Katrina 15 years

 

Po-Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

Katrina Fifteen Years

            6:10 A.M. Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slams into the Southeastern gulf coast as a category 3, 4, or 5 storm (depending on your sources) with winds of 127 miles an hour. New Orleans, taking only the outer bands, was still hit hard; by that afternoon 20% of the city was flooded. By August 30^th 80% of the city was under water. By September 1^st, 55,000 people had sought shelter in the Super Dome and Convention Center having refused/unable to evacuate. Many were still in their homes, many of them dead. Over a million people fled after hearing the mandatory evacuation order 48 hours before. The last of the water was pumped out of the city on October 11^th, 43 days after the storm hit. We were, as General Russel L. Honore quipped when seeing the local, state and federal responses, “Stuck on stupid!”

            In the aftermath, our city was (almost) completely evacuated, troops went door to door looking for survivors and bodies; Debbie and I were in the French Quarter holed up at our apartment on St. Philip and Dauphine Street for six days before we saw any first responders and by that time we had finally found a way out of town. I aged six months in those six days. Very few remember or recall those days and those that do usually don’t want to talk about it.

            Here’s what I remember: the night before, we went bar hopping, playing kick the can in the street and wondering why that pizza delivery was taking so long. First bands start 1:15 A.M. A few hours later Debbie was dragging me and a mattress into the hallway to cower as what felt and sounded like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse enacting a no-knock warrant accompanied by chimneys imploding. A 50 year old cypress tree was bashing the house while conducting a concerto of small tornadoes in the ‘Wreak Havoc Overture’ through the neighborhood. Background music was provided by the Torrents of Rain Orchestra.

            In the morning (expecting to go for coffee and a NYT), electricity and water cut off, the streets are empty. The next day, the last neighbors on our block caravanned out. Somebody gives us their dog. Very quiet. Looting had started almost immediately, Cartier, Brooks Brother, Pottery Barn, convenience stores, Winn Dixie, anything that can be taken is taken for little or no apparent reason. One third of the police force drives out of town. Psychiatrists that can prescribe anti-depressants are gone and folks are off their meds. Charity Hospital is under siege by boat. We clean up debris like good citizens. The weather is hot and there is no air conditioning.

            Police loot Walmart for electronics, leaving the guns and ammunition that the store sells for civilian looters. Looters breaking into hardware stores steal bolt cutters, looters use bolt cutters to break into warehouses, stealing forklifts. Armed looters on forklifts off their meds. A kid steals a city bus and drives folks to Houston. The busses for evacuation high and dry but keys are under water.  Curfew imposed. Warm beer at Molly’s at the Market, solidarity and community updates. Cops put snipers on rooftops to discourage looters, Governor: “Shoot looters on sight.” Mayor hiding out in a hotel, George Bush does a flyover. Esplanade Avenue is impassable due to fallen trees and debris.

            Water in the street, petrochemical waste, medical waste, human waste, decaying animal waste. Explosions on the river Wednesday night. Rapes. A couple of corpses reported abandoned on streets. Folks drifting into town from lower nine. Animals not allowed in shelter, being turned loose, reports of dogs being shot to discourage ‘packing”. No ice, no refrigeration, no toilets, no bathing (no water). No lights at night besides gaslights. The kindness of strangers, food sharing, help with bolt cutters to free a chained dog. The Nelly Deli gives away supplies on credit. We now are caring for 4 dogs and 3 cats. Our house is known as ‘Dogpatch’.

            Radio reports ‘French Quarter looks like an island’, the ‘sliver by the river’ holds, all else under water. Animals coming out avoiding drowning, alligators, raccoons, snakes and rodents, seeking higher ground like people do. People rescued from rooftops only to find that there’s no way out of the city, people turned away at gunpoint from crossing into Algiers. Nita and Jeffery have their apartment taken away at gunpoint. Reports of trucks with bodies being dumped in the river, running gun battles. We’re holed up on the second floor, banging tin sheeting to discourage ‘visitors’.

            A radio report that thousands have been standing on the overpass for days waiting “where are they going to the bathroom?” one reporter asks, “They’re crowded together!” Looters set up a market in the Convention Center which was broken into by folks not wanting to go to the Superdome where that roof has blown partially off.

            A fire at Saks Fifth Avenue set by looters and a scramble for water to put it out. Police tell us to not bike ride because people are getting ‘bike-jacked’ for a way out of town. Food rotting in refrigerators and restaurants (it’s Labor Day weekend, people stocked up). Reports of a car to be had if we can get to it. Cemeteries flood and bodies rise to the surface.

We’re invited to a meeting at the Bourbon Orleans ballroom where the topic to be is the intentional flooding of the French Quarter to ease the outlying areas. Those left here transmit information and hearsay as they get it, some is rumor and some turn out to be uncomfortable truths.

Fifteen years later we veterans of Katrina find nothing about the coronavirus extraneous or dismissive; but still, ask any one of us and we’ll tell you that we’ve been through worse. Quit your bitching and put on a mask. As deadly as Covid-19 is, I wish Katrina had been this easy to deal with. 

Waggin' the dog

 

Po-Boy View

By

Phil LaMancusa

Parlay Vous

Or

Waggin’ the Dog

            I talked it over with my dog and I suggested that as soon as we can we should go to France. Together. She’s dubious and underwhelmed and I can see that I’ll have to sell this.

            One of the side bars of the voluntary-semi-nonmedical-stay-at-home self-quarantines, besides a lot of time on my hands, is my new found ability (and inclination) to converse with things around me, animate and in(animate). To the dishes in the sink: “What are you looking at?” To my Italian pepper plant: “Stop already, I have enough @#%$%^& peppers!” To my refrigerator: “That’s the LAST beer?” To my dog: “Hey Scout, wanna go to France?”

            Scout doesn’t know what a “France” is, so I explain. “We go to the airport, get on an airplane and fly for a while to where they eat different food, speak a different language and do different things”. “You mean like Fairhope Alabama?” She asks. “Kinda.” I say.

            “What’s an airplane?” “It’s like a bus that goes in the air like a bird”.  A very pregnant silence ensues.   Then: “Do I sit in a seat, like in the car?” “How do you feel about riding in another room on the plane with the suitcases?” “I don’t think I’d like that.” “Okay, I’ll ask the vet if she’ll get you an exemption, like as a ‘companion’ dog.” “Good. Is it a long time away?” “About half a day in the plane and then another half a day on a train.” “Why can’t we take the car?”

            “Will I eat? What if I have to pee? Can I sit on your lap? Will there be treats?” “Yes and no, you’ll probably be asleep the whole time, one minute you’ll be home and the next you’ll be in France, we’re going to a little town called Angais, we’ll stay in a hotel.” “You mean like Fairhope?” “Kinda.”

            “Is Mom coming?” “Sure thing, Buddy.” “What about the cats?” “The cats have to stay home”. “Will there be cats? I like cats, I have four. What will be for supper? Can I still sleep in bed with you?”

            “Well, we’ll mostly be eating out, but here’s the good news, you’ll be able to come into the restaurants and café with us; you see, in France they believe that canines are to be welcome everywhere, even where you eat out.” “Really?”

            “Here’s the other things, the language there is mostly foreign to me so I won’t be talking with other people as much, you’ll get lots of attention because many people there won’t know what I’m saying either. We’ve (your Mom and I) have been to major attractions in France and this time we’re just going to chill, have walkabouts, drink in the scenery and eat some great food; once we’re over there we’ll be eating cheeses and pastries and breads and we’ll see if we can rent a little place with a kitchen so that we can have coffee and croissants in the morning, fresh from the boulongerie, that’s what they call a bakery; we’ll drink wine in the afternoon at lunch and have Pastis with warm water in the afternoon. We’ll go boating on the river and introduce you to any new friends we make; we won’t know anyone there, it will all be new.”

            “Can we still have Happy Hour at night with beer and potato chips and treats like at home?” Am I gonna like this France place? I don’t know about this Angais place.”

            “Well, Angais is a small town in a bigger area, it’s a kinda nothing to do place but that’s what we want, eh?  There’re other towns around it, unless you’d rather stay in the country; oh, there’s also mountains and a beret museum. I saw some in-town places for rent in a place called Pau where we’d walk around and shop and stuff like we do in the French Quarter and some country places in case you want the great outdoors, names like Asson, Peyrouse and Ferrieres. I’m gonna leave it up to you, it doesn’t make much difference to me.” “Then why are we going?”

            “Listen Scoute (that’s your name in French), this year  has been a real wear on me; the world has had sickness and trouble in the streets, we’ve had politicians fighting and calling each other names up to here and storms blowing through and remember when our street flooded and we’ve had to stay home and wear stuff on our faces? I’ve been out of work, we’ve had no visitors and I watch the news all the time on television and read the newspaper and I’m sure that I haven’t been much fun and we don’t go for walks as often or go riding in the car as much.  And the year isn’t even over yet! And there goes that damn phone again! I just want to be someplace where I don’t know the language, the politics, the currency and I can get amnesia. I’ll take my sketch pad and some inks and maybe draw a lot of what I see. We’ll take pictures. We’ll take naps.  “What’s amnesia?”  “All of what I just said.”

            I had to stop here and answer the person on the phone who wanted to cancel my student loan debt even though I’ve been out of school since Washington crossed the Delaware and besides, Scout was at the front porch barking at the postal delivery person; a daily ritual for her. She came back in, wagging her tail and said “why don’t we just go to Fairhope? I bet you can get some amnesia there!”

            Well, you know, when your dog is smarter than you are you have to give it to her. “Okay….Scout, you wanna go to Fairhope? “Yippee!” “Okay, let’s go tell your Mom.”

            “I love you Dad!” Je t’aime aussi Cherie.”

Time to Quit Whitey

Po Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

La Pura Vida

Or

Time To Go

            The headline would read “New Orleans Oldest Working Pot Dealer Turns Himself In!” and indeed he will. Whitey Jackson, age eighty-four, will take his walker into police headquarters and explain to the Desk Sergeant that he needs to make a statement to the narcotics officers, the DEA and especially to detective Bobby Phelps. The Sergeant would explain that detective Phelps had retired years ago and could he (the sergeant) help him (Whitey)?

            “I’m here to turn myself in, I’ve been dealing in New Orleans for almost seventy years and it’s time that you caught me; I figured I’d tell Bobby first as he’s the one that’s been trying to nail me. Here I am. Lock me up. What’s for dinner?”

            Two smiling plainclothes cops will escort Whitey to an interrogation room and have him sit down, get him a glass of water and “Now tell us… what’s this all about?”

            “Well”, Whitey says “I’ve been to the IRS to turn myself in for tax evasion and they said that until I prove I was actually making money that they couldn’t charge me with having not paid taxes; what I really want to do is go to a Federal facility, it’s much nicer than State, you know. I got names.”

            It’s true, Whitey had been ‘selling vegetables’ since High School, never filed taxes, made a good living, supported a couple of families and some of his friends through hard times; it was well known that if things got tough, you could always reach out to Whitey. He drank smooth gin and always tipped well, but was never flashy. He used to have an old four door white Crown Vic that he’d take trips to Texas border towns with, he said it looked so much like an undercover cop’s car that no one dared pull him over, he especially liked Laredo and across the border in Nuevo Laredo with its dirt streets, seedy bars and easy women. Sometimes he moved ‘freight’.

            But times had gotten tough in the last dozen years, old contacts had gotten older, suppliers became unreliable, some jailed or gone out of business, it was more difficult to get ‘product’ across the borders and prices increased with inflation; he could have diversified, but he was against ‘hard stuff’ and mind blowing substances were iffy in quality and result. No: ‘Mary Jane was her name and connecting her with people was his game’.

            He fell on hard times. His landlord had passed and the landlord’s kids had kicked him out of an apartment that he had for forty years, he had to sell his cameras (a dear but expensive hobby), downsize (a word he hated) and move to smaller quarters. He had no savings. He got a minimum from Social Security and qualified for Medicare and other forms of geezer ‘on the dole’ incomes. He had never had an occupation other than his dealings and had no marketable skills. His health was failing and he had just one plan ‘B’, turn himself in and become a ward of the state.

            Some friends got him into an ‘assisted living’ facility, which was a postage size room with an alcove kitchen and a bathroom the size of a foot locker, it was vermin infested and mildewed, but it was close to the French Quarter and fit his budget.

            He wasn’t used to being broke and he missed his old hangouts, he remembered the old days and sitting in coffee houses for hours espousing wit, witticisms and philosophy with high likeminded miscreants. He enjoyed opera and jazz and for the life of him couldn’t understand ‘woke’ music and he hated rock and roll. He was used to the easy life, strolling around New Orleans like a king, anticipating the arrival of ‘vegetables’ after he retired his car and taking his time leafing through his book of names to ascertain who had not scored for a reasonable period of time; he’d make a quick call on his burner phone and set up meets, pass a good time and a package and head out into the humidity toward another watering hole and possibly another exchange of goods and services.

            It all came to a head when he took a fall in the hallway of his facility, He had hit his head, limped back to his room and lay on the floor bleeding for almost two days until one of his friends got worried and came to check on him. He was in the hospital for about a week and had a lot of time to think, “Time for pan B”, he decided.

            Whitey made the headlines; it was a slow news week. It was a slow court week as well and he was charged, booked and let go on his own recognizance; he wasn’t considered a flight risk. He promised names, dates and places of half the city including society swells, bankers, politicos, real estate brokers and high priced Madams; it would never come to charges but it would make great gossip which was something New Orleans ate for breakfast.

            Then Whitey disappeared. Theories and conjectures flew. The Mob? Some guilty big shot? All anyone knew is that one night a long black limousine pulled up outside his building and Whitey was whisked away.

            Six months later, Slick Willie showed me a copy of a photo of some old dude on a beach (skinny legs and all) with a hand written message; finally, news of Whitey was circulating. Slick said he got his copy from The Dodger who got it from Princess Diana via Lady Blue, Sonny Duprey, Raspberry Mahogany, and a few dozen others. It read:

            “Dear Folks, On the lam in the Papaya Republic with old friends, the grass certainly is greener and free. Love W. 

P.S. If the phone’s not ringing, that’s me not calling.”

Father's Day 2020 vision

Po-boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

Users Manual

Or

Dad’s Dilemma

            To paraphrase Shakespeare: “Some are born Fathers, some achieve Fatherhood and some have Fatherhood thrust upon them”, and when some of us find ourselves in the role of fatherhood, some of us (although cute, smart, witty and pretty) haven’t a blessed clue as to what baseball bat just blindsided us with a blow of intimidation, impotence, insecurity and total ignorance to how to deal with a biped that we’re gonna be responsible to/for, perhaps for the remainder of one of our lives. It can be a lot of water to carry.

            Sure it’s fun to be with someone who you knocked up and go through the nine months of chaos that the carrier of this little-miracle-to-be experiences; you’ll run the gamut of emotions and physical upheavals that accompany that little angel on its trip from innocent zygote to uterine ripping Howler monkey and then, it’s yours… forever. Red faced, breast sucking, crying and orifice expelling little bundle of joy. You didn’t realize that it’s gonna take months before the little cherub can even look you in the eye, hopefully by that time they turn cute; mine, at birth, looked like a cross between the inside of a boxing glove and Edward G. Robinson.

            Sure, everyone around you says they’re cute and precious but they’re not woken up every two hours until Babykins is able to sleep the night through. Forget about a sex life, that’s way down the road; your ballroom days are over. At first I thought my bundles of joy were willful, spiteful and selfish until I got hip to that behavior being inherently a human rite of passage from uterine to university, self examination taught me that in fatherhood all bets are off. Have more than one child and your confusion expands exponentially. Three or more will drive you sober.  

            You see, nobody explains to you how to be a Dad, I got my clues from television shows, movies and the confusion of fathers around me who were making mistakes on a daily if not hourly basis. What I imagined was that somewhere Dads were cowboys, office workers, shopkeepers, cops and firemen, who never went to the bathroom or smoked unfiltered cigarettes, never smelled like booze or had the body odor of a gorilla and the worst thing that could happen was they would look sad and say “son, I’m very disappointed in you”.

            The Dads around my way would knock you into next week for looking cross-eyed at them. Where was I headed? All the kids around me were little monsters that were sly, crafty, cunning and out to get away with mayhem, mischief and if possible murder; was I going to fit that ‘Dad as Storm Trooper’ mold and would my kids turn into the Brady Bunch or a chapter of Hells Angels?

            Well, I threw all the balls up in the air, I threw caution to the wind, I sailed the spaghetti at the wall and watched what stuck and what hit the floor, in short I tried everything. I was an authoritarian, best friend, mentor, gang leader, wise guy and sage; it didn’t make any difference, they loved me anyway and I came to find them precious and unconditionally ensconced in my heart. We were good, we were bad, we had fun, we cried and yelled and threw things; got dressed up and dressed down--I’m certain that their mother thought that she was raising me as well. I used to say “I can’t help it; nobody issued me The Dad Manual!”

            These days there is rarely a thing called a ‘stay at home’ parent so we all have to do our part; you have to keep those Coke suckers busy; ballet; soccer; music lessons; arts and crafts. There are trips to the zoo; the beach; the park and that awful thing that they call a ‘play date’ until they get old enough to get to school on their own, be sent to camp or let them have a sleep over at some unsuspecting and less seasoned parent’s house.

            Then they start to grow up. From the terrible twos to the terrorist teens; by this time you’ve become a workaholic and let their mother raise them. You become the chauffer, the money bags and that guy that burns things on an outside grill while they play in the kiddy pool or Slip-And-Slide. You become the “Wait ‘til I tell your Father!” father.

            All the while you have given up your privacy, and your relationship with Mom can really become strained. There may be spats when that glass of wine at dinner turns into a bottle; you take up jogging just to get out of the house; you stay later and later at work and Mom is left holding the bag and now she is heading for a nervous breakdown. Face it, kids can drive you crazy and being a Dad is not like you see on television where nobody seems to have money problems and dinner appears miraculously as you sit around and wisecrack waiting for the laugh track and another character to barge through the door and amuse everyone.

            Then they learn to drive and then they drive away from home to start their own lives and families. You reminisce about the good old days and frame old photographs in which everyone is smiling. Then you become friends and when they have a little bundle of joy of their very own, they’ll ask you for advice and tell you that they don’t know how you ‘did it’; and if you’re really really honest, you’ll give them a big hug and say “Listen Kid, don’t ask me, I never had a clue. Ask your Mother.”

Why we march

Of the People

By

Phil LaMancusa

The night of April 4^th, 1968 I was working as a bartender at The Village Gate in Greenwich Village, NYC at a show called “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris”. It was a stunning performance and the audience was rapt with attention and appreciation. At the end of the show one of the performers (I think it was Mort Shuman) came out to announce that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and had died in Memphis. At that point the cast came out holding hands and sang Brel’s “If We Only Have Love”.

That night, in the back bar area, I heard some waiters joking about how they were going to go out that night and ‘go looting’; I was surprised because these were grown men and not a word of grief was spoken by them, they seemed more like giddy children going off on a lark. The next day I went on my first protest march along Fifth Avenue along with thousands of other mourners; fights broke out, the police broke up skirmishes but by and large it was mostly peaceful. We marched because we believed in MLK Jr’s message and mourned the blatant mentality of racism in America. We were against that and war and inequality and hunger; we wanted peace and prosperity; we had President Lyndon Johnson who would be defeated by Richard Nixon in the fall. We wanted peace and quiet, they gave us law and order. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

In the next decades I’ve marched and protested bombings and killings and inequities from My Lai and Kent State to the offense of having a homophobic misogynist voted into our highest office, for the rights of women and the persons of fluid sexual identities and now, once again, I express outrage at another unjustified killing of yet another black man by a white police officer.

In recent years I would go to rallies not because I thought that anything was really going to change but jokingly I would tell people that I’d go to get my photo updated by the government photographers that surely have been recording me through the years. I’ve never gotten combative or violent, never taken anything that wasn’t mine or freely given, not even after Katrina when the whole city of New Orleans was being raped by, it seemed, everyone but myself and my peer group.

 I and my peer group, comprised of young, old, and across all ethnic and sexual backgrounds, understand frustration, rage, helplessness, impotence, anger and the very real sadness that horrible things continue to happen to good and innocent people, we’ve lived with it these past fifty-something years since waking up to it, likeminded people have been protesting over inequities for centuries. We fume that there is no Bureau of Happy Endings able to answer prayers and somewhere in the years of protesting, our optimism concerning change for the better had waned; nevertheless, we kept showing up, seeking a just God, seeking closure. 2020; maybe this time a change will come, it’s been a long time coming. Centuries.

From Emmett Till to Michael Brown; from lynchings to bombings and shootings all across the country, systemic bias, prejudice and racism is and has been alive, well and real against all hues of color and genders, but especially when it comes to minorities, women and the poor and educationally deprived. Here in New Orleans for example, we go to great lengths to epitomize the nobility of our hospitality workers when in fact, the restaurant industry is a blatant example of plantation mentality that has flourished, been perpetuated and continues into the twenty-first century.

This plantation business model is not new in America or the world nor is it exclusive to restaurants. It crosses all employment and business demographics and stems from the marriage of the twin miscreants of unbridled greed and the addictive nature of power, who stroll hand in hand down paths of righteousness and privilege; they control those that are kept below a higher standard of living by keeping a lid on opportunity---for what constitutes the majority of the earth’s population. There are still slave holders and there are still slaves. The lower classes are kept down by systemically having to make do with less, and by way of insufficient education, substandard health care, wage inequality, overzealous incarcerations, financial bias and poor living conditions perpetuate that situation for their children’s children. Lower standards of living, which lead to cultural genocide, civil disobedience and an honest disrespect (and suspicion) of the authority that is placed to keep poorer people in their place under the guise of ‘protection and service’. It is nothing more than a subliminal form of modern day slavery. Those oppressed in these manners are indeed referred to as ‘those people’.

Religion is another way of promising the good, conforming and accepting parishioner to a reward after death; God’s mysterious system of punishment and reward. Prisons are in place to punish here on earth. In life, the persons in charge are allowed the godlike privilege of oppressing men, women and children by treating them as one would a lesser animal, allowed life but not a future. God promises redemption and reward; pie in the sky, and to hell you’ll go if you don’t turn the other cheek.

November 19^th 1863  Lincoln gave what is called the Gettysburg Address and told us that this country was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…” he told us that we have “unfinished work” to dedicate ourselves to. When was the last time that you read those words, those words that are being echoed today? Those words are the glue that holds us together and those that do not, have not listened to them AND taken those words to heart are enemies of those words. Do I really have to tell you this? That’s why we marched on April 5, 1968 and that’s why we’re still marching.       

Cookbook Junkie

By

Phil LaMancusa

Food Fixes

Or

Cookbook Junkie Po Boy Views

            When Moses came down from the mountain with those Ten Commandments to give us, he also brought other instructions: How to Parallel Park a Feisty Camel; Festive Robes for Every Occasion; Getting the Best Seats at the Coliseum; and How to Cook in Desert Climates. I admit it: I made a deal with him and bought the cookbook (first edition), naturally it took some negotiating, and it was the beginning of my cookbook addiction.     

Over the years my addiction has not abated; Red Sea: Fish Fry’s All Time Hits; Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper Recipes; Attila the Hun’s Cooking on Horseback; What to Eat After the Mayflower Docks by John Alden and my favorite The Witches Book of Brews by A. Salem Coven.

            In 1999 in New Orleans, my daughters and I opened a cookbook shop with five thousand books, manuals, ephemeris and tomes that I had collected. You may remember, it was called The Kitchen Witch; it grew in twenty years to 10,000 books and no daughters (they both left me for younger men), I did gain a partner, lover and eventual wife (Debbie).

            There have been a gazillion cookbooks printed in the last centuries, the earliest (besides Moses’ tablets) written by a Sicilian (YAY!) around 350 BC. I never did get a copy of that one, although I have gotten some terrific, wonderful and sometimes scary ones. I’ve had everything from cannibalism, insect cuisine, canine cooking, drag queer brunches, aphrodisiacal, historical, futuristic and my favorite, Billi Gordon’s You’ve Had Worse Things In Your Mouth. I’ve had copies by Salvador Dali, Dinah Shore, Vincent Price, Liberace, Minnie Pearl and Paul Newman. With my experience I’ve been ready with discourse on authors such as Alice Waters, James Beard, Julia Child, Charlie Trotter, Jacques Pepin, Elizabeth David, M. F. K. Fisher, Charles Baker, Irma Rombauer, Leah Chase, Paul Prudhomme, Apicius, Darra Goldstein, Yotam Ottolenghi, Edna Lewis, Jessica B. Harris, John Folse and Austin Leslie, to name a few.

            Cookbook authors range from prostitutes and poets to philosophers and prima donnas; you name it, someone has written it and someone has written about it. Vegan, vegetarian, slaughterhouse, hunting exotic animals, Keto, high carb, low carb, martini diets, church supers, and dumpster diving; in my years, nothing has surprised me.

            What makes a good cookbook, one worth buying, reading, using, putting on your overcrowded bookshelf and/or gifting someone? Depends, depends on you, that’s why I opened a cookbook store; that and an excuse to buy, read, and use yet another one. It’s not their price, which can range from pittance to plenty (first editions can run into thousands of dollars). It’s not fads, which can range from How to Crochet a Cauliflower Casserole to Gutting a Tarpon and Eating Its Still Quivering Liver; Alice B. Toklas has a great hashish brownie recipe. It’s about you and what you want to cook and keep cooking.

            There are people that will buy a cookbook, use it once or twice, shelve it and give to charity the next spring. There are those that buy cookbooks and shelve them and never cook from them, reading them like novels in bed with their hair in curlers and a box of bonbons on the bedside table. There are serious collectors that will not flinch at laying down hundreds for first edition, first printing of The Gastronomical Me (1943. used $400.00-$600.00) a signed copy going for around $5,000.00.

            The Modernist Cuisine weighing in at 46 pounds and selling for half a grand to start is one that you wouldn’t purchase on a whim, but who can pass up that Fondue Magic for half a buck at a garage sale? I’ve pretty much had them all and I still have a bucket list.

            My advantage is that I cook every day and mostly for a living wage (sometimes a little less than a living wage); the point is that I read and use cookbooks and I will buy cookbooks that are on subjects that may be of interest to me: Baking formulas, cheese making instructions, plant-based methods, spice studies and local Creole and Cajun cooking line my shelves today at home. I have since left the retail sales cookbook business. Selling books of any kind from a brick and mortar location is not a way to make a living and here’s why.

            First of all, if someone wants to buy a book these days, where do they go? Directly to their computer. If someone wants a recipe for pickled pig lips, where do they go? Same answer. If someone wants a cheap copy of How To Cook a Wolf? Guess.

However; who can resist passing a book shop and not dropping in to browse? Maybe some fool that’s in a silly hurry, but not your average Joe, Jane, Jim or Jacqueline.

            What the browsers don’t see is the expense of having a brick and mortar located in their path; the rent, the lights, the staffing, etc. I’ve actually had a chef come into the shop, pick up a cookbook and say to me “I can get this cheaper on Amazon.” Oh, my heart. I felt like saying “yeah, and I can pick up lettuce at the store and make my own damn salad” but I didn’t.

            Rent is another thing, and rents are not going down, neither is the insurance, upkeep and maintenance of properties that the landlord wants to include in your lease. Those days are behind me and I can’t say that I don’t miss the struggle, pride and exhaustion of owning a cookbook shop. A wonderful shop spanning two decades, three landlords and locations and a hell of a lot of work; some people actually miss The Kitchen Witch.

Me? I’m on the trail of making vegan croissants, Indian Samosas and a Korean spice mixture called yangnyeomjang (it’s in a book I just bought). Bon Appétit.

Home alone (together)

Relatively speaking, we are not all in this together, in the same boat or up the same creek, and brother, if you think that, you may want to reconsider that actually we’re all in the same barrel, like a barrel of fish that covid19 is getting set to shoot into, knocking us off one at a time.  As our esteemed experts have told us, it’s time to duck and cover because, it’s not as if we’re all gonna catch this virus, it’s just a question of when. We will all get it to some degree and as we read and hear, some of us will get it so bad that we wind up as a smiling photo on the obit page. We’ve been hit below the waterline. “Mortality is now the wallpaper in the room” as Tom Piazza would say.

So what do we do? We self quarantine to ‘flatten the curve’; we do this so that we give our overworked healthcare system a chance to get those most immediate cases taken care of so that they’re not overcrowded when our time comes should we get that bad, Lord knows, there’s others in that line ahead of us that need care. If we’re lucky at all we will only experience a mild smack down, a mere medical mugging. If we’re lucky.

We make some semblance of our life in lockdown, we limit our exposure, wear masks, wash our hands constantly, disinfect items that are going to be inside our sanctuaries and then we sit back and wait as if the ‘all clear’ sirens of the planet are going to wail. “Ollie Ollie oxen free!” “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Good self shut-ins do many things similar. We stay up just a little bit later. We sleep in later with some degree of guilt. We make coffee, tea, smoothies, and feed the cat, walk the dog, shower, shave and put on clean underwear. We clean our domiciles to a fault and because there’s not much else we can get away doing early in the day, we sit on our porches with a cup of something, an old newspaper, book or magazine and wait for someone to pass by so that we can wave and say hello; people all over the neighborhood use their dogs as an excuse to get out of the house and walk about, some forget to take the dog.

We wash dishes, make the bed and wonder what we’re gonna do with that ten pound bag of potatoes that we panic shopped; every time we use the bathroom we check our supply of toilet paper, hand soap and no bath towel goes unlaundered. We care about other people and wonder how the less fortunate are making out now that the bills keep coming in. We panic and call the bank to make sure that at least we are still semi-solvent. We check our email, FaceBook and intsagram and wonder what will be on our menu today. Will we finally perfect that grilled cheese sandwich? We try again to get through to the unemployment folks. We wait for word that someone we know hasn’t bought the farm. We don’t use the word ‘Die’. We take naps, baths and disdainfully watch our muscle tone disappear.

Objectively, we’re happy as clams; think, all this time to do whatever we want to do, except what we’ve all been doing before this pandemic struck the world like a plague. Now, we can read, cook, catch up with mail and bills and learn the words to Funky Cold Medina. We can take pictures of inane subjects and post them for the world to see: our cat’s hairballs, our disastrous attempts at cooking, our selfies making funny faces and outdated photos of our families. At times we share a notice of another person’s passing. We’re essentially bored as sh*t. It helps if you’re quarantined with another biped or at the very least a critter, they act as a sounding board, someone to share meals, perspectives, chores and a warm blooded comfort with; it’s reassuring to see more movement in the place besides the desk top and/or the ceiling fan. There are those people that on a good day that professes not to be telly watchers, but I tell you this, without the one in our house we would be a couple of snapping turtles.

We tune in to our daily dose of evening news on three channels drinking coffee and having a homemade cookie or two. We have a ‘Happy Hour’ on the bed with the critters with cold beer and potato chips and we stream entertainment on the smart TV with dinner and drinks. Then it’s time to walk the cur, have a nightcap on the porch, make some hot tea and read until bedtime, we sleep (perchance to dream) wake up and do it all again. Sometimes we plan an outing for the early afternoon. Tomorrow we’re gonna clean under the refrigerator. We don’t mention our phantom symptoms.

At home, social distancing takes on a whole new meaning, double digit days self quarantined together can be exhausting; it’s a thin line between selflessness and selfishness and a fluctuation between hugging and hiding. Know when to seek solace and when to seek solitude. The need for understanding, patience and respect for personal space has never been greater. Do things in tandem but don’t forget to charge your own batteries.

Now here's your motivational mantra: This is a once in a lifetime experience, we’re up against the ropes; we can come out of this chumps or champs, there’s no such thing as “we’ll get ‘em next round” This is the telling round. Let’s collectively bring out the champs within us. Do the right thing.