One morning, from Squalor Heights' tall dormers, I looked over cold slate roofs and saw the flying bridge of the U. S. S. Iwo Jima as she pulled away from her moorings at the Governor Nichols Street Warf. She had been in port celebrating the National D-day Museum's new Pacific Wing. Gracefully, her tugs pulled her midstream where she turned about and made way down The River to the open Sea.

The Sunday before, L.A. Norma and I had walked to the levee hoping to board her - a courtesy usually extended by a visiting man-of-war. This time a black and white sign atop a steel post turned us away. It read: "Stop / No Visitors because of heightened security…" A platoon of young men in civilian clothes came running along the levee behind Marine colors. It was a warm day, the last of Fall, so we stayed awhile admiring them and the sleek hull of their ship. Atop the levee, they were framed by a clear blue sky and their red flag snapped in the wind.

I enjoyed this year's pre-Carnival Holiday Season - that time before Twelfth Night that outlanders know only as Ramadan / Hanukah / Christmas / Kwanzaa / New Year's. Pity those who think theirs the biggest celebration of them all, for they do not know Carnival.

I had a good Holiday Season this year. My first since the flight of youth. Ironically, as I write this, WWOZ, "Radio Free New Orleans," is playing that terrific jazz vocal, "Every time we say goodbye, I die a little..." A perfect bittersweet song that mirrored my grief that painful year I turned fifty, two old college friends died of AIDS, a twenty-four year old Tulane student broke my heart and, for poetic measure, it was Fall. Many a day I stood on the levee singing that song to The River, "If the Gods above me / who must be in the know / Think so little of me / they allow you to go…"

Who would have thought that eight years later I might have this (best ever?) Christmas - even in the shadow of September Eleventh, and even as ENRON teeters over juggled books threatening to take America down with it. (What's good for ENRON, it turns out, is neither good for California nor the U.S.A.)

ENRON was a kind of middleman broker of stuff. A private spigot tariff-collector. That may be a good system for monopoly-money games but it is not good for real life production and distribution. Remember, boys and girls, when left un-regulated Adam Smith's magical hand sometimes jiggles the spoon.

During the lull before Carnival, L.A. Norma and I sat at P.J.'s on Frenchmen Street stirring coffee and waxing over recent events, so as to shine them to truer colors. "Hell, they aren't hiding Dick Cheney from Afghan bombs," she said of ENRON's insider position forging Cheney's energy policy. "They're hiding him from some cheeky D.A.'s possible subpoena."

I had three expensive cigars in one day during the pre-Carnival Holidays - about a month's supply up in smoke! (But what else is there to do with a cigar, Mr. President?)

I had my cigars touring the nearby faraway French Quarter with a lawyer friend in town from distant, elegant Marin County, California. We stopped for libations at the famous late night dance hall Oz, on the great slough rue. It was late morning and the place was empty but for a couple other drunks at the bar and their tender. Later it would boom. I knew this because it was in this bar I found heartbreak and collected hangovers that are now painful memories with an odd urge to reproduce themselves - I know towards what the moth soars.

We took lunch at Ralph Brennan's Bacco, on rue Chartres. "They have ten-cent martinis?" my Marin County friend asked incredulously.

"Yes, in celebration of their tenth anniversary. And ten-dollar lunches, too," I burbled, "like black truffle fettuccine, and crawfish ravioli, and a Champaign and butter lobster sauce so rich you may never eat again, for awhile."

"We must," she cooed. "I need a ten-cent martini story to splash on the rocks of San Francisco."

We did. Again and again and again, until the bartenders and waiters knew us by name. Or, perhaps, by secret nicknames. The food was good, the place lovely, and the bill such a pittance we all left full of Christmas cheer and warm stories to splash on life's cold rocks. Bacco's General Manager, Robert Brunet whispered in my ear that they might push the ten-cent martini past December's celebration. I informed our table and Norma said, "Maybe he just wants you to stop drinking them all now."

Another morning, with winds mild as a Lib's Karma, we rode bicycles to Elizabeth's, way down on the Decatur Street levee, for amazingly large servings of liver and onions with scrambled eggs. There we met the noted folk artist Dr. Bob (www.drbobart.com), who gave me his card and invited us to his studio Christmas party.

Norma did not enjoy the Holiday Season and she did not go to Dr. Bob's party. Instead she flew to Los Angeles to visit her children. Waiting in front of Walgreen's on Tulane Avenue for the bus to the airport she grumped over a newspaper story about Clinton trying to improve his image.

"Bill Clinton's cigar habits, who cares? The Conservatives plundered the nation while the rest of us studied Clinton's love life." She drew hard on a Camel cigarette; "They conned us out of national health care just in time for this new age bio-war." Another drag on her cigarette. The next words floated with the smoke out her mouth, "Maybe bin Laden had a paid lobbyist in D.C." (Editor's note: You know of any unpaid lobbyists, Norma?)

"I think you are being ironic," I said.

"I think I am, too," she snorted as the bus pulled up. She fed the right money into the fare box but the driver motioned her back down the three steps. She muttered, "Merde, already I'm in smoke free L.A." She turned and handed me her cigarette, "Find some place to keep this, I'll be back for it come Carnival time."