The First Christmas After Katrina / August 2026
DRAFT 
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August 2026
~ Fiction ~
Roman à clef, cher
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
© 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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 2005 Photo credit: Frank Parsley |
THE FIRST CHIRSTMAS AFTER KATRINA
(Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29, 2005.)
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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
𐦓 𐦓 𐦓
The month was December.
The bar was on Saint Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans. It recently reopened after The Storm, and has tried since Thanksgiving to coax Yuletide spirit from our 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 warm Saturday, December 17, 2005 ~ nearly four months since Hurricane Katrina took hold of New Orleans like a mother cat shaking her cubs by the scruff.
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 blinked a bright red and green
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| After Katrina / Coleen Perilloux Landry |
Everywhere houses lay splayed open like huge fish with their innards spilling out for the world to see.
Occasionally a cascade of generator powered lights pour over some brave heart's intact gallery. They cast faint shadows on refrigerators sitting along the curb wrapped in industrial strength tape and that 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 bill. A tiny silver bell dangles from its peek.
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 consist to show support for Arlo Guthrie's Friends Benefit Tour for Louisiana Musicians. The Amtrak special stopped for fundraiser concerts ~ "Out on the south bound odyssey... all the way to New Orleans."
Tonight, my friend and I are planning on 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 opened the French doors and spotted my friend at the far end of the bar. He was overdressed, and clearly over served. He wore 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 twinkled 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.
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"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 was also behind the bar. He was wearing a sport coat that looked to be sewn together from Anheuser-Busch labels. 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 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, hearing Chicago's famous motto laid up against New Orleans' famous work ethic.
"What's wrong with cops protecting brothel patrons?" I ask.
"And people in evening clothes entertaining themselves without restraint?"
"What's wrong is it cuts into everybody's profit margins, my ageing hippie friend."
We both look 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
~Lagniappe du Jour~
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| © Leonard Earl Johnson |
Your Comments and Corrections are welcome 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 Your Comments and Corrections are welcome Readers comments accepted after publication on the First of the month 🗣😷 © 2026, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved |
posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 2:41 AM
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