β Water Under the Bridges / October 2026
~ Fiction ~
Roman Γ clef, cher!
Created AI-free
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
LEJ's Louisiana
a monthly e-column
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Yours Truly in a Swamp
by Leonard Earl Johnson
Β© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reservedβ€
In the Heart of Sleep, Day Dream on the Beach,
Oil on canvas, 1986 ~ Françoise Gilot
Yours Truly in a Swamp
October, 2026
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WATER UNDER THE BRIDGES
(Reprinted with changes from YOURS TRULY IN A SWAMP, June 2011)
Louisiana, Land of Dreamy Dreams. Where we treat the Mississippi River Valley like our odalisque slave.
This year, The Mighty River has gone giddy as television's weather-poets. Leaving our passions leafed out topside dry and dusty in a time of draught while our roots drown under Yankee runoff. There is no rain and yet we flood.
We are aboard the Sunset Limited, Amtrick-ling over the Huey P. Long Bridge at New Orleans. It is clear from here, only the sturdy old Huey is up in the air enough to be untouchable by the floods.
At Morgan City the bayous have grown into rivers lapping at bridge pylons within a few feet of our train tracks.
Upriver, the Mississippi continues gushing over the Bonnet CarrΓ© Spillway on the way to flood Lake Pontchartrain.
In Acadiana, the Atchafalaya Basin fills with Mississippi River water tumbling out of the Morganza Spillway, above Baton Rouge. It threatens isolated homes, small settlements and towns on its way under bridges and out to The Sea beyond.
The conductor says, "You may not be able to come back this way." We bought round-trip tickets anyway.
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Saturday night in New Orleans!
At the Vincent Mann Gallery on Royal Street we join a reception for Françoise Gilot.
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"Going back while the bridges are still up?" L. A. Norma asks us, as we stand in line.
"No one expects any bridges to come down, but no one expected Katrina either!"
Hildegarde and Balthazar are banking on the Sunset running, and the Morgan City bridges holding. "At least till after we pass," Hildegarde says.
"There is no problem with the Huey P. Long. Huey built it well with Standard Oil's tax money."
We all smiled.
Long leveed taxes on Standard Oil and in an unrelated event ~ one day while Standard Oil was out of town ~ someone murdered Huey in the lobby of the new State Capitol in Baton Rouge, which he also built with their tax collections.
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We sidled along shaking hands with Françoise Gilot, and chatting with her manager and Son, Claude, who is the spitting image of his Father, Pablo Picasso.
"Picasso would have done them all in oil," Hildegarde whispers. "With two noses."
Claude Picasso, the issue of two world famous artists, manages his Mother's estate and sales.
"And his Mother," Hildegarde adds.
"As much as she, still an ingΓ©nue mystΓ©rieuse at ninety-something, can be managed."
His life began in 1947, in the ashes of World War Two, a time fading in memories outside of history lectures and art galleries.
Françoise Gilot was twenty when she and Pablo Picasso met. She was having her first exhibition -- in German-occupied Paris! Picasso was already famous, and sixty.
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Claude turns his inherited handsome head to matters other than us.
From the gallery catalog we read:
". . . she has been a bridge between the heroic period of the School of Paris and the emergence of New York City as the new world center for contemporary art. While she has lived in New York and La Jolla, California, for many years, I believe that she has found a cultural home in New Orleans." ~ E. John Bullard, Director Emeritus, New Orleans Museum of Art
After the gallery reception, Gilot and Picasso had dinner at Antoine's with gallery founder, Jacob Manguno and a few gallery friends and art collectors. Bob and Marilyn Tarpy of Lafayette were among this number. "I've collected Gilot since 1972," Tarpy said.
"We are all very proud of our work over the past forty years, bringing fine French paintings to Louisiana," Manguno said, "Françoise Gilot is one of the best."
Outside, levees groan.
Inside, people chatted with François Gilot, the ageing ex- of Pablo Picasso; and their Son, Claude Picasso.
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| Françoise Gilot, Pablo Picasso, and his nephew Javier Vilató / by Robert Capa |
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Copyright, 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, all rights reserved
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Lagniappe du jour
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| Β© 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 Readers comments accepted after publication on the First of the month π£π· Β© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved |
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