✍ WHAT GOES UP / October 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 

⚓

⚓ ⚓

October 2024

💀💀

💀

💧

⭐ WHAT GOES UP ⭐

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

~ * ~     ~ * ~     ~ * ~

Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson

Amtrak  🚅.....

 👒

The train bearing our little klatch of 

Red-Hatted 

Women-for-The-Donald

wobbles off down the tracks leading from Lafayette, Louisiana to the Texas border.  

At a table under the club car's upper deck observation 

dome sits the large woman who boarded in Lafayette with a small following and the biggest red hat she could find in Dallas. She opens a green alligator briefcase exactly like the one Sylvia and Balthazar took to New Orleans, and extracts a clear cube inside of which sits a solidly frozen Republican Snowball.

"A manifest example of non- Global Warming." 

She continues, 

"To quote Our Fearless Leader: 

'Global Warming is a  

Liberal Wacky Wokey Hoaxy'."

She smiles at one of her acolytes and instructs her to pass pamphlets to three glum faced women watching from the table across the aisle. 

The three women are bound for Lake Charles. They hold red paper coffee cups liberally laced with Bourbon, and wear faces that are liberally skeptical. 

Now they live in Lafayette. They previously lived in Lake Charles and 

Capital One Bank's Bank One Tower
Lake Charles, Louisiana 

proudly worked at Capital One Bank's Bank One Tower   ~  ~  at twenty-two stories the tallest building between Lafayette and Houston. They are taking the train back home to witness The Tower being brought down in a highly publicized implosion, following years of FEMA inertia, and private investor reluctance to reopening the building after Hurricanes Laura and Delta blew out its windows and closed it down but left it standing. The implosion will not be so sparing.

"Makes you think FEMA and investors might know more 'bout  Global Warming than Republicans do." one of the former Lake Charles residents says to the acolyte handing her a pamphlet.

 🥤 🥤 🥤

Meanwhile in Lafayette, at the Rosa Parks Amtrak stop, Sylvia and Balthazar cross Jefferson Street for Rêve Coffee Roasters. There they are greeted by their friend, The Mulato, who asks if

 they brought Stormy Daniels back with them for Halloween.

Photo credit:
Leonard Earl Johnson

"No," Sylvia says. 

"But Balthazar did buy a Trump Voodoo Doll for twenty-dollars, from a street picker at a gas station under the Broad Street overpass."

Balthazar holds up the little orange headed doll with a long hat pin through its bloated chest.  The Mulato sits their coffee on the counter and laughs.

Balthazar picks up the cups and they move out to the curbside tables. Sylvia unlocks their broken green alligator brief case and transfers it and its empty snowball cube to a Rouses Supermarket bag. 

Shortly an Uber driver pulls up, takes the bag and drives off down Jefferson Street. The Street is under an early Fall canopy of browning 

Spring budding, Bald Cypress Trees
Jefferson Street, Lafayette, Louisiana
Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson 

Bald Cypress Trees gathering deciduous needles round their knees, and around storm drains up and down The Hub City's Great Art Way. 

~ www.LEJ.world ✍ 

📖

💛 

Copyright, 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

~ to be continued ~

🗣😷

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

~    ~    ~

Lagniappe du Jour

💜  💚  💛

💧

 
💜 💚

💛

Implosion Day, Bank One Tower
Lake Charles, Louisiana

Jefferson Street Cypress Knees
 The Great Art Way, Lafayette, Louisiana
Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson

💜  💚  💛

💧

Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson

~    ~    ~

💜  💚  💛

💧

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 folderal ...

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

⚓ A Dream Train Makes Good Walls / September 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 

⚓

⚓ ⚓

September 2024

💀💀

💀

💧

⭐ A Dream Train Makes Good Walls ⭐

Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series

BY  Leonard Earl Johnson

💜 💚

💛

💧

🗣😷

© 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

~ * ~     ~ * ~     ~ * ~

(The Dream)

Aboard the Sunset Limited, dozing in our recliner seats during the last hour before reaching Lafayette. We dream of Gandy Dancers. 

Gandy Dancers definition ~

Gangs of mostly black men using muscle alone, dancing heavy iron rails into an alignment that joined the nation by an iron umbilical cord linking West Coast gold to East Coast greed.  With call-and-response vocal accompaniment.  

🎵

"Why not," tweets The Donald, "a wall 

Gandy Dancers

of rails stretching from California to Florida?  Strung with trains thick as bamboo and hard as wartime lies!"  

The Donald offers to show his bone spurs to assembled reporters. They turn him down. 

"See, folks, fake news!" he tweets. "If  the Dem's V. P. demonstrated how to clean an assault weapon, press rats would be on it like editors on cheese.

"But my war wounds?  Nothing!"

A tuft of grey-gold hair blows down from atop The Donald's head and hangs by a thread before his open mouth. His eyes cross to focus on the tuft. Then, he commences chewing on it. 

"Move over, Mexico," he speaks between the strands. "I'm hearing a lot of people saying it."

courtesy of Amtrak

He twitters, "Let's see'em beaners cross that." 

Ivanka brushes his hair and strokes his wallet. Her husband, Jared Kushner unspools backchannel lines to the Kremlin, shielded behind his genetically pure and self-proclaimed uber-patriotic leader and Father-in-law, "The Donald."

⚖

"A Supreme Court protected back-channel!" boasts Stephen Miller, balding head-gargoyle to The Donald.  

William Barr, one-time U. S. Attorney General, and sometimes Trump Family consigliere, nods agreement on both sides of his face. 

Behind them a righteous chorus of Evangelical Preachers sings in hypocritical jubilation, "Heaven's Just a Sin Away!"🔊

Our dream family tableau descends on a golden escalator in a manner befitting American nostalgia:  

"Streets paved with gold," 

Barr calls out, like some dreamy field hand of yore.

🎵

Miller responds, 

"Immigrants done been told."

Out in front of them, bent-back and whisking away obstacles in their path, are Republican Party regulars led by stunned-face Moscow Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky. Pulled behind him on a velvet pedestal stands Nikki Haley, of South Carolina, wearing a Cheshire Cat grin and a tarnished golden leash. Next, rolling about on the pavement giggling their patriotic support, comes Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and George Santos, New York Republican once removed. 

Toe-and-heel men follow, then spokes-critter lawyers for powerful chambers of yes-and-maybe contributors. They clear the walk as it grows more shadowy with each step of their boots and sweep of their brooms. 

"For the goal of smaller decentralized government," Moscow Mitch laughs, slapping the fat former Attorney General across his ample back. The fat former Attorney General shakes his wattle and hoots out puffs of laughter. The two look rather like broken-down old steam engines loping along the rails.

"After us?" 

Moscow Mitch calls out.

🎵

"Who cares what floods!" 

the former A.G. responds. 

They giggle, waddle, wobble, and fart off down their goldbrick road.

Back in the shadows quietly walks Mike Johnson of Louisiana's Fourth District, uttering nary a word critical of Trump nor Trumpeter.

Kushner's 'backchannel cable' spools on then off again ~ fully out of anyone's oversight.

❤

👀

👀👀

👀👀👀

👀👀

👀

💀

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A mustachioed face claiming National Security Portfolio opens an electric notebook.  A Google map glows into focus showing Roseate Spoonbill migration routes.

Roseate Spoonbill

"With no fear of blow back," the mustache whispers in The Donald's ear. 

"We can lace migratory feeding sites with chemical-castration drugs that will threaten a final solution to their endangered numbers!

"This," he tells The Donald while leaning so close his mustache takes on moisture from The Donald's nibbled hair.

"... this will convince the last doubters that America means business. 

"Mad business, yes, but business!" he adds.

"A plausible crazy man can win the game," The Donald twitters. "Ask those New York bankers of mine!"  

Ivanka brushes, smiles, and speaks not.  The Son-in-law spools and speaks not.  The escalator escalates.

Amtrak 🚅

We awake from our dream with the real Conductor calling: 

"Lafayette next stop!"

 

 

Sylvia stretches her arms overhead, and steps off the train and to the side ~ away from the traffic pouring out behind her. Lafayette is the train's only smoke-stop between New Orleans and Houston.  

Sunset Limited, Amtrak #1 
New Orleans to Los Angeles 
Smoke Stop, Lafayette Louisiana

👒

"And there are good people on both ends of the lynch mob's rope," a large woman wearing a big red hat tells a small following of similarly crowned women. They are smoking cigarettes and heading to the train bound for Houston.

~ www.LEJ.world   

✍️

 Copyright, 2024, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

~ to be continued ~

🗣😷

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