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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, April 01, 2025

✍ Easter on the River of Bourbon Street / April 2025

 Best viewed for color contrast on a computer or phone screen with dark background.

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher!

Created AI-free

by Leonard Earl Johnson 

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana


 www.LEJ.world 

⚓ 


Photo credit: Leonard Earl Johnson
    
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LEJ's 
Louisiana

a monthly e-column at 

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💛



Yours Truly in a Swamp

April 2025


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Easter

 on the River 

of Bourbon Street

by 

Leonard Earl Johnson

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson,  All Rights Reserved
 
Jackson Square, NOLa    
 photo credit:  J. R. Tullos

After Easter MassL. A. Norma and I left the piercing 
witch hat towers of Saint Louis Cathedral and headed for the soaring two-story balconies of Bourbon Street. 

There we were lifted on the chaliced wings of whiskey. Served from temples bearing names like Bourbon Pub and Oz.

T
here are nightclubs named 'Oz' and 'Pub' on streets like this in most every port city. But only New Orleans has them flanking such an intersection as 
Bourbon and Rue Saint Ann. 

In the world-famous French Quarter
 

𝌾  𝌾

It is here that red hatted tourists turn back to their hotels and edited narratives.  A tourist-drawn line in the cultural sands of Big Swamp City.

  A line once crossed mostly by gay men.  Then, gay men and gay women.  Today?  A mix of those mentioned and those who might read about them and follow their beacon through the lighted screens of YouTube.

 "L. A. Norma lit a Camel Cigarette, and said, "Without a nit wit's concern over how those at the next table might trip the Freudian fantastics."  

Allured by Louisiana's polyglot accents, today's Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's and Marco Polo's follow the path.

"The wafting 'odeur douce,' the aromatic linguistic Sirens,L. A. Norma says, as we crossed the line. 

We found seats on the balcony above the Pub's swinging shingle, and watched the masses below with their arms upraised in jubilation of Christ's Resurrection ~ or more beads.  

There, touched by Easter's spirit and the elfin Mr. Booze, we saw Jesus walking down this street of sin. He wore a crown of thorns over His long black hair. He wore sandals, too, and was naked save for a loincloth cut like the one in the paintings.  He was thin and looked like He might be Filipino or might be Timothée Chalamet ~ but mostly He looked like Jesus. Everyone on the balcony saw Him.

The Battle of Bourbon Street
 
Norma exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and said:

 "Forget the Crucifixion, skip the fasting and 
go straight for the Resurrection!"

Everyone laughed and glowed in the righteous irony of her thought. 


True to His Book, Jesus was down there on Bourbon Street slumming with the local rabble, and reveling in their Easter experience.  As were they in His.


"Their experience is a damn sight easier'n His,"  L. A. Norma said, tapping her index finger against the tiny silver figure hanging on her necklace.  

"The Cross?!  A two-thousand year old Roman gismo for torture elevated to a symbol of The Son of God"

Dangling now on a silver chain hung around her neck.  

"It's madness, the American Donald Trump or the English King James editing the Gospels for their own damn politics!"
 
Norma snorted, exhaled, and guffawed.

💭
 🚬 💭

A few years back, a few blocks up the street, the late Chris Owens ~ an elderly Bourbon Street dancer and nightclub owner with staying power ~ conducted her annual Easter Parade with self-anointed grand-marshal David Duke crashing the street party. 

"It's Bourbon Street," 
L. A. Norma said, 
"you don't need no stinkin' invitation!"

 A brass band made-up of midgets played along, while elder ladies of the snatched-bodies cult and a half dozen or so young bunnies in pastel furs marched down the street and rode atop pedicabs throwing Spring colored underpants and beads

 Easter maidens, Margareta and Chiquita Bergen
None among this human eddy gave any notice to our walking Jesus, 
except a tourist family standing against the downstream wall of then Pete Fountain's (now Club Oz) directly across the street from where we sat. 

The father was wide-eyed. The girl, about seventeen, waved up to us. The pubescent son giggled and hugged his mother. Then along came Jesus headed straight for them. The tourist mother looked offended. She gathered her brood and paddled them off back towards Canal Street. Jesus did not seem bothered by their departure. 

"After all," Norma said, "He wrote the book on forgiveness." 


The sinners went on with their sinning.  The Pope appeared on the Oz balcony. He stood directly above where the tourist family had been and he was dressed head-to-toe in yellow and white satin. He blessed all who passed beneath him. He looked across the River of Bourbon Street and blessed us, too. We waved, and he motioned us over. We crossed the street and took our seats at the Pope's table.


We looked back at the Bourbon Pub balcony. The Pope, ever wise, said, "You cannot see yourself on the balcony you have just left." We had all had a lot to drink. 

The Pope handed out Wild Turkey and iced water, "Holy Water from the Holy River," he said.

Three real nuns, in old-fashioned black-and-white habits, came trotting down Rue Saint Ann, returning from a later mass. They passed our intersection headed towards Cathedral School. The Sea of Sinners parted. We all cheered.

"What would they think of seeing Jesus," L. A. Norma asked of no one in particular. She leaned over the balcony rail and yelled to the crowd below for Carnival beads. A photographer looked up and took her picture. I yelled down asking if he had seen Jesus. "No!" he shouted back. Would he like to? "Yes, of course, yes!"

The Pope laid his hands on my shoulders, and said, "Watch that woman, do not let her fall over the communion rail."

 Green Carnival beads landed on the Pope's pointy hat. They looked interesting, but he took them off and tossed them to two college boys on the street below. Norma told him the two boys should have opened their pants. He frowned and said sternly, "This is not Carnival!"

I said, "It is not Laughingyette either," but the Pope did not hear me ~ he was gone to find Jesus. Norma looked past my forehead and talked of far-ranging things.

The Pope returned without Jesus. He was balancing fresh drinks and passed them round the table. "He can not be found in this wicked den," said The Pope, handing out Wild Turkey and water.

When we looked up from our drinks we saw Him again. He was at our old balcony table across the street, waving. We waved back. His naked arms were lifted heavenward. His loincloth flapped in the whiskey-flavored air. The man with the camera jumped and shouted, "Your cross, your cross, show us your cross!"

Jesus looked down and bellowed: "Don't you know what holiday this is? It is Easter, I have no cross!" 

 LEJ wearing a younger man's beard
Atop the Presbyter copula, Jackson Square
During Katrina evacuation, 2005-06
The Pope, assorted communion-rail leaners, and other followers passing on the street below shouted, "Is it Carnival?"

It wasn't.  It was Easter on the River of Bourbon Street.


---------------


Copyright, 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved

🗣😷

For more L. E. J.'s Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp go to 



If  you wish to read any month's story go to the archives at www.LEJ.world (stories are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years.) 

Hope you do, I love talking with you,
Leonard Earl Johnson,
Columnist to the elderly and early weary. 


© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved.

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Lagniappe du Jour

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Next Month's Column

Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series
              www.LEJ.world http://www.LEJ.org


💜💚💛💜💚💛

Old Man on The River, New Orleans

Old Man with Sunday's Bunny
Jefferson Street, Lafayette

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© 2025 Leonard Earl Johnson,  All Rights Reserved.

© Leonard Earl Johnson 

Your Comments and corrections are welcome
click here
If you wish to read any month's column go to 
 Archives: www.LEJ.world
~   ~   ~
 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
© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserve

Saturday, March 01, 2025

⚓ The Day After Mardi Gras / March 2025

Best viewed for color contrast on a computer or phone screen with dark background.

~ Fiction ~

Roman à clef, cher.

Created A. I. free

by Leonard Earl Johnson 

of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana

 www.LEJ.world 


📖
💛
 

⚓ 

March 2025

💀💀

💀

💧

Dedication

Food Critic Tom Fitzmorris

Born: Mardi Gras Day, February 6, 1951

Died: Carnival Time, February 12, 2025

May you dine in peace

🍽

Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series

BY  Leonard Earl Johnson


💜 💚

💛

💧

🗣😷

Your comments and corrections

are welcome

click here

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THE DAY AFTER MARDI GRAS
ww.LEJ.world
 
  
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 Copyright, 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
On Ash Wednesday ~ all over Louisiana ~ Carnival lifts its joyful mantle exposing Lent's ashen trail leading us off the streets and into forty days of Vatican sanctioned smudge. 

At Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans to Saint John the Evangelist Cathedral in Lafayette, business suits stand 
cheek-by-jowl beside crimson caped gentlemen and smeared-lipstick ladies.  They are awaiting priests dressed in the Vestments of Sorrow.
Waiting The Sign of The Cross smeared on their foreheads with Priestly thumbs dipped in the burnt ashes of the previous Palm Sunday's Palms. 

In Lafayette, Silvia talks with the big red-hatted supporter of The Donald just now off the train from Houston.  They stand outside Rêve Coffee Roastersacross from Amtrak's Rosa Parks Centré loading platform.

Abandoned Railroad Baggage Wagon
Photo credit, Charles M. Johnson 


The Day After Mardi Gras

Ash Wednesday 


and the Forty Days of Lent 


by  Leonard Earl Johnson 

© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, 

All Rights Reserved
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Zamboni street sweepers wash
 the city streets; and Cajun chickens stretch their necks up to see if it is safe to resume Life.  

Inside churches, brothels, and bars we 
tremble with fears and doubts.  Yet we suffer no doubt about this ceremony.

  Faithful and nonbeliever alike know it is Lent, and 
to ashes we shall return. 

Banana Tree / photo credit:
 Deb Kohler
 

Lent is the oddest holiday in all the Christian calendar.  It emphasizes forty immovable days of everything the King Cake Baby Jesus grew up opposing.  

Yet, it is the longest 'holiday' of The Faith.

~💀~

Should you need a reason to be suspicious of evangelical religion's temporal powers consider that. 

 

"In such acts we find sad truths" 
~ L.A. Norma.

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↙⇓↘

Clearing the Liturgical Air
Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the last day of Carnival's ever-changing season of joy. 

Next day, Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent's never-changing season of suffering.

"The Gregorian Calendar
," L. A. Norma laments to a bewildered tourist sharing our pedicab, "
with Easter changing with the moon, is none too accurate!  

"For instance, in the secular world you have leap year, and Sadie Hawkins Day!" 

🙍🙏🙎

Easter Sunday marks Lent's end, and also welcomes Spring.

  It is a holliday 'borrowedlong long ago, by the marauding legions of Rome.  

Borrowed from religions they happened upon that had been beating those same drums before Rabbi Jesus took His show on the road.  

Spring / Easter may be the oldest celebration calculated (or miscalculated) into Canon Law. With instruments created out of faith in suffering and suspicion of pleasure.

Beansprout
 
Suffering is not to be monkeyed with in these theological calculations. Carnival's pleasures, however, are reducible by God (or His agent's with their inaccurate stopwatches).

Lenten fasting knits Carnival's raveled sleeve and prepares us for Spring's rebirth.  Like the bean sprout and the jazz man say:

"Blow the roof off the sucker"

𝅘𝅥𝅮 📯💥🎺𝅘𝅥𝅯

It is a good Lent this year, with sunny mornings and a warm place in the kitchen to read Internet posts and sip coffee. 

Photo credit:  Eric Douglas
The live oaks outside our dormer windows are a soft young green. Live oaks don't dump their leaves till Spring's new buds arrive (as followers of JFK conspiracies will eagerly tell you). 

Then they change from old dark green to young soft green almost overnight. 

Today soft-green rules coastal Louisiana, and we old alligators lie on the banks in whatever sun we can find, 
dreaming of Easter baskets and Spring.



(A lesser version of this story first appeared in 2004)
-----------

Copyright, 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson
all rights reserved

For more L. E. J.'s Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp go to 
www.LEJ.world

Your comments and corrections are welcome

*    *    *
© 2025, Leonard Earl Johnson, 
All Rights Reserved.

~    ~    ~

Lagniappe du Jour

💧


~ to be continued ~


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💧

 
💜 💚

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~    ~    ~

💜  💚  💛

💧

The Ladies Wore Red,

July 2021

Origin Story

 

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