 |
|
|
***
Reprinted from Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans *** Narrow streets lead from and round Faubourg Marigny's bend in The River. They link its wharves and the ships moored there awaiting sailing boards. When you drive past such waiting vessels consider "first trippers," those sailors ne'er before upon the Great Blue Deep -- one of whom might be looking back over the gunnels at you. In 1977, I joined my first ship, the S.S. Sugar Islander, in Chalmette, Louisiana. Chalmette is a booming community of mostly former New Orleans YATS who slipped below Faubourgs Marigny, Bywater, Industrial Canal and the mysterious Ninth Ward. My ship lay alongside the Domino Refinery, near the Battle of New Orleans historic site. From there she sailed up to Baton Rouge to gather wheat, then back down The River, outbound for Haifa, Israel. After Haifa, we sailed her empty bottom towards the Panama Canal and along the way were spotted from the air leaking oil around the Lesser Antilles. We were directed to a U.S. military dock on the Colon side of Panama. Repairs took seven eye-popping days during which I saw slums that would make New Orleans Iberville Project look like a mansion patch. U.S. troops would later flatten those slums on their way to tether lose-cannon Manuel "Pineapple Face" Noriega, our former Panamanian puppet and drug dealer. Also that week began a long acquaintance with Panama's Crossroads of the World Bar & Pleasure Club. By the way, dictator-seeking U.S. troops left the Crossroads unscratched (if not untouched). Next, we sailed to Hawaii for a load of raw sugar. "And us with all that cane in Louisiana!" exclaimed Thibodaux Red, our ship's baker and world class drunk. Before leaving Haifa, Captain Moses P. Stein had grown angry with Red's drunken failures at turning to and refused delaying our posted departure when informed, "Thibodaux Red is missing." "Leave the drunk for the Jews to handle," he bellowed, washing his hands in a brass face bowl fitted inside the wheelhouse and slightly out of plumb from too many rough Seas. "His biscuits made better bagels, anyway!" Everyone laughed, even those who didn't know what a bagel was. Captain Moses laughed again on our second day out, when Red was found in the linen lockers sleeping on a litter of dirty tablecloths and empty beer bottles. "I ain't relieved for your sorry ass," the Old Man growled at Red, "but from the Fed's damn paper work!" The first week of Election 2000 I yearned greatly for The Sea. To abandon this treacherous hill and return down to the water's edge (or "up," in the case of New Orleans). To sail o'er the Great Blue Deep away from beachside fools and their election foibles. It stormed during the long election, breaking briefly our four-year drought. I bicycled through the rain to a spectacular luncheon at the posh Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Canal Street. "Summer's rains in Winter," someone said at my table, "neither God nor the weatherman is happy about this election." L.A. Norma smiled around a large porcelain bowl of perfect roses and said, "You Liberals are just worried you'll end your days in hospital beds inside your children's living rooms." Well, yes, we are. Personally, I'd rather end my days at the Ritz-Carlton. Baby Bush is now ensconced in the presidency for which he seemed so ill-groomed during the campaign. He promised he would bring prosperity enough to do that -- soon as he feeds the Social Security System to Wall Street. Maybe? Wall Street bulls and bears, alike, drool at the prospect of those trillions. Hopefully, what comes out the other end will make a bed of roses lovely as the ones on our table. Day after the prickly election was decided by the Supreme Court's 5/4 decision to stop the vote-counting, N.P.R.'s elder voiced Dan Schorr called it a "junta." (Schorr, you may recall, was top name on Nixon's Enemies List.) "Junta," I looked it up: "n. [Sp. < L. juncta, fem. of junctus, pp. of jungere, join.] A deliberative or administrative council, esp. in Spain and Latin America." A "deliberative council," like our Supreme Court? The following morning Norma and I met for coffee and healthful pastries at La Spiga on rue Chartres. We ate without talking, the election had taken the wind out of our sails. When we split I rode over to the Mandyville Wharf to see up close the huge ship spied that morning from Squalor Heights' tall windows. I could see her flying bridge and half her house. She turned out to be the L.A.S.H. vessel M/V Atlantic Forrest. "In with green coffee," a black skinned first tripper from Faubourg Treme', told me, "in with the cargo, out on the tide, with hope." Happy New Year, President, Millenium and -- most importantly -- New Carnival Season! Good hope and following Seas through it all! _________ |