Southern gothic

A few days ago I wrote that I wished I could cry. Today I was a weepy wreck. It is a difficult, emotional time.

On the front page of the Times Picayune today was a picture of a crazy old woman who I used to see at the grouchy Norwegian guy’s laundromat. She would bring her clothes in a buggy she would push down the street, and even though she was washing her clothes she smelled like she hadn’t bathed in a month. She always seemed terribly sad. She was obviously not right in the head, but it was also obvious that she had once been beautiful. She scared me a bit, because she presented the scary specter of being old and not in your right mind and not being able to take care of yourself. But she was a character I wondered about.

She was on the front page of the paper because the city was tearing down the house that she shared with her three equally crazy brothers. The house was truly a hazard, falling down and stuffed with hoarded junk, and unfit for occupation, and it had been condemned for nine years. So the city tried to do the right thing, and you can’t really blame it if it didn’t quite pull it off. The woman was weeping the street and upset because they wouldn’t let her in the house and she couldn’t find her mother’s wedding picture. And again you couldn’t really blame anyone, because how could she possibly find anything in that mess. But still, she was so decimated and broken by this, and so helpless.


this is the house

I didn’t see the demolition, but I was in the neighborhood. Since my car is still in the shop, I rode the streetcar for the first time since the hurricane. The rumble and the woody smell of the cars, the windows that click up and down, the reversible seats, and the way that through the windows you can see New Orleans as it was the first time you saw it, these are the qualities of the streetcar that made me cry.

Also, twice today I saw this guy who I once met at the Rue who flirted with me and invited me to his birthday party. When I was foolish enough to show up, I was introduced to his fiancee. I remember that he was a few years older than me, which means that now he is past 40 and has blue hair and works in the kitchen at Nacho Mama’s. That was the second place I saw him today; the first was at the Rue on Carrollton where I was reading the paper. He did not make me cry, he made me feel like I did well in breaking out the the rut I was in and glad that I am leaving.