LEJ's Blog: 11/01/2023

About Me

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.

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

⚓ Snowball at Rêve / November 2023

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NOVEMBER

2023

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher

by Leonard Earl Johnson

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

www.LEJ.world ✍

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

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Snowball at Rêve

by Leonard Earl Johnson

~ www.LEJ.world

Sylvia stood outside Rêve Coffee Roasters, On Jefferson Street, "The Great Art Way" of Lafayette, and opened

Abandoned Railroad Baggage Wagon
Photo credit, Charles M. Johnson

the green alligator briefcase, as Dillard had instructed her to do.

She removed the clear plastic cube containing the Republican Party's Snowball Project snowball. Shipped to her and Dillard from Washington, and handed to them leaving The Rectory by Hildegarde Bottlebrush, housekeeper to The Rector.

"Clear proof," according to Senator James Inhofe, Republican, Oklahoma (served 1993-2023) that climate change is nothing to fret.

"Merely an anomaly," added a trained spokes-critter for the well-oiled mostly Republican, Louisiana Delegation. Ever more emboldened, as they are ever more imbedded inside the godless gun and petroleum soaked D. C. Beltway.

Soaked by what for momentary clarity we will call, "money!"

As one elderly Louisiana Senator ~ Oxford University educated ~ member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, with the incongruous name of John Kennedy, pointed out in his folksy manner of speaking, greeting depositors in line at his perpetual Campaign Headquarters.

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"It's just a big ole learnin' curve, sugar dumplin'!

"Heck fizzle,

'Non Global Warming' would be more accurately foggy."

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The good Senator said this to television cameras watching him scratching his back against the doorframe, like it was a barnyard fence post, while an aide departed for the Senator's bank, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with that morning's lessons.

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Sidewalk Seating at Rêve
photo credit, Leonard Earl Johnson

Sylvia placed the cube, "For all to see," atop her curbside table, and sat herself in the chair facing the railroad station at the Rosa Parks Transportation

Centré.

Its handsome clock tower

keeping watch over everyone.

Rosa Parks Clock Tower

Sunlight made the pristine white snowball inside the cube sparkle.

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The waitress with dreadlocks and a Café au lait complexion sat cups and a glass French press coffee maker beside the sparkling snowball.

"That some softball trophy?" the waitress asked, pushing down the plunger on the coffee press, and pouring the black liquid into white and grey Rêve cups.

Silvia explained it was not. It was a snowball kept frozen in her coaldust-fired green alligator briefcase, "To illuminate the Republican mantra,

"Government that governs best is government that doesn't govern at all."

A crackerjack crackling snap of the oracle whip from a 'Neue Ultrarechte' (German for New Rightwing) Republican Party. American made and grown mighty by the old-time method of chaos, and vigilante rule.

"Pass me that fiery cross, there, son!" the waitress said to no one in particular, as she returned inside.

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Sylvia passed cards out espousing The Message Republican to any who would accept one. She even poured a coffee for one young man radiant with the confident air and aroma of youth ~ and a blue skate board.

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The Skateboarder accepted, and accidently splashed hot coffee on the Snowball Cube. Paper napkins sopped up the spill. Sunlight dried the cube and set the Snowball inside shimmering. A small drop of moisture rolled down its curve and formed a tiny puddle.

~ www.LEJ.world

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Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

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Lagniappe du Jour

Sixty years ago,
this November 22, 2023
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For extra insight,
in your chapbooks make two columns.
List everything improved since JFK's murder.
In the other column list everything that has grown worse.
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