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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.

Tuesday, September 01, 2020

βš“ 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

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Β© 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved




Birthdays 

and Hurricanes

by Leonard Earl Johnson
LEJ.org✍

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β€œThe mail, that great link between minds, today penetrates into the heart of the wilderness."

Alexis de Tocqueville  /  1805 - 1859


πŸ’œπŸ’šπŸ’›



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. 


πŸ’§βš“πŸ’§ 

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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 EmojiEmojiEmoji

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 Copyright, 2020, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved






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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.

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 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

It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson
 of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana


Archives: www.LEJ.org

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Β© 2020 Leonard Earl Johnson, 

All Rights Reserved 

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