“When I used to skip
school we would walk the river front, cause it’s shorter. It don’t seem it, but
you walk that river front all the way to Canal street it’s shorter than going
up St Claude or something. You know? And we played ball and everything. Almost
every Monday in football season we’d skip and go downtown. Just a bunch of stupid
asses, I guess that’s what we were, really. You know? But uh, that’s how it
was, you know? Did I tell you when I was a kid, son, trust me. We grew up poor.
I mean dirt poor. Seven cents streetcar fare and you got four transfers with it
for the seven cents. And that’s a fact. It was sevens cents for many many many
years. Man, I could tell you stories. You know? And you say, ‘old man, he’s lying,’
and I’m not lying. I don’t have no reason to lie. You know? It’s the truth.
Sometimes I can’t believe it. I tell my kids, they laugh at me.
“Ah, here we are. 2400
block of Royal. That’ll be 50 dollars.”
The trip had been so entertaining;
I decided to give this old man a 100 dollar note. He started to get some change
out. “Keep it, you seem to be a good man.”
“You sure? I mean, I’ll
take it, but you know?”
“Absolutely, It was worth a
bit of good company.”
“Alright, well you enjoy
the city. If you need any more rides you go ahead and call me up.” He said
handing me a business card; I took it, got out and closed the door. He drove
off slowly.
As I exited the car, the
air hit me like a wall of dank misery. It was unseasonably hot, well for what I
would consider the season. I was a born and raised northerner, where seasons
were always mild, except for the few freak occurrences. Winters that were extra
cold and snow filled, summers that were so hot you could cook an egg on the
sidewalk. But here, it felt like it was hot all the time, hot and humid.
I looked around me for the
first time. Really looked. This city was amazing. It was all falling apart and
decaying, but every house had a decently new coat of amazing vibrant paint. Not
the traditional house colors you’d see in any other suburb or city, with their
drab browns, grays, whites, and the occasional powder blue, or light yellow.
No, here every house was a mixture of colors that would excite you. Purple with
bright yellow shudders, greens, pinks, reds, and every other color under the
sun. It had a certain whimsical feeling about it.
I walked up to the address
that Howard had given me and knocked on the door. I had no idea what to expect.
I wasn’t sure or not if Howard had already left, and what arrangements he had
made for my arrival. An aged black woman opened the door. She stood much
shorter than me, but perhaps that was just her age, years of gravity and life
pulling her down. Her face was a mass of lines that went in every direction.
-V-
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