Cooled by Hurricane Ivan

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What might be behind this? Did Landslide's prayerful muscle men lean on the national weather man and move Hurricane Ivan off its Florida track? Towards us? Was Pat Robertson on the beach popping prayers and pills with Lush Rumball?

No one home A normally bustling street in New Orleans' Fauborg-Marigny district is deserted as Hurricane Ivan approaches. -- Photo by Melanie Plesh

At least Ivan brought temperatures down enough to fling open the big dormer windows at Squalor Heights and watch the past night's flotsam, with audio. On the street below passed late night lubbers, bandstand strummers, the pierced, the gilded, the lost, the found, and some taxi driver laying his hand as heavily on his horn as his butt lay on his seat.

"Get out and ring the Goddamn doorbell!" an angry voice yelled from down the street.

Early the evening before, L. A. Norma and I met ink-trailers Lee Grue (NEW LORIAL REVIEW) and Dean Paschal (BY THE LIGHT OF THE JUKEBOX) at le Spotted Cat, on Frenchmen Strassa. Grue is working on a CD reading with poem-subjects Kermit Ruffins and others. Paschal is re-doing his novel. Jeremy Lyons' Deltabilly Boys were doing early sets - they are a terrific blues/bluegrass fusion band with street-musician roots now climbing onto a nightclub bandstand near you, go hear them.

"We are the drunken literati of Big Swamp City," observed L. A. Norma, who had been doing Black Jack with a water back. The slim bartender wore a white t-shirt with "Colombia" written in yellow the color of his hair. He placed beers in front of the rest of us. Paschal lit a cigar. Grue danced with herself.

"I had my gold tooth's first-fitting," I said.

Lyons strummed "Wang Dang Doodle all night long."

"My dentist is a drummer in a band."

Norma smiled and asked if that would get me a purple heart from George Bush. We all sang "Oblide oblada, life goes on."

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Plenty of parking The first time this asphalt's seen sunlight since who knows when. -- Photo by Melanie Plesh

Immediately after the Mayor's first news conference, we left Town with friends, for the closest hotel available. It was in Memphis!

It was quite a ride. I-10 was a parking lot from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, and no hotels were available in any direction from here to Dallas, Houston, or Austin, in the West. None towards the North til Memphis, and almost none there. Of course, towards the East was terrible Ivan.

What's a Mayor to do? A last resort vertical evacuation order was given, and that might get you out of the immediate flood, but likely the building will fall - not from the wind but from water eating out the foundation. The new wisdom in Big Swamp City is that Our Town is doomed if we take a direct hit from such a big storm. Worrisome, but thrilling too!

A million-point-two people evacuated the greater New Orleans area, said the car radio. More filled the roads from settlements all over the U. S. third coast. A goodly number of them held a hurricane party on Beale Street, in Memphis. We ran into Daryl Pfief, Editor at SCAT MAGAZINE. You can take the citizens out'a da Swamp, but you can not take the Swamp out'a da citizens. It was a fun party, but a bitch to get to.

It took us eight hours just getting out of the New Orleans area. We took the Causeway Bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, and two-lane route-90 to Hammond, to join I-55 above I-10. This is a distance of less than a hundred miles but it took eight hours. Once on 55 we flowed in extremely heavy traffic at nearly normal speeds.

Roadside rest stops overflowed with refuges looking like a miscast film noir. It took us over twenty hours to reach Memphis but we made it and are safely back home, though weary and broke - one-hundred-and-eighty dollars to stay one night in a Holiday Inn across Union Street from the Peabody!

I showed the Peabody ducks to L. A. Norma and Captain Steve Halpern, who did all our driving. The Peabody's morning "Duck Walk" now includes a sales pitch and an honorary Grand Marshal. This day's chosen were two blanc de blanc boys from Metairie. Their equally blond Mother told us they had left before Mayor Nagin's first press conference and reached Memphis in normal time.

Also, while In Memphis, we rode the new trolley, visited the Pyramid (disappointing), ate good BBQ at the old Rendezvous, and did the afore-mentioned hurricane party on Beale Street - more a "walk" at our weary state and age.

Memphis is greatly changed from daze of youth (so am I). We enjoyed seeing it, but hope to never evacuate again. Like the man on Beale Street said, it is not something you would like.