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Les
Amis Index
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Hot daze! At sunset, L.A. Norma and
I sat on The River watching a oversized Spanish Caravel being pulled upstream by a
determined little tugboat. At the same time, a thin man dressed in Banana Republic safari
clothes came steaming down the levee, with a big black dog named Frank.
They joined our watch, and the man told us he knew a gambling boat like that one, off some
Caribbean Island he'd forgotten the name of. He thought that might be it, on its way in
for repairs.
He also said he was American, but had recently gone down to Communist Cuba, as a free
lance photographer, for London papers.
L.A. Norma sighed. In 1943, she married a man in Havana. They lived their married life in
Los Angeles, but her late husband's family was still in Cuba. She longed to visit again
the crimson isle, alas, made off limits -- by Americans, for Americans -- since its fall
from Capitalist grace.
Frank and I hit it off, also, and shared a piece of cold spinach pie I'd
brought along, from Schiro's. I held up a bottle of medicinal red, and the thin man pulled
a folding metal cup from one of his many pockets. He told us he lived in New Orleans
thirty years ago, "At the time following Clay Shaw's trial."
Through youth's serendipity he came to work as a researcher for Dean Andrews and,
"Did we know who that was?"
"Yes," we said.
Andrews had been a larger than life lawyer connected to Kennedy's 1963 assassination. The
late John Candy portrayed him in Oliver Stone's movie, JFK
On the levee, that hot night, catching River breezes: Strange ships. Strange men. Mystery.
Yarns. Mosquitoes.
In some ways, New Orleans hasn't changed much since sailors were shanghaied on rue
Decatur, and Samuel Clemens smelled the ladies along Canal Street.
In other ways, The City changes all the time.
On Saint Ferdinand Strasse (Street), Holy Trinity - Faubourg Marigny's first German
Catholic church - sits blinded, its stained glass eyes gouged out and carted off by
collectors of such things. Gone, to become imported history, for other churches, in other
towns.
Poor Holy Trinity, unwanted by the current Archbishop - ironically, with the German name
Schulte. It will become a private home, and maybe a guesthouse.
This former church, where German-speaking representatives of Rome once blessed Marigny's
Burgerwehr (police/militia), will be home to Morgan Higby, formerly of Los Angeles. He
paid the Archdiocese $140,000 for the church shell. Welcome, sir. An orchard to you, for
saving what The Church has rendered useless unto Whew The People of New Orleans.
********
Voices silenced: Faubourgundians Ed Boardman, the bookseller who lived on rue Dauphine,
near Café La Pe`niche. And John Horn Foster, optometrist, and gay activist who lived on
rue Decatur, near the new high school, NOCCA. Both, witty, charming, and missed.
Once, I asked Foster what NOCCA stood for, and he said, in his Alabama drawl imitation of
NOLA-speak, "New Orleans c`Cademy Art."
Un-silenced voices: Faubourg Marigny Books, Frenchmen & Chartres, hosted recent author
parties, for Ricc Rolns, Like Breathing (ISHAI Books); Judy Francesconi, Stolen Moments
(self); David Leddick, Men in the Sun (Rizzolli); and Lynn Powers, Killer Art, (Pontalba
Press). Orchards for these scribes, and FMBooks' Alan Robinson, who brought them to town.
Brought to town, by The University of New Orleans' Eisenhower Center For American Studies:
U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen.
Secretary Cohen was paraded about firing boastful shots in the battle for Silicon Swamp -
the latest Cargo Cult venture heralded as New Orleans economic salvation, id est, UNO's
new computerized Navel Information Technology Center.
At a party in Gallier Hall, New Orleans pre-Civil War City Hall, located in the
"Federal Compound" around Lafayette Square, the Eisenhower Center's bright,
youthful Douglass Brinkley introduced Secretary Cohen, and U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D,
LA).
Remember Kevin Costner's Jim Garrison, in JFK, waltzing his investigators about Lafayette
Square, pointing out its inhabitants? "Over here," he said, "we have the
FBI, CIA, Navy Intelligence..., that was Guy Banister's office." (Banister's address
was on pamphlets Oswald handed out on Canal Street) "Now, ask yourself, isn't this a
strange place for the great Communist Lee Harvey Oswald to be hanging out?"
Back on the levee, that hot night, the thin man had told us his old boss, Andrews, would
have been Oswald's defense lawyer, "If he'd lived long enough to need one."
After Cohen's Gallier Hall party, coming down an inside stairway, I shook hands with
almost-Speaker of the House and pork-plucker Bob Livingston. What do you say to a man like
Livingston, when you're happy for the Silicon Swamp pork, but unhappy with his
hypocritical power play in Clinton's sex trial? (As Speaker-to-be, he pushed Clinton's
Impeachment, then resigned when porn king Larry Flynt threatened to out him for similar
sexual peccadilloes.) I said, "Thank you for your good work."
At the front door, Brinkley stood by himself, looking out at Saint Charles Avenue,
watching anti-war demonstrators singing, "Down by the Riverside / Ain't gonna' study
war no more / No more..."
Cohen, Landrieu and Livingston were no longer within ear site, or eye sight.
L.A. Norma and I walked down the steps and crossed Lafayette Square, to the Federal
Courthouse named for New Orleans' late John Minor Wisdom Judge Justice was buried that
very morning. In life, he handed down rulings that changed The Faubourgs, The City, The
South, America.
Inside, we sat in Wisdom's darkened courtroom, and talked about James Meredith's court
ordered admission to Ole Miss, and voter registration, and jury make up, and more.
Outside, demonstrators packed their banners and drove away. And Lafayette Square's newest
residents, the homeless, stretched out under spreading oaks.
____________________________
Copr., 1999, Leonard Earl Johnson
Web site: http://www.lej.org (with message board)
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