⚓Part Three, Snowball in the Sun / July 2024

 ~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher.

Created A. I. free

by Leonard Earl Johnson 

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world ✍

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved 

⚓

⚓ ⚓

July 2024

💀💀

💀

💧

Dedicated to 

Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson 1936-2024

New Orleans City Council, District C (French Quarter and Algiers), plus At Large.

PART THREE

⭐ Snowball in the Sun⭐

Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series

BY  Leonard Earl Johnson

  www.LEJ.world 

 
💜 💚

💛

💧

🗣😷

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

~ * ~     ~ * ~     ~ * ~

His Grace, the elderly TV-preacher from Baton Rouge

"Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what you are told.

Religion is doing what you are told, regardless of what is right."

~ H. L. Mencken

  

🌐

Sylvia and Balthazar balance the green alligator briefcase on gray rick rack at the foot of the Moonwalk Steps leading to the Mississippi River ~ from The Battery atop the levee with its never used Civil War cannon.

  Sylvia washes the Republican Snowball Cube in the muddy water, while Balthazar shares a joint being passed between two Vietnamese-creole skateboard boys. The boys ask Balthazar why Louisiana does not celebrate Bastille Day. Balthazar does not really know. 

 The boys, who speak English, French, and some Vietnamese, say their Fathers, who speak only French and Vietnamese, brought the holiday with them to Louisiana from Vietnam. Balthazar thinks, how crazy that sounds. Then, how crazy that war was.      

A giant ship from the Port of Shanghai heads upriver to the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal. 

His Grace, the elderly TV-preacher from Baton Rouge, and Stormy Daniels watch from the levee, standing next to the virgin cannon. 

He speaks to a flock no longer visible nor inclined to listen:

"A.I., Artificial Intelligence is nothing less than the epiphany of a new religion with claims of infallible Truth hidden behind an altar of electronic curtains. 

"Presented by new priests cloaked in the white vestments of science.

"Perhaps the World's new modern Saviors." 

Stormy Daniels sneers:

 

"Or perhaps its newest Serpent!"  

 🍎🐍

 😎

The New Orleans Beltway train sounds its whistle and pulls its impenetrable iron curtain into view. Routinely momentarily separating each side of the levee.

 "Almost never running over a tourist," Stormy says.

  This short line rail system runs up and down The River connecting warehouses to outbound rail yards. It carriers no passengers. Not since some Yankee-hire director used railway funds to outfit a posh carriage, hire a Pullman butler, and take his family and friends on riverside rides, with wine and boudin sausages served on silver trays.  

Balthazar cocks his ear at the train's whistle, and reckons they should be making their reservations west. On Amtrak's ole number one, The Sunset Limited, America's oldest continuously operating train, since 1894, and the first to bear a personified name.

🚬

   "Republicans and their traveling snowball,"

 Balthazar snorts.

    "Their problem is they don't know how to govern. Only how to wedge and fight. 

"Then scavenge the rubble, leaving their superstitious followers angry and bewildered on a field of broken pitchforks and fallen torches.

 

"What profit thee, if you scuttle your own ship to steal your own brass."

Balthazar is not only a fisherman but also a poet. In a land where still today poets commonly walk the levee.

The whistle blows again and the train pulls away.

~ to be continued ~

www.LEJ.world  

🗣😷

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

~    ~    ~

Lagniappe du Jour

💜   💚   💛

💜  💚  💛

💧

 
💜 💚

💛

~    ~    ~

💜  💚  💛

💧

The Ladies Wore Red,

July 2021

Origin Story

of

The Red Women Warriors Stories

💞

 

Go here for 
T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.world icebox magnets and such falderal ...

If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.world 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.world,

Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
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

 www.LEJ.world ✍

🗣😷

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

⚓Part Two - Snowball in the Sun / June 2024

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher.

Created A. I. free

by Leonard Earl Johnson 

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world ✍

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved 

⚓

⚓ ⚓

June 2024

💀💀

💀

💧 

Part Two

⭐ Snowball in the Sun⭐

Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series

BY  Leonard Earl Johnson

              www.LEJ.world 

 
💜 💚

💛

💧

🗣😷

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

💞

~ * ~     ~ * ~     ~ * ~

The Wrinkle Room door swings open framing the large, well distributed proportions of Stephanie Gregory Clifford, a.k.a., Stormy Daniels, the one-time straight-A high school newspaper editor, from the northside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  

Her silhouette falls on the brick floor, outlined in a noonday light rarely seen inside this dim room where earlier elderly men gave folding money to young things dangling from stripper polls.  

This morning, hounds of the Louisiana press following the strong odor of a good story and free food,

 pack the doorway behind Stormy D. 

"Perhaps a Pulitzer-worthy saga of the lost-way-found class," two cub reporters from NOLa.com tell each other. 

"If not," shrugs a third cub, "free food and beer!"  

Balthazar offers hunks of Muffuletta dripping olive oil in the glass of a bearded old man wearing sun glasses and a grin.  The man speaks Cajun French and lights his cigar from a Zippo flame extended at the hand of Paula Jones, who is in town from Arkansas for a hairdresser's workshop at the Morial Convention Center. 

"Yes, it was sex," the old man tells her, "but we all have it.

"Some trade it for fun.  More accurately for dinner, a license, a home and stability. Others dicker, ever shifting, transactional for what they want more than sex ~ domination! Think of the Taliban. Hell, think of the Republicans!" 

He pulls on his cigar, drinks from his glass, thanks Balthazar for the Muffuletta and hands him his card.  He is a retired television evangelist, another philosopher from Ferriday, Louisiana, home of Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, Jimmy Swaggart, and the late ABC-TV anchor, Howard K. Smith. Now, this holy man of the electronic cross lives in Baton Rouge, and is seen regularly in New Orleans at the Kelsto Club Lounge, across from Antoine's Restaurant.

Sylvia asks His Grace and Paula Jones to stand with Stormy Daniels and Gennifer Flowers as they unveil the Republican Party's answer to Climate Change: A perpetually frozen Snow Ball, like the one they passed round the United States Senate promoting the party's Non - Global Warming Theory. 

Climbing on the bar amid the Muffuletta debris Stormy lifts up the clear crystal cube.  A small puff of what at first looks like frost floats out of the green alligator briefcase.  The puff is not frost but actually the dying gasp from the coal-dust generated freezer unit built into the green briefcase.

Condensation trickles down the outside of the cube.  Inside, a growing puddle floats a small round...

"What is that?" one of the cub reporters asks. 

It appears to be a small ball of ice, perhaps melted down from one of those large ice balls fashionably favored in today's upscale watering holes, lounges, and The Wrinkle Room.

💧🙏💧

💧

"Ah, 

bless us all in our withering Final Days,"

says the elderly evangelist, raising his prayerful hands over the congregation gobbling and quaffing in communion with their unquenchable faith. 

A lion of New Orleans commercial television leans into the ear of Peggy Scott Laborde, his local PBS counterpart, and says:

"I think Senator Inhofe's

 Republican Snowball

 is melting."

The snowball, reduced to a bit of flotsam, drips condensation on the Muffuletta wrappings and

 scraps.  

The three apostles of the flesh look at each other and burst into laughter. The Evangelist draws on his cigar and blows smoke.  

Sylvia and Balthazar gather the briefcase and flee through the door into the light.

~ to be continued next month ~

www.LEJ.world 

🗣😷

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

~    ~    ~

Lagniappe du Jour

 💚
💜 💚 💛
💜   💚   💛

💜  💚  💛 

💜 💚

💛

~    ~    ~

💜  💚  💛

💧

The Ladies Wore Red,

July 2021

Origin Story

of

The Red Women Warriors Series

💞

 

Go here for 
T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.world icebox magnets and such falderal ...

If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.world 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.world,

Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
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

 www.LEJ.world ✍

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

⚓ Snowball In The Sun, Part One / May 2024

  ~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher.

Created A. I. free

by Leonard Earl Johnson 

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world ✍

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved 

⚓

⚓ ⚓

May 2024

💀💀

💀

💧

⭐ Snowball in the Sun⭐

Part One

Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series

BY  Leonard Earl Johnson

              www.LEJ.world 

 
💜 💚

💛

💧

🗣😷

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

💞

~ * ~     ~ * ~     ~ * ~

Snowball in the Sun

 

by Leonard Earl Johnson

~ * ~    ~ * ~    ~ * ~

The boastful engineer's long pull on the whistle announces Amtrak's ole # 2, smackdab on time for its 5:12 p.m. arrival from Houston, Texas, at the Rosa Parks Transportation Centré, downtown Lafayette, Louisiana.

The Mulatto, the so nicknamed barista at Rêve Coffee Roasters, says to Hildegarde Bottlebrush,

"That's not something you see everyday, Amtrickle running ontime!"

The two women cross Jefferson Street heading for the passenger loading platform.

🚆🚅

 

Aboard the train, Sylvia tucks the green alligator briefcase ~ containing the Republican Snowball ~ under her footrest, and stretches out atop the last recliner lounge seat in the last carriage on The Sunset Limited, Eastbound for New Orleans.

Balthazar moves into the seat next to Sylvia, touching her green briefcase with the toe of his shrimper's white rubber boot as he does.  Balthazar is a poet / fisherman and his white rubber boots have sparkling plastic jewels hot glued round the tops. One, a yellow diamond, is a secret lockbox. It brushes briefly but sharply against her left ankle.

The train pulls out and they settle into their seats waving to Hildegarde, who gave them a ride to the station.  The Mulatto hands Hildegarde one of the two paper cups she is holding and they both wave the train off from the platform.

⭐Stormy Daniels⭐

 Pride of Baton Rouge

Sylvia and Balthazar are headed to New Orleans for a meeting tomorrow with Stormy Daniels ~ the pornography industries' award winning erotic film star from Baton Rouge, currently appearing in a New York curtain call performance trimming Donald Trump's presidential poll.

Their meeting has been arranged by Gennifer Flowers, hostess-emeritus of the Kelsto Club Lounge, in the French Quarter, across from Antoine's Restaurant, on Rue Saint Louis.  

Flowers was once seen daily frolicking above the fold in splashy newsprint about her acquaintance with President Bill Clinton ~ when they all lived in Arkansas, and Hillary was a curiosity to everyone. 

"You'll get good government when you pull the politicians off the booty, the bottle, and the boobs, huh," Balthazar says.

Silvia glares at him and slaps a circular sticker to his shirt collar.  It reads, "Love America Love The Donald."

The meeting with Stormy Daniels, a.k.a., Stephanie Gregory Clifford, is set for high noon at The Wrinkle Room on Rue Chartres.

"Louisiana made, Louisiana proud!"  the Mayor-President of the state's capital city sarcastically remarks on Jim Engster's Talk Louisiana show.  "Makes pride swell in their hearts." 

The erudite master of the high wire microphone replies, "Or somewhere lower."  Switchboards in all sixty-four Parishes of the Sportsman's Paradise instantly light up. 

💜💚💛

 💧 

The Sunset Limited slips alongside the Superdome and comes to a full stop on time, inside New Orleans ironically named Union Terminal.  They gather carry-on bags and the green alligator briefcase and catch the red streetcar to the French Quarter.  

The next morning Balthazar removes one of the hundred dollar banknotes from his right boot's secret yellow jewel lockbox.  The money was given him by The Rector of Lafayette's Cathedral of Saint John The Evangelist, for a little porcelain rocking chair memento of the JFK assassination.  He places the greenback on the counter, and it is instantly snatched up by the saleslady at, "Home of the Muffuletta," Central Grocery on Decatur, across from the Mississippi River levee.  In exchange, she hands him a stack of red and white butcher paper wrapped sandwiches.

ণ

Sylvia and Balthazar take a pedicab to the Wrinkle Room and spread the unwrapped sandwiches atop the bar, in hopes the press will be lured to see two famed Louisiana Cupids unveiling Sylvia's Republican Snowball ~ and eat muffulettas and beer for free.

The door swings open and a gash of noontime light cuts across the brick floor.

    

~ To be continued next month ~

  © 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

🗣😷

 

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

~    ~    ~

Lagniappe du Jour

💜   💚   💛

💜  💚  💛

💧

 
💜 💚

💛

~    ~    ~

💜  💚  💛

💧

The Ladies Wore Red,

July 2021

Origin Story

of

The Red Women Warriors Stories

💞

 

Go here for 
T-Shirts, Koozies, LEJ.world icebox magnets and such falderal ...

If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.world 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.world,

Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER,
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

 www.LEJ.world ✍

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here