Welcome to New Orleans

Two nights ago, I hung out with my good friend from Cleveland, who took me to play congas on the front porch of a house on St. Claude Avenue, just past the tracks that run along Montegut Street in the Lower Ninth Ward. Two years after the storm that renamed “The Big Easy” as “Crescent City” and replaced the famous multi-booze tourist treat, “Hurricane” with a similar concoction called “Hand Grenade”, the houses that remain in the Ninth are all still painted with the cryptic graffiti system that rescue workers used to identify the hungry, the stranded, and the dead.

These days, things around the newly paved blacktop ribbon that runs along the river are more or less back to normal, which means that most of the repairs are being done by tenants who know that investing their own time and materials beats waiting forever; and the local Police Cruisers are joined by Military Hummers and DEA Vans in a statement of presence that consists of racing up and down the road every 20 minutes or so like drunken teenagers.

The folks, at several homes across the street, lined their front porches to listen to the voodoo drums, enjoy the slight breeze, and drink tallboys, all of which are an almost every night affair. We also made occasional eye contact with appreciative groups of trapped motorists, as the trains from the nearby switching yard stopped traffic, while railroad employees chatted up pedestrians and steel behemoths crawled across the tracks. The scent of the climbing jasmine growing along the wrought iron fence that enclosed the side yard of my host’s humble abode became increasingly intoxicating as the night blooming petals slowly opened, and I detected a bottom note of cannabis woven into the resulting perfume.

Although the windows were open, the resident children readily slept through several hours of Rumba, Bembe and Mozambique, which in hindsight may have served to mask the sirens, railroad bells, rumbling freight trains, and rumbling car stereos, that seemed to be a nonstop feature of the neighborhood. Our host provided water and beer and chocolate cake, offered home rolled cigarettes and talked about his recent project to seal all of the numerous holes in his home as part of an ongoing war on various rodent populations. “I wouldn’t mind ‘em so much if they paid rent, or brought by a bite to eat once in awhile,” he complained with true seriousness, “we all gotta contribute somethun, you know what I mean?” I asked him if he knew about the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and felt great pride when he said, “Of course man, they’re over on Royal, and really cheap. That’s where I got the trim boards and some other stuff for the kitchen”

At the end of an exhilarating evening of Afro-Cuban percussion without much other conversation, I told him that I was going to be working on a Habitat house-building project over on Roman Street, just past North Claiborne Avenue and he said, “Now that’s the Wild Wild West, man. I don’t even like goin’ over there. The deeper you go, the worse it is. Folks around here didn’t have nuthin’ to start with. Now they got nasty trailers, screwed up houses, no school, and for the most part no help. It doesn’t exactly put everyone in a great mood.” He paused for a moment, closed his eyes and leaned back on his stool, then smiled and said, “But y’all are cool, man. Y’all actually care about folks and you’re not afraid to go where the action is.” He slowly lowered the stool so all four legs touched the porch floor again, opened his eyes and added, “And you can play some African music too. You’re practically a local already, man. Welcome to New Awlins”.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Jeffrey Bowen jeffreybowneAThotmail.com

Bowen has been writing and performing poetry since he was a child and has appeared as a featured artist at dozens of venues, including Cain Park, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Public Theatre, and on WRUW and WCSB FM. Jeffrey has performed on programs produced by Cleveland Poetry Slam, CSU Poetry Center, Everette Maddox Memorial Poetry and Prose Series, Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations, PAND, Poets and Writers Inc., The Repertory Project, and Daniel Thompson.
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