✍ Old Age Meets Old October Winds / October 2020

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HEAVEN'S JUST A SIN AWAY 

by

Jeannie Kindall

"A Republican Fight Song" ~ L. A. Norma 

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✍ Column Final Draft

~ October 2020 ~

LEJ's Louisiana
Yours Truly in a Swamp

Monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org

by Leonard Earl Johnson,

of Lafayette and New Orleans

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© 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections 

 are welcome

Comments

Old Age Meets Old October Winds ~ a scary story ~

by Leonard Earl Johnson

www.LEJ.org✍

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We awakened with a start, and an image in our foggy head of a hand thrusting up from the warm grave of nightdreams.  

We think about death more than we did before Katrina ~ and her following winds.  

Some are new winds, and some are old windbags; and now our very age blows in unsettling knowledge about how our dreams turn out. 

I rub my eyes and look through six-over-six windowpanes, at a small metal smokestack of some forgotten use.  Short and stout it wobbles about in the morning breeze, waving at us it seems ~ like a barnacled rusty old hand.

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A blackened tin hat chimney ~ rusted in half years ago and folded over on one side into an extended thumb.  It is folded down the other side like fingers making a fist.  

2020 is pushing up yet another worrisome day.  

We rubbed the night from our eyes.

The Donald Voodoo Doll

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L. A. Norma switched on her smart phone's radio.  

"Smartphones do anything,

 but make good phone calls." 

She switched channels to all-music, 

"To avoid bad news overload. 

"Did you know radio offers this antidote to its news service?" she asked.  

~ Hayden's Kaiserquintett filled the room ~ 

"Sooths but doesn't abuse." 

Abusive News Syndrome is a new disease recently discovered by Norma. 

"A condition soon to be treated with expensive sugar pills under development today by an international drug giant in India, Delaware and Puerto Rico." 

She says this, lighting a Camal Cigarette, and pointing me at the Donald Trump voodoo doll we bought recently in New Orleans. 

 From a Broad Street peddler ~ "Under the scenic I-10 overhead.

"Till then," she said, fingering an antique hatpin sticking through the doll's orange neck, "we have this!" 

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COVID-19 deaths have risen above 200,000 ~ a number once chided by The Donald as exaggerated predictions too false to demand a response.  

"A response greater than crushing a Family or grabbing a trophy woman by her genitals," Norma said to our pedicab driver, through a cloud of smoke.

We pulled up in front of Saint Louis Cathedral.  

The gates to Jackson Square, behind us, were locked to keep someone from pulling Andrew off his high horse. 

Andrew Jackson saved New Orleans from the British, but was a nasty slave owner and Native American administrator. 

Bad people do good things 

My Grand Mother (Großmutter) was born in Bönnigheim, a Gau Swabish German town, dating back to 793 ~ in the Black Forest and Bavarian Mountains ~ "Fourteen point nine kilometers outside of Stuttgart."

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Her homeland (Vaterland) was annexed by Bavaria in 1803 (the same year as the Louisiana Purchase).  During the Nazi period, the area was separated from the rest of Bavaria to become the Gau Swabia. It was re-incorporated into Bavaria after World War Two. 

My Grandmother was neither a kind nor tender woman.  She was hardened by what happened to her world and once told me, "If you see change in your Life as I have, you are in for quite a große fahrt (big ride)."  

Große fahrt's English translation makes one of the first jokes learned by English speakers in Germany.  There are many variations stemming from große ('gross' in English) and fahrt (pronounced 'fart').  Need I elaborate?  I thought not.

"Leading to your tremulously underachieving Life," 

L. A. Norma says, shoving the coffeepot across the counter.  She is angry with me.  

We bought a green bag of Union Brand Coffee with Chicory, at the French Quarter Rouses, to bring back to Laughingyette, where chicory sits

 on the store shelf till it grows too old to drink.

 I left the coffee on a bench overlooking the Mississippi River where we had gone to eat a Muffuletta and watch the ships. 

True, I agreed. 

 Now, an old man, I am sequestered in my rooms tapping out poetic wisdom for a World approaching changes vast as any my Grandmother saw. 

"And, she might say, 'The same damn change!'" L. A. Norma said. 

Cartoon by Dr Seuss
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My Grandmother was young when she fled to America,  

safe but bitter for her loss of "The Old Country."  What would she think of losing the New One?

~ LEJ.org✍

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 Copyright, 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections are welcome:

Comments 🖋😷

Go here for 

T-Shirts,

Koozies,

Icebox magnets, 

and such falderal:

*  *  *
If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.org anytime.

 

They are posted on the first of each month and polished

 for 

the next few years.

~   ~   ~

 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org

and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans,

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

 of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

Subscribe@LEJ.org

Archives: www.LEJ.org

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© 2020 Leonard Earl Johnson, 

All Rights Reserved 

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Lagnappe du jour

President Barak Obama 

Final White House Correspondents Dinner

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Your comments and corrections are welcome:

Comments 🖋😷

⚓ Birthdays and Hurricanes / September 2020

✍ Column Final Draft

 ~ September 2020 ~

LEJ's Louisiana
Yours Truly in a Swamp

Monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org

by Leonard Earl Johnson,

of Lafayette and New Orleans

*   *   *

© 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections

 are welcome

Comments 🖋😷

Birthdays 

and Hurricanes

by Leonard Earl Johnson

LEJ.org✍

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“The mail, that great link between minds, today penetrates into the heart of the wilderness."

~ Alexis de Tocqueville  /  1805 - 1859

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I always get a Hurricane for my Birthday, thank you.

The long wait for Hurricane Laura so frightened my smart phone it woke in the night and made me do the same ~ twice.  

Only to tell me it was storming badly and going to get worse.  And neither it nor I could do a thing, but maybe run out in it and wave our hands. 

Then the building's alarm took up the screech and would neither stop nor explain what we were to do.

By now I was up trying to find tv or radio news.  Not easily done at 4am, in the heart of Louisiana's Great Mother Swamp.

Dallas CBS-tv was the best I could find.  That or local ten O'clock news repeats. The repeat news said Hurricane Laura was coming and might kill me.  Dallas said it was already here and we will see.

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My windows are huge offering a wide expanse of sky normally lovely for relaxing and gathering cotton.  Tonight's ambient lighting shows horizontal rain.  

"It was storming more'n a hundred hatchet-bearing Carry Nations at a hundred Dew Drop Inns," L. A. Norma said.

Eventually Diana on the ninth floor began Facebooking the topic ~ a sure sign ~ like Fascism's early sightings ~ that it was already here doing damage.

No fire engine sirens wa-heed into range, but later I was told they answered the call and hushed the alarm.  The walls did not fall, and I shut off the phone and went back to bed. 

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Life goes on. Next day, Floyd LeBleu, one of Pamplona Tapas Bar's oil barons turned away by its locked doors, rousted me for hamburgers at the Hideaway on Lee Avenue, the only place open Downtown.

The burgers were good, the service strained, the crowd friendly, and for dessert Root Beer Ice Cream Floats, what the Froststops of earlier Birthdays called a Purple Cow. 

"Something good comes of everything," L. A. Norma tells our waitress. 

We are told the bar with its large courtyard is resuming outdoor music ~ with masks and distancing ~ this very night.  We would like to return but know we won't.  It takes old men days to recover from Birthdays and Hurricanes.  Thank you for the greetings.  

Yours Truly in a Swamp, 

LEJ.org 

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 Copyright, 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections are welcome:

Comments 🖋😷

Go here for 

T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.org icebox magnets and such falderal

*  *  *
If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.org anytime. 

They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years.

~   ~   ~

 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org

and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans,

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

 of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

Subscribe@LEJ.org

Archives: www.LEJ.org

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

© 2020 Leonard Earl Johnson, 

All Rights Reserved 

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✍The Virus and The Donald / August 2020

✍ Column Final Draft

~ August 2020 ~

LEJ's Louisiana

Yours Truly in a Swamp

Monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org

by Leonard Earl Johnson,

of Lafayette and New Orleans

*   *   *

© 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections

 are welcome

Comments 🖋😷

The Virus  

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And  

The Donald

by Leonard Earl Johnson

Photo credits Eric Douglas

LEJ.org✍️

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"The mask is not intended to save you first handed," L. A. Norma said, pulling hers down past her chin and lighting a Camel Cigarette.

"It is intended to save your neighbor from your potentially infectious spittle. That in turn reduces the number overall infected, and second handedly saves you."

The pedicab driver to whom she is saying this pulls his rose colored mask over his face and mumbles about evil Communism and good works. It isn't clear if he is for or against them.

We arrive grandly in front of Brennan's on Rue Royale, in the French Quarter.

We are on a Family celebration ~ a Big Swamp City weekend in the Time of The Virus and The Donald.

Inside Brennan's carriageway we are each tested for temperature and handed a rose colored mask. The shade of which is actually coral, like the walls of this legendary New Orleans' white-creole cafe.

 "Is there a non white legendary creole New Orleans cafe?" asks Eric, my Nephew from Chicago.

 

He is a lobbyist by trade and practice, most recently in service to Google's self-driving car project. He knows the answer to his question and is asking for the benefit of his Family.

On other visits he has dined at Dooky Chase's ~ the most revered black-creole restaurant in all Louisiana, perhaps the World.

Tonight we are gathered to celebrate his fifteenth wedding anniversary with his lovely Wife, Lia.

They are accompanied by their Daughters, Avery Marie, 8; and Rosalie Margaret, 10; and their ancient beached mariner of an Uncle ~ permanently home from the Sea.

I melt at first sight of my Grandnieces. The Darwinian thought of barnacled me and such fine flying fish leaping out of the same gene poole is dizzying.

The restaurant ~ tables separated by six feet ~ has never seemed more elegant.

It's very name, Brennan's, passed recently from the exclusive use of the Brennan's founding family branch ~ to Ralph Brennan ~ who once was banned by court order from using his own name on any of his restaurants.

In 2013 Ralph Brennan bought the Royal Street Brennan's and with it the court ordered exclusive rights to the Family name.

"It is as if Blind Justice took up the poetic pen," L. A. Norma says.

Our wait staff included a couple who speak German ~ something at which I excel around those who do not.

They are Swiss and this is their last week in America. "We wish to be home should borders close more tightly," Hans tells us. Uta takes the girls out to see the turtles in the courtyard.

We have a meal platonic if not divine. Can any dish be both? We should ask Tom Fitzmorris, our favorite New Orleans food critic, Norma suggests, "Or the Archbishop!"

Lia declares her Creole Tomato Salad with Sprigs of Dill the best ever. Of course Brennan's Turtle Soup is too. The girls declined the soup ~ on grounds they had aligned with the kingdom of Turtledom while in the courtyard.

Bananas Foster, the flambeau dish invented in this restaurant by the late Ella Brennan, was presented with flaming success. And a

Louisiana spun-sugar cake was the playful prop of the night. Inside the bouffant puff was a dense little teacake.

We walk the block back to our hotel rooms at the Omni Royal Orleans. 

Agreeing to meet next morning at the rooftop pool and bar.

I need to work on my Pulitzer, but have trouble with the Hotel's internet connection.  My Nephew fixes it for me, and they head out to explore night time New Orleans in its Virus constricted state ~ bars are closed, and with them most of The City music venues.

Drums, four stories below on Rue Saint Louis, draw me from my computer.  Our windows look across the street at the Louisiana Supreme Court, an institutional siren of a building calling out for the drummer's response, "Black Lives Matter!" 

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"The Donald isn't a racist," Norma says, blowing smoke out the window, "to him, No Lives Matter!"

The Supreme Court building is a massive white marble and terra-cotta Beaux Arts structure thought, when completed in 1910, not to fit colonial French Quarter architecture (which is Spanish not French, by the way).  It also is where Oliver Stone filmed Jim Garrison's office scenes for his 1991 assassination film, JFK.

I see PhD Mike among the marchers below.  He lived next door to Squalor Heights ~ my Faubourg Marigny garret ~ before Katrina.  

A City licensed card reader on Jackson Square, PhD Mike attended the University of New Orleans and obtained a doctorate in political 

science.  He was a favorite of reporters for his activism and credentials, and they gave him the nickname PhD Mike. 

The marchers maintain their distance passing our hotel for an hour or more.

   

Next morning we gather at the rooftop pool and bar. The view is sweet. My heart aches for everything lost and remembered ~ and what never came to pass.

Bloody Marys and caramelized bacon strips standing on end in little silver pencil cups fortify us for lunch.

We are meeting Lafayette friends next door, at Napoleon House.

Recently bought by Ralph Brennan and serving good food. "For the first time in three hundred years," Norma says.

After two bottles of wine we adjourn for Café Du Monde's beignets, café au lait, and a stroll through Saint Louis Cathedral and the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum.

"You wonder sometimes if they mightn't have had reciprocal referral fees," Norma says exhaling a plume of cigarette smoke large as her head.

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Next morning we met Steve Halpern, my fact check editor, for a farewell brunch at Cake Cafe And Bakery, a beloved Faubourg Marigny eatery closing this day for good.

Kermit Ruffins played his horn on the corner of Chartres and Spain as the house went dark.

Cake Cafe, K-Paul's, Upperline. All great restaurants recently closed by The Virus and destined to be missed forever.

"Vote for expanded health care," L. A. Norma says. "Vote for human rights. Vote for the guaranteed annual income. It is the only thing that will save us.

"Or die on the cross of golden greed with a thorn of silver pressed down on your head, and your COVID-19 facemask dangling round your neck."

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🍷

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* * *

 Copyright, 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections are welcome:

Comments 🖋😷

T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.org icebox magnets and such falderal

*  *  *
If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.org anytime. 

They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years.

~   ~   ~

 LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp

is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.org

and historically at

Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans,

publication of the

Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson

 of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

Subscribe@LEJ.org

Archives: www.LEJ.org

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

© 2020 Leonard Earl Johnson, 

All Rights Reserved 

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