✍THE FIRST CHRISTMAS AFTER KATRINA /January 2026
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⭐A Christmas Story⭐
THE FIRST
AFTER KATRINA
photo credit, Mark Konikoff
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January
2026
~ Fiction ~
Roman à clef, cher
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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Leonard Earl Johnson / Photo Credit: James Wise
💔LEJ's Louisiana,
Yours Truly in a Swamp
a monthly e-column
by
Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
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| LEJ 2006 / Photo credit: Frank Parsley |
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The First Christmas After Katrina
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by Leonard Earl Johnson
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© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved.
Originally published in 2005 in a slightly different version
The month is December.
The bar is on Saint Charles Avenue, in Uptown New Orleans. It has recently reopened after The Storm, and has tried since Thanksgiving to coax Yuletide spirit from the flood weary City.
Their effort has been great, but the task has been greater.
The water is gone, but so are most of the customers. In time the bar will fill again. But not this shirtsleeve warm night, December 17, 2005 ~ nearly four months since Hurricane Katrina took landfall, on August 29.
The City street cars are silent.
Now and then a lone vehicle scurries down some darkened street towards destinations not obvious to onlookers ~ had there been onlookers. Military convoys make up the only traffic moving regularly on this or any other street. Followed by armies of Spanish-speaking civilians, hired by FEMA to rake and push the massive debris mounds ever closer to the curb.
🚦Neither stop lights 🚦
nor street lights blink a bright red and green
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| After Katrina / Coleen Perilloux Landry |
Everywhere houses lay splayed open like huge fish with innards spilling out for the world to see.
Occasionally a cascade of generator powered Christmas lights pour over some brave heart's intact gallery. They cast faint light on refrigerators sitting along the curb wrapped in industrial strength tape and the sickeningly sweet smell of a Mafia funeral.
Inside the bar, blue snowflakes hang from rafters, along with toy gray helicopters lifting little plastic refugees from little blue-tarped roofs. The bartender sports a red baseball cap with cotton pasted around the rim of the bill. A tiny silver bell dangles from the front.
A great effort, indeed! But the bell rings hollow and the bartender looks like some Papa Noel rescuing the hopeless with promises of gifts not always delivered.
He rode down on this unique train to show support for Arlo Guthrie's Friends Benefit Tour for Louisiana Mu
sicians.
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| Pre Amtrak livery |
The Amtrak special stopped for fundraiser concerts ~ "Out on the south bound odyssey... all the way to New Orleans."
This night, my friend and I are making our donations at the tour's last stop, at Tipitina's on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon Avenue.
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I open the French doors and spot my friend at the far end of the bar. He is clearly overdressed, and clearly over served.
He is wearing a camel hair topcoat, a gray wool suit, a white cotton shirt and a red silk tie. A fast-paced Chicago uniform, in a flooded New Orleans parade not too fast in the best of times. These are not the best of times.
A mural behind the bar twinkles with tiny blue lights sprinkled over a snowy hillock of white deer nibbling mistletoe berries dotted among the evergreen pines. The mistletoe berries are represented by tiny red lights.
"Mistletoe is poison," my friend is telling the bartender, in his booming Chicago voice, "and its berries are white!"
A brewery representative from Saint Louis, Missouri is also behind the bar. He is wearing a sport coat that looks to be made from Anheuser-Busch labels, and he is passing out samples of Red Wolf Beer. My friend takes one and lifts it in my direction. I move down the bar and accept the brew.
"Must be a Santa after all," my friend booms to the largely empty room.
From a green felt-covered table, an elderly couple often seen here before The Storm, looks up and smiles. No one is dealing. Their cards lay face up. We tip our beer towards them. They are wearing evening clothes and his gold studs, set with diamonds, flash back at the mural. She is ash blonde, well-painted, and wearing a red sequined gown. She unzips the gentleman's tuxedo.
My friend and I both say in stage whisper that she is an expensive date.
The man laughs and asks, "How better to spend my FEMA money?" She slaps him playfully.
"Where is the vice-squad?" my friend asks in a real whisper.
The bartender sits down two more Red Wolfs and says, "In diapers with Senator Vitter, at the Canal Street Brothel?" We all snort and laugh like Americans at the sexual peccadilloes of our betters.
My friend is hanging his observations with the heavy tinsel of Chicago bluntness, "Christmas in New Orleans is not like going over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house, is it?"
"It's a good system," I say. "We, not Chicago, are 'The City That Works!'"
He snorts again, hearing Chicago's famous motto laid up against New Orleans' famous work ethic.
"Cops protecting brothel patrons," I say.
"And people in evening clothes entertaining themselves for free, he adds.
We both look back at the elderly couple and laugh. My friend mutters, "Maybe not free, but a lot less than the cops charge."
The beer rep hands us two more Red Wolfs. He wants to finish and leave. My friend asks him, "Shouldn't you call this stuff Red Riding Hood?" None of us are sure what he means by this, but we all laugh the laugh required of our station.
The beer distributor gives us two full six packs of Red Wolf and smiles, "Please take them, I need to find one of those scarce airplane seats out."
The bartender says, "Allow me to put that on ice for you."
I get up to go to the restroom as my Chicago friend yanks a hanging blue snowflake from its tether. He bellows at the bartender, "What fathead told you to hang blue snowflakes in this swamp-flooded city?" The bartender is startled and blurts back, "The fatheads in Chicago who own this bar!" Of course he does not know he is talking to fathead number one.
The Saint Louis beer man smiles weakly and moves towards the French doors. Through the glass we see a waiting limousine with rental license plates. The man in the tuxedo falls from his chair. The woman in red helps him to his feet and they stumble outside balancing themselves by holding on to articles of each other's clothing. They lunge into the limo and motion for the beer man to join them. He shrugs and climbs in.
Coming out of the restroom I drop a quarter into a slot machine. The last of my FEMA money whirls away. I do not care. It is Christmas and my friend is in Town to wine and dine us for three fat ~ if somewhat shipwrecked ~ days.
We have known each other since the Fabled Sixties in Carbondale, where Guthrie's special train stopped to play at Southern Illinois University. He likes having, as he puts it, "A writer bum for a friend." I like having a rich one.
In a wastebasket beside the slot machines, I spot seven paper teddy bear tree ornaments. Each with the name across its brown belly of someone lost to Hurricane Katrina. I pick up one and read the name out loud, "Senegal Breaux." I gather them all and stuff them in my shirt pocket.
Back at the bar I sip my beer in silence. The bartender smarting from my friend's harsh words, punches up Linda Ronstadt singing Blue Bayou, on the jukebox. He pushes a remote-control button next to the cash register and a lone gray helicopter opens its bomb bay doors and sends red and green glitter drifting down into our beers.
We stand to leave, and my friend tells the bartender to keep the remaining Red Wolfs. He gives him a two-hundred dollar tip and his business card. "Tell those fatheads in Chicago to jump in Lake Michigan, New Orleans is in a swamp not a snowy wonderland!"
Outside, my friend stares at the empty curb. "Where the Hell's my driver?"
I say, "Forget it, let's walk."
He slips out of his topcoat and hands it to a bewildered Mexican in
blue jeans and a t-shirt that reads:
FEMA
Find Every Mexican Available
We walk towards Tip's silently passing mounds of rubble. My friend accepts a paper teddy bear and holds it up to ambient Christmas light.
"Ah, Christ, what am I supposed to do about this?" Then he hands it to a pair of passing National Guardsmen.
He turns back to me and says, "Let's distribute them like handbills."It seems all those in Town tonight are headed to Tipitina's.
We start singing, "We three kings from Orient are..." Someone passing asks, "Where is your other king?" We hand them the teddy bear named Senegal Breaux, and keep on our way, "Bearing gifts we travel so far..."
We start singing, "We three kings from Orient are..." Someone passing asks, "Where is your other king?" We hand them the teddy bear named Senegal Breaux, and keep on our way, "Bearing gifts we travel so far..."
Copyright, 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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~Lagniappe du Jour~
⭐Two Christmas Stories⭐
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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 It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana .JPG) © 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved |
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