Thursday, October 13, 2011

Out of the Big Easy

This here is the miscreant bus. New Orleans to Houston via Baton Rouge, Fayetteville, Beaumont, Texas. Full of young black men. I say that, and then a young man passes forward and around the front half of the bus a full bag of little 3-packs of milk dud malt balls, making sure everybody has one if they want. It’s a great and beautiful world.
WE left that magnificent perfectly maintained spacious art-filled NOLA depot a little late. I had another chance to walk around the vast hall staring at the Diego Rivera style mural that runs all the hundreds of feet around the upper half of the walls, bright southern colors and lively vignettes. Oh bullshit. I didn’t even look at the effing murals. I have no doubt they are truly fine and all that but I didn’t and don’t give much of a shit about anything when I’m in go mode, which I was. Ready to get the fuck out of New Orleans, and just in time to get my paperwork together for the bus to LA, that is Los Angeles not Louisiana. I reconsidered and got the priority boarding, for five bucks you get to jump the line, and worth it too.
Like I said we were a little late, but not so very much considering there were 80 plus people trying to get on a 60 person bus, so they added another coach, and now, after our stop in Baton Rouge this coach is full, too.
Ish took me around the lower 9th ward today to see for myself how much rebuilding has been done. We were both astonished at the progress made everywhere, and how these working class folks got the energy and the wherewithal to rebuild such an utterly devastated neighborhood I will never know, but build they did, and all praise to them and to their city shrunk down like hot-washed long-johns, but warm just the same.
I ate some red beans and rice with smoke sausage on the side, and I had some gumbo. Butter sautéed crab claws, and a little bbq baby lamb ribs. Beignets in the kwahtuh at the DuMonde, with a café-au-lait to go.
And voodoo too…

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