to the car and plan b. The pushing plan. I drove the car down to the first level and to the sidewalk wondering if I could just drive the sidewalks where it was more shallow. Too narrow. I put the car into drive and took my foot off the gas. I racked my brain for someone reliable to send up prayers to.
As we all know, the depth of a street is lower by the curb and higher in the center so that rainwater might travel from the street to the drains. The car, with me at the wheel and Kevin and Debbie scooting debris out of the way ( to prevent tire punctures) dipped into the street up to the grill and my heart sank from my chest to my stomach and I felt the need to void my bladder. With still my foot off the gas petal and the car in gear and moving on impulse power alone, she came out of the water and kept on going, like a frigging ship of state at sea. Tears came to my eyes; and ever the pessimist, I allowed the car to roll, on its own, to the middle of the street where it sloshed through water that was higher than the hubcaps, up to Canal St. onto the median where Kevin and Debbie got in and we drove to Royal St. and up Royal, the wrong way, to Conti where we let Kev out so that he could pack and then up to Dauphine where we were already set to get going. My heart had re-inhabited my chest and was singing the Ode To Joy.
We stashed the car behind the locked driveway fence to pack the trunk; the day before we had been warned by police not to be on our bicycles because of jackings taking place aimed at anything with wheels for transportation out of town, and we were taking no chances. Wouldn’t you know it that at that precise moment the National Guard finally made it into our neck of the woods.
Animals are easy to pack, all seven of them, critter food was ready as were our belongings and we were wearing the traveling clothes with the money sewn into the waistbands; we bid adieu to our sanctuary within twenty minutes, picked Kev up and headed down Decatur towards the bridge to freedom with the National Guard waving us toward our destination which was anywhere but where we were. It was then that I knew that if we had been young and black we might not have had such an easy way out. On the way out we saw the body bags.
We were headed towards Shreveport where the safe house had been set up for us by Gallivan and where we would reunite him with his dog; I was following any road sign the said that we were headed north and west. We were dirty, we were weary, we were motley. We were crowded. We were ecstatic. Kevin wanted a Carl’s Jr. burger, Debbie wanted to use a lavatory. We stopped at a filling station and Kevin got something in a large cup that had ice in it, he had the smile of a child as he enjoyed ice for the first time in almost a week. Debbie took a long time in the rest room and I was beginning to worry until she emerged with the explanation that she had been mesmerized by the flushing and re-flushing of the toilet, and that she had washed and rewashed her hands just to feel the running water.
We eventually, that night, made our destination, which was only the first leg of our exile that took us all the way to San Francisco; on the way we had many more adventures that some day over a couple of cold ones, if you get me in the mood, I’ll relate. Right now, I’m exhausted just finishing this thus far… say goodnight, Gracie.
ANYBODY OUT THERE???
By
Phil
LaMancusa
Beethoven’s Fifth
Or
Away We Go
I reckon that it’s only fitting that I squeeze a fifth installment out of this subject; after all, I’m sitting in the shop that we opened five years ago without the benefit of customers or cash, just me and my computer.
Business in The Big Easy is anything but easy; Summertime and the livin’ is anything but easy, there are no fish jumpin’ unless they’re already heavily oiled.
After the ‘event’, naturally business was bad enough, prospects were dim enough and economic hopes were not springing eternal enough so, the light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished. We came back to more than half of businesses closed and moved or moving away. The city was a shadow of its former shadow and rather than picking up the pieces and moving on a lot of folks just pulled up their pants and moved out. It didn’t help that landlords were doubling rents and in some cases people came back to find their belongings on the street; FEMA worker’s rent money was being planted in town and the landlords were eager to harvest. The bars and restaurants that were able to open quickly enough did very, very well. When I called from our exile to see about re-employment the question that I had was about whether the beer trucks were delivering; when I was assured that they were, I knew that I could come home and that the city’s recovery was a possibility.
Yes, we did make it out of New Orleans after the storm and flood, albeit six days afterwards, and we left like the proverbial bats out of hell. Literally.
On that Saturday morning after Kevin had it settled in his mind that he could leave his three dogs with a friend that was determined to stay here and after Kevin gave me the keys to the car, Debbie, he and I set off to see if the cars actually existed and whether it was able to be driven as an escape vehicle.
We reached the garage where the gates had been left unlocked and on the first four levels we saw cars that had been vandalized. At the fifth level with Debbie waving and yelling that we were not looters to unseen forces we found some cars left intact and among them was the 2005 Corolla which opened with the keys that Kevin had provided, the engine started right up and the gas tank read full. Getting the car out of there was going to be an ordeal of different magnitude, the street was littered with debris and the water was calf deep all the way to the Canal St. median.
We walked back to Canal St. thinking possibly that we could push the car through the water if worse came to worser and let the engine dry off enough to eventually start it.
I had noticed a water line on the walls of the buildings higher than the level of the standing level and I was assuming that the water was in fact receding; we were told that the level of the water rose and fell with the tide in the lake, ‘swell’, I said, ‘all we have to do is wait for low tide’. A policeman informed us that this was, in fact, ‘low tide’.
We went back to the car and plan b. The pushing plan. I drove the car down to the first level and to the sidewalk wondering if I could just drive the sidewalks where it was more shallow. Too narrow. I put the car into drive and took my foot off the gas. I racked my brain for someone reliable to send up prayers to.
As we all know, the depth of a street is lower by the curb and higher in the center so that rainwater might travel from the street to the drains. The car, with me at the wheel and Kevin and Debbie scooting debris out of the way ( to prevent tire punctures) dipped into the street up to the grill and my heart sank from my chest to my stomach and I felt the need to void my bladder. With still my foot off the gas petal and the car in gear and moving on impulse power alone, she came out of the water and kept on going, like a frigging ship of state at sea. Tears came to my eyes; and ever the pessimist, I allowed the car to roll, on its own, to the middle of the street where it sloshed through water that was higher than the hubcaps, up to Canal St. onto the median where Kevin and Debbie got in and we drove to Royal St. and up Royal, the wrong way, to Conti where we let Kev out so that he could pack and then up to Dauphine where we were already set to get going. My heart had re-inhabited my chest and was singing the Ode To Joy.
We stashed the car behind the locked driveway fence to pack the trunk; the day before we had been warned by police not to be on our bicycles because of jackings taking place aimed at anything with wheels for transportation out of town, and we were taking no chances. Wouldn’t you know it that at that precise moment the National Guard finally made it into our neck of the woods.
Animals are easy to pack, all seven of them, critter food was ready as were our belongings and we were wearing the traveling clothes with the money sewn into the waistbands; we bid adieu to our sanctuary within twenty minutes, picked Kev up and headed down Decatur towards the bridge to freedom with the National Guard waving us toward our destination which was anywhere but where we were. It was then that I knew that if we had been young and black we might not have had such an easy way out. On the way out we saw the body bags.
We were headed towards Shreveport where the safe house had been set up for us by Gallivan and where we would reunite him with his dog; I was following any road sign the said that we were headed north and west. We were dirty, we were weary, we were motley. We were crowded. We were ecstatic. Kevin wanted a Carl’s Jr. burger, Debbie wanted to use a lavatory. We stopped at a filling station and Kevin got something in a large cup that had ice in it, he had the smile of a child as he enjoyed ice for the first time in almost a week. Debbie took a long time in the rest room and I was beginning to worry until she emerged with the explanation that she had been mesmerized by the flushing and re-flushing of the toilet, and that she had washed and rewashed her hands just to feel the running water.
We eventually, that night, made our destination, which was only the first leg of our exile that took us all the way to San Francisco; on the way we had many more adventures that some day over a couple of cold ones, if you get me in the mood, I’ll relate. Right now, I’m exhausted just finishing this thus far… say goodnight, Gracie.
ANYBODY OUT THERE???
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