✍Trains Make Good Walls, Dream #2 / May 2026
~ Fiction ~
Roman à clef, cher!
Created AI-free
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
Color contrast best on black screen
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| Amtrak's northern wall courtesy of Amtrak |
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LEJ'S LOUISIANA a monthly e-column at
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Yours Truly in a Swamp
May 2026
LEJ'S LOUISIANA
a monthly e-column at
📖
💛
Yours Truly in a Swamp
May 2026
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Trains Make Good Walls
~ Dream #2 ~
BY Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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In my train seat, dozing the last hour before reaching Lafayette, Hub City of Acadia.
I dreamed photographers raised their cameras. Art directors composed men shouldering oversized silver and
gold
sledge hammers.
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| Gandy Dancers |
The men were
'Gandy Dancers' ~ those gangs of mostly black men who, with muscle alone, wiggled and danced heavy iron rails into an alignment that joined the nation by a new iron road ~ an umbilical cord linking West Coast gold to East Coast greed.
"Why not!" The Donald tweeted.
"Why not a wall of railroads stretching from West Coast to the Eastern Seaboard.
"Multiple rail lines strung with multiple trains running thick as Vietnam bamboo lies?"
Recalling the Vietnam not-war, the Donald offered to show his bone spurs to the assembled reporters. They turned away.
"See, folks, fake news!" He twitted.
"If Elizabeth Warren showed her tomahawk, press rats would be on it like editors on cheese.
"But my war wounds? Nothing!"
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The Donald sweated and twittered, "Move over, infiltrators.
"Pay up and say,
'Here we come no more.' "
Tourism agents, airline officers, and festival organizers grimaced.
He twittered, as daughter
Ivanka brushed His hair and stroked His wallet bloated with Russian Rubbles.
Son-in-law Jared Kushner unspooled
communication lines to the Kremlin. He was shielded behind the back of the genetically pure, highly self-esteemed, supremely self-proclaimed uber-patriotic, and red-blooded Klan of The Donald-Go-Round."A supremely legal back channel," explained Stephen Miller, head gargoyle to The Donald.
Behind them a righteous chorus of Evangelical Preachers sang,
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The Family Klan rode in a manner befitting American nostalgia. They moved effortlessly along gold plated escalators and moving-sidewalks running from the White House up The Mall to the big domed Capitol on the Hill.
"Streets paved with gold," The Donald-go-round called out.
Steven Miller called back, "Immigrants done been told."
Out in front of them, bent-backed and whisking away obstacles in their path were Republican regulars led by grim-faced Moscow Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.Toe-and-heel men followed. Then, spokes-critter lawyers for powerful U. S. Chambers of yes-men clearing a way growing darker with each step of their boot and sweep of their broom.
"For smaller decentralized government," Moscow Mitch laughed uproariously, slapping the United states Attorney General, Pam Bondi across her departing back. Attorney General Bondi shook her long hair and wrinkled brow while hooting derisive puffs of laughter like an old steam engine.
"For smaller decentralized government," Moscow Mitch laughed uproariously, slapping the United states Attorney General, Pam Bondi across her departing back. Attorney General Bondi shook her long hair and wrinkled brow while hooting derisive puffs of laughter like an old steam engine.
The two chortled, "After us who cares what floods."
They swept, giggled and farted off down the gold-plated road.
Kushner's 'backchannel cable' spooled on, then off again. Fully out of any one's oversight.
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| Roseate Spoonbill |
National Security portfolio to the President of the United States, opened an electric notebook. A Google map glowed into focus. It showed Roseate Spoonbill migration routes.
"With no fear of blow back," he said. His mustache twitched as he talked, tickling the President's earlobe sending a not unpleasant tingle all the way down to his spurs.
"We can lace migratory feeding sites with chemical-castration drugs that will threaten a perfect final solution to their endangered numbers!"
"We can lace migratory feeding sites with chemical-castration drugs that will threaten a perfect final solution to their endangered numbers!"
"What this will do," he told the President, leaning ever closer to his ear, "is convince the last doubters that America means business.
"Crazy business, to be sure, but business that will bend them to Your perfect will!"
"A plausible crazy threat wins the game!" The Donald twittered, "Ask my New York bankers."
Ivanka brushed and spoke not. The Son-in-law spooled and spoke not. The escalator escalated speaking tons.
We awoke with the real Conductor calling,
"Lafayette next stop."
We stretched our arms overhead and stepped off the train ~ and to the side ~ away from the foot traffic pouring out behind us.
Lafayette is the train's only smoke-stop between New Orleans and Houston.
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| Sunset Limited, Amtrak #1 New Orleans to Los Angeles Smoke Stop, Lafayette Louisiana |
We continued a conversation
about walls we had started earlier in the Cafe Car, with a young couple bound for Tucson, Arizona.
"Take Hadrian's, China's, Berlin's. Walls have not long kept anything out. Not ideas, not people, not things!"
The young man from Tucson nodded, "It's just another of The Donald's spur-studded political footballs."
"Sometimes with headline interference," his Wife added, "the pea hiding the shell." She flicked cigarette ashes to the grass, and smiled. In its moment, that falling cigarette ash burned brightly ~ though it be in descent ~ then went dark landing atop a purple clover.
The young man from Tucson nodded, "It's just another of The Donald's spur-studded political footballs."
"Sometimes with headline interference," his Wife added, "the pea hiding the shell." She flicked cigarette ashes to the grass, and smiled. In its moment, that falling cigarette ash burned brightly ~ though it be in descent ~ then went dark landing atop a purple clover.
The engineer onboard blew his whistle calling them back to their smoke-free train to the Golden West.
"Manifest Destiny all over again," she said, from inside her toxic plume of Camel Cigarette smoke.
"Manifest Destiny all over again," she said, from inside her toxic plume of Camel Cigarette smoke.
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A mushrooming cloud of toxic fumes embraced all the World. Our new friends ran back to the train shouting, "Red-herrings distract."
Automobiles waiting at the crossing gates revved their engines to show their toxic commitment.
The train snaked off down the tracks. Its last car rocked and wobbled back at us. The automobiles drove away ~ each trailing a lingering chemical bouquet. Five elderly white women standing on the station platform scowled in our direction. They each wore a big red church-lady hat, red sweaters, red dresses, and red gloves. They each lifted red-hemmed skirts showing red soled shoes, and choo-choo-ed into the depot, with its comfortingly stable toilets.
Train toilets and politics are not stable, one of the red women said. "And there are good people on both ends of the lynch mob's rope."
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© 2026 Leonard Earl Johnson,
All Rights Reserved
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Lagniappe du jour
Gandy Dancers / You Tube
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This Land is Your Land
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This Land is Your Land
written by Woody Guthrie
Sung by Pete Seeger and the multitudes,
including Seeger's Grandson / also Bruce Springsteen, Barack Obama, and more
Sung by Pete Seeger and the multitudes,
including Seeger's Grandson / also Bruce Springsteen, Barack Obama, and more
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.JPG) 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. |
© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved.
Coming Next Month
⭐Continuation of the Red Women Warriors Series⭐
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| Old Man on The River, New Orleans |
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| © Leonard Earl Johnson |
~ ~ ~ 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 © 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved |
posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 10:50 AM
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