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Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

Leonard Earl Johnson (photo credit Frank Parsley) covered Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (2005), and the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for ConsumerAffairs.com. He is a contributor to Gambit Weekly, New Orleans Magazine, SCAT, Baton Rouge Advocate, Advocate Magazine, The Times-Picayune, Country Roads Magazine, Palm Springs Newswire and the anthologies: FRENCH QUARTER FICTION (Light of New Orleans Publishing), LOUISIANA IN WORDS (Pelican Publishing), LIFE IN THE WAKE (NOLAfuges.com), and more. Johnson is a former Merchant Seaman, and columnist at Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans; and African-American Village. Attended Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship at Piney Point, Maryland. Winner of the Press Club of New Orleans Award for Excellence, 1991, and given the Key to The City and a Certificate of Appreciation from the New Orleans City Council for a Gambit Weekly story on murder in the French Quarter.

Monday, September 01, 2025

⚓The Little Boy from Big Mamou / September 2025

  ~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!

Created AI-free

by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world ✍

⚓

⚓   ⚓

💜💚💛

 *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  


📖



🗣😷

LEJ's 
Louisiana

a monthly e-column at 

✍


Yours Truly in a Swamp

September 2025

Dedicated to 
September 3, 1947 / August 22, 2025

🌹 


~  *  ~   ~  *  ~   ~  *  ~


by 

Leonard Earl Johnson

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson,  All Rights Reserved
Best viewed for color contrast on a computer
or phone screen with a black background.

✍


The Sunset Limited pulls along very slowly creeping beside the Intercoastal Waterway, near Côte Des Allemands.  The name is French.  In English it means, Coast of The Germans.

In German it would be, Küste de Deutschen.  

Everyone uses the French name. It is on a state signpost, though it is not an officially incorporated settlement. 

There are some homes, and a few stores fronting the railroad and waterway. One with a shingle bragging: "Yes, We Have Alligator Meat." 

There are three bridges crossing Bayou Des Allemands, where it opens out to the Gulf of Mexico/America/Trump. Two are for  automobiles and one for the railroad.
 
This is where Balthazar once watched three boys of mixed race mooning the passing train. One boy was blond with white skin, another dusky Mediterranean mixed, and the third black.

Côte Des Allemands
 "That was integration Homer Adolph Plessy never thought about," Balthazar remarked to two red hatted tourists from Texas, who looked at him like he might be speaking Martian. 
 
The mooning inspired Balthazar ~ a little  known fisherman poet ~ to pen barroom ballads which he often sings into convivial free wine, and sometimes a boot out the door.  

He took this morning's opportunity to share one of those bawdy ballads:

🧜‍♂️ 💀 🧜‍♂️
⇓

THE BOY BEHIND THE ALTAR, 
The Little Boy from Big Mamou

by Balthazar Beauregard
© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson / All Rights Reserved

He was just a little boy from Big Mamou,
 and that's way out in Acadia.  
There a man with a long black limousine 
filled him up with amphetamine, 
and led him to the hot side of The Swamp.

He was wined, dined, and charming.  
His intention was alarming. 
So he say, 'au revoir, Acadia.'  
Like Jean Lafitte he roamed about 
till he came to New Orleans and he found out,
the one you call 'mon cher' ain't your 'mon père'. 

He was young, hung, and lanky, 
and he loved hanky-panky. 
 Every night opportunity would knock.
And now that he's known at the Whitney Bank, 
he's goin' back home and genuflank 
to the one who done him wrong,
 the one who done him wrong, 
the one who done him wrong 
in Big Mamou!


𝅘𝅥𝅰🎵𝅘𝅥𝅯

Then someone broke his heart on Bourbon Street,
 and he ups and leaves Louis-e-an. 
Like a lost Cajun he bum-and-roam,
till an East Village slum become his home. 
 And he laid New York for Louis-e-an. 

He was young, hung, and lanky
 and he loved hanky-panky.
Every night opportunity would knock. 
And now that he's known in the finest clubs 
he's goin' back home and snub the studs,
 the ones who done him wrong, 
the ones who done him wrong,
 the ones who done him wrong
 in Big Mamou.

Then someone broke his heart on Bourbon Street
and he ups and leaves Louis-e-an.
Little lost Cajun he bum-and-roam
Till an East Village slum become his home
and he laid New York for Louis-e-an.

He was young, hung, and charming,
His intentions were alarming.
He took up Daddy-farming in New York.

And now that he's known for finding his stay
up with the stars on ole Broadway, 
he's still that little boy from 
Big Mamou

𝅘𝅥𝅰🎵𝅘𝅥𝅯

His landlord adored him 
and was like a papa toward him, 
till he learned what he earned alone at night. 
 
 And now that he's known in saloons and bars, 
he's movin' back south with six fancy cars, 
to the ones who done him wrong, 
the ones who done him wrong,
 the ones who done me wrong
 in Big Mamou! 

I mean the one who done me wrong,
 the one who done me wrong, 
the one who done me wrong 
in Big Mamou!

💜💚💛 
❤  ❤
💔

When Baltazar finished the train car passengers held their breath.  There was no murmur, no shuffle.  Nothing stirred but the poet-fisherman stepping down from his imagined microphone... 

And the Conductor calling,

"Lafayette, next stop!"

👀 😁 👀


🗣😷

...............................................
ww.LEJ.world http://www.LEJ.org

Next Month's Column

⭐Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series⭐

Coming in October: 

Balthazar,
 
Hildegarde,
 
and The Pope
            
         * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

© Leonard Earl Johnson 

If you wish to read any month's column go to 
 Archives: www.LEJ.world✍
~   ~   ~
 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp
is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world,
Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
and historically at
Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans
publication of the
It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
 
Readers comments accepted after publication on the First of the month

🗣😷

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved 

posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 1:16 AM | 5 comments

Friday, August 01, 2025

✍Red Women Conflated, 20-Years Post-K / August 2025

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!

Created AI-free

by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world ✍

⚓

⚓   ⚓

💜💚💛

 *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  *  ~  


📖


🗣😷

LEJ's 
Louisiana

a monthly e-column at 

✍


Yours Truly in a Swamp

August 2025


🌹


~  *  ~   ~  *  ~   ~  *  ~



Red Women Conflated,

Twenty Years Post-K 

by 

Leonard Earl Johnson

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson,  All Rights Reserved
Best viewed for color contrast on a computer
or phone screen with a black background.

✍


The Sunset Limited 
outbound from New Orleans to Los Angeles, 
and points between, is 
Amtrak's designated Train #1. 

 It is America's first truly single consist coast-to-coast transcontinental train, from Miami to Los Angeles. A land cruiser, with a running time of  three days and three nights.  It is also the first American train to carry a personified name, e.g., 
Sunset Limited. 

"In August of 2005, Balthazar says, "Hurricane Katrina changed all that. All but name, number, and history."

Sylvia and Dillard are in the Observation Car  having coffee from the train's snack bar, with sandwiches they bought on Saint Claude Avenue in New Orleans. They are listening to Balthazar, who recently repatriated from an offshore oil rig job.  

He arranged to join up with the two 
Red Warrior Women 
for the train ride back to Lafayette.
 

Mural / section

(Click for More)

Union Passenger Terminal

 New Orleans, Louisiana

 Commissioned 1951 / Completed 1954

 Artist: Conrad Albrizio (1894-1973)


They met at the Amtrak gate, under the nationally acclaimed Albrizio murals of New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal.  

The murals, dating from the 1950s, were nearly lost to lime blooms 
following Hurricane Katrina, when the Union Passenger Terminal was pressed into housing prisoners from the nearby flooded 
Orleans Parish Prison, and the terminal was without air conditioning. 

🚉🚅
😇🚄🚉

"In 1934," Balthazar continues, "Myrna Loy and William Powell appeared in the wildly applauded film 

adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's mystery novel turned stylish black-and-white post-prohibition cinematic jubilation, 

THE THIN MAN.

 

"In the final scene, outside Lafayette, the train fades down the tracks flashing a spare tire round sign on its last carriage, proclaiming: Sunset Limited." 


Balthazar accepts one of the sandwiches and says, "Hard to believe that film was shot ninety-one years ago."

 The train has halted near Avondale. Outside the club car windows we see mounds of trash marching off to landfill eternity.

⛰
⛰ ⛰

Sylvia points at the towering stacks and grumbles,
"Ninety-years, ninety-one since we stopped 
on top'a Mount Katrina," 
as the mountain of debris is known by locals and train regulars.

Katrina is Hurricane Katrina, which evacuated New Orleans, August 29, 2005 
~ and ushered in what Donald-go-round Republicans erroneously call 'Non- Global Warming'.

Doors closed, keys turned locks, and Life ended as lived before.  Both for the dead (1,392+), and for the living who later returned.
   ⛰
⛰
⛰ 
⛰      ⛰
            ⛰     ⛰ 
   ⛰    ⛰

⛰
🚄...............

"The dogs barked, 
but the caravan moved on.
 
"A Turkish proverb," Balthazar tells us.

Our train whistles. 

We roll on...

Along the tracks at a brownish green spot on the West Bank past the Huey P. Long Bridge, lays 
 a ghostly yacht beached
Sea Oats
 by Hurricane Katrina.
 
Mast snapped off and lost.
 
 Discarded vessel. 

Forgotten now, twenty years later. Hull so faded you can no longer make out her name. Keel sprung for sure.
 
There she sits, someone's lost dream sailing along on sea oats grown up to her gunnels.
 
Further down the line, next to the Mississippi River levee, we pass a small Cajun farmhouse, with outside stairs and unpainted cypress walls. It is surrounded by flocks of grey and white geese. 

Foie gras

"Some French Quarter tourist will eat one of those birds' liver tonight,"
 
Balthazar tells the women. 

🌎

"In another ninety-one years the Louisiana Life we live will be lived differently and by new carpetbaggers who will likely love it as we do now. 

"That is if it's still here.

"Though your little ship has no anchor,
and my little ship has no sail.
How can the dreamers of such fine Oceans
be bothered by a slight detail..."

We are still here,
and better off as Sailors on a train than geese on a platter.

💀🙏💀

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson,  All Rights Reserved

LAGNIAPPE DU JOUR:

.................................

ww.LEJ.world http://www.LEJ.org
Next Month's Column

⭐Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series⭐

            
         * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

© Leonard Earl Johnson 


If you wish to read any month's column go to 
 Archives: www.LEJ.world✍
~   ~   ~
 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp
is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world,
Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
and historically at
Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans
publication of the
It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
 
Readers comments accepted after publication on the First of the month

🗣😷

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved 

posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 4:13 AM | 7 comments