This might be longest stretch of time I've gone without a proper post. I have an excuse: HAIL. It is most common in warm weather thunderstorms and I’ve been caught in it twice down here in New Orleans in less than two days. I’ve yet to inspect the company car for serious dents. My nerves however seem to be dented up a bit. I’m hoping the suffocating southern humidity will steam them out back to normal.
While I was dining at Joey K’s, I saw three young folks wearing badges on chains and carrying pistols in side holsters. I thought they were all on break from what must be the new 21 Jump Street set or something. Two guys, one tattooed all up and down his scrawny arms, and one chick, young and ambiguously ethnic. What else was I supposed to think?
So in additional to hail, guns are the travel theme this week. I stopped to see a pal on the way into the city. She stays in a lil Louisiana country town and when she found out I was going to be running around New Orleans by myself she let me know that any woman traveling alone is sure to be raped, robbed, and maimed. I told her where I was staying and she said “Yep, girl was raped and beaten right there. Saw it on the news.” Then she offered to loan me her pistol and said I could mail it back. She said that like there are pistol drop boxes throughout the swamplands that would make this both legal and convenient. I imagined big blue catfish shaped steel depositories with signs hand painted in red paint: Pistol Return.
Needless to say after our visit (aka:the unwelcome travel consultation) and the long drive and the hail storm, I was a little road weary, a little rattled, I was starting to believe my time was up and I was not long for this world. I’d had a nice life and a good lunch at Cracker Barrel, things that should be comforting, but they weren’t. I decided to have an anxiety attack in time to drive across a giant lake. I’d had to pull over three times due to torrential downpours but it was starting to get dark and I was either going to take the gun and sleep in my car next to an alligator-wrestling road side attraction or cross over the 25mile causeway across Lake Ponchatrain and pray that the deadly crosswinds and swarming black clouds would not release their fury on my teeeeny vehicle. And pray that I could get to my hotel in time before the murders and rapists came out (which everyone knows is approximately 25 minutes after sundown).
It is a good thing the causeway has its own radio station (AM 1700*) that I listened to THE WHOLE WAY ACROSS 25 MILES for no reason other than I thought they were going to break in with news about how I was going to die. ( *Remind me to write something sometime about the voices of attraction-specific AM weather and travel alerts.) The drive across was uneventful, except by the time I got to the other side I had the emergency vehicle information memorized: Pull over to one side and walk to the rear of your vehicle and flag oncoming traffic…"
I made it to my hotel and there were at least a half dozen robbers and rapists waiting for me. Some looked like happy retired couples walking to dinner in the Lower Garden District but I knew better. When I checked in I discovered that I had made a huge mistake and booked what might be considered a B&B. The woman told me to walk one block to the house and I had my choice of three rooms. The place was a huge white mansion that looked all spooky in the shadows of giant spanish-moss-covered-trees, and I guesstimated from the amount of lights and movement coming from the place, there might have been two dead people and sixteen vampires about ready to wake up for their nightly bloodletting.
I wouldn’t know – there was no lobby – just a long hallway with a bunch of old rugs. She had given me keys to rooms on each of the three floors and when I was checking out the rooms I didn’t see a soul. By the time I got to the third floor I was sure I was going to pass out from irrational fear. The room I remember was probably quite gorgeous by B&B standards but there was no way I was going to stay in a room with a vampire balcony if no one else was in the whole house, I had opted out of the loaner pistol so I was not equipped to stay in such a place. I went back to the lady at the front desk and said “You tricked me. That is a B&B!” and I nearly starting to cry because there is nothing more horrifying than knowing a stranger may talk to you at breakfast. She was nice enough and said, “I understand, you want to feel like you are a part of something.” I was like you know me.
And then I realized she was talking about a more populated regular hotel. She put me in a room near a bamboo courtyard that looks like a place I have dreamed about before. A smallish old room with lace curtains and a wardrobe, not a closet. An arm chair, a nice desk, and an alarm clock. Exactly the place, as I told my friend, I had always envisioned living out my later years while writing plays and long angry letters to old friend while smoking opium. So, in fact, this trip did bring me to my end. I shall start to live as if I am 66 right now…. maybe I will have more time to post here or more time to mail a letter to you.
Oh..you know what I found out though? Here in New Orleans it is hot – real hot – but you can get an ice cream shake that has booze in it and then just walk around drinking it and make bad shopping decisions.
