Low Living, Sight Walking.

I've been out and about.

In front of a house on Plank Rd in Baton Rouge. It ends with an incomplete word...a syllable.

Broadmoor Theatre on Airline Highway...Baton Rouge.



A constant and faithful companion.

Pentecostal Church in Biloxi.

 

Raleigh MS...Rogers's Grocery.

 

 

Somewhere around Prentiss.

Between Rocky Mount Church and Winona.



Little Sammy Davis of Winona on Harmonica...not in the Delta but that don't sound much like the Delta anyway.

No Constitutional Right to Smoke

This is what happens in an actual Democracy...which we are increasingly becoming...your daily activities are subject to the wants and desires of people named LaToya.

                                             LaToya Bans Smoking in New Orleans

According to this new Edict of the People, there is no Constitutional right to smoke. Far be it from me to question the Constitutional expertise of LaToya but, it's my understanding that the Constitution is not a set of permissions granted to subjects...a list of things the State will allow you to do. Instead, again with all due respect to LafuckingToya, it is a list of powers that the citizenry refuses to grant the State. It's a collection of Negative Rights...this is what the State cannot do.

This is the understanding of the Constitution that another community organizer, Barack Hussein Obama, finds so troubling. According to Barack, that's the great flaw of the Constitution...it's a collection of negative rights that says a lot about what the government can't do and nothing about what the State should do for people. In other words, the flaw of the U.S. Constitution, as Barack sees it, is its essence. This point, even as a bone of contention is, obviously and completely, lost on....dear God...LaToya.

Of course, I'm the fool...who cares about negative rights and the crucial role they play in protecting Liberty (Liberty? HA!)...who cares about the, small c, constitutional legitimacy of law. To the extent that legitimacy matters...desire is sufficient. Majority rules...authority is found in numbers.

That's how we get to the point where you do not have a right to allow smoking on your own property...but, you do have the right to seize the property of others so you can go to Junior College. The precious people, that seething mass of avarice and stupidity, want something and the vapid politicians are happy to provide it...fully justified because they are doing the bidding of that most sacred body..."the people." Amazing that we have laws at all...when the instincts of the people are so trustworthy and virtuous.

My concerns here are not only esoteric but, increasingly, nonsensical. So, let's come down out of the clouds...get down on the ground and have a closer look at the city for whose benefit this decree has been issued. New Orleans is a city...a real object. So comforting that we can measure it, touch it....smell it.

If you've never been to New Orleans and would like to experience it...you can do so in your own home. First, have a bloody piss in a carton of milk and leave it open to sour on the counter. Once the milk is ripe...two, empty your trashcan on the living room floor. Three, get blind drunk and pass out in the trash. Four, have your significant other...doesn't matter if it's a wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend or, even better, a stranger from the park...dress in an edible bikini and thigh high go-go boots. They should stand over you while barking for a strip club or hooking. Five, for a truly authentic experience, have some friends come by to vomit on you and urinate in the corner.

Whatever you do, however far you get carried away, for God's sake, do not let anybody fire up a square. We're not trying to get anybody killed here.

We've been down this road before....

No Smoking at Old Absinthe House

we've gotten so far down now that lighting up anywhere along it will get you a 100 dollar fine.
It should be fun watching the enforcement...expensive but, fun. Food and beverage people smoke...even in Quarter bars where it's already banned you can watch them early in the morning stumbling out into the daylight...cigarettes dangling from their squinting faces.

Never mind the droves of tourists who may or may not be aware of the Decree. A person standing on a sidewalk smoking is exactly the kind of mushy target that cops love. Good times...Good times...or Bon Temps I reckon.

I'll close with a question. Let's set aside the issue of legitimacy for such Decrees. What kind of people ban smoking in bars, jukes, taverns...we're talking about a bar...a BAR. What concept of a juke and the purpose it serves must those people have? I know many don't like to be around smoke...but that's hardly the issue. That market can be served without a total ban. What kind of human being would support a ban on smoking cigarettes in a juke...a honkey tonk? It's a bar...you get dunk, dance, fight and smoke cigarettes.



It's not really a place that figures into a program for adding a few years to your stank carcass.

Indignity

My Dignity.

Mississippi Kid

Alright then...that was Louisiana this week. Actually the place I stayed in Alexandria wasn't nearly so nice as that. Is there anyone here who doubts my slobbering devotion to Dixie? Well, even I have trouble making something romantic out of north Louisiana (as opposed to south Louisiana which is one of my favorite places on the part of the map that matters) I'm pretty sure those arrows are pointing east toward Mississippi...though given Byzantine layout of Alexandria (bypasses, three way stops off of frontage roads, loops to nowhere...loops...to nowhere) could probably just pick a spot on the compass and you wouldn't be wrong.

For me the arrows are pointing east-southeast through Alabama and Georgia into North Florida. I'm heading out, in the morning, to spend a few days with my Daddy...playing golf and drinking coffee. A decades old winning formula.

Provisions for the trip have been gathered...



Instead of the usual route that would take me down through Mobile, Alabama and along the Panhandle of Florida, I'm going first to Birmingham...then I'll wind my way down through Montgomery into the Wiregrass, with a swing through Georgia...just because.

I have my reasons, other than the fact that I've been making that same ride through Mobile for 25 years...namely Full Moon BBQ and the Birmingham Museum of Art. I had been under the impression that they had a collection of works by Jonathan Lasker...that was why I had originally made plans to go that way. I don't think his work is there anymore but...they have just reopened the African art collection (in the grand reopening was today)...so my plans are the same.

For the curious, Jonathan Lasker and African masks and shields have as much to do with my paintings as tractor trailers and firework stands. Which is to say, a great deal.

Soggy Norton

The prison grounds at Angola are very much like a ranch. Once through the gate you travel a straight road, lined with oaks across flat grass...broken in a couple of places by creeks and ditches. There are horses.

When you leave you head for the hills. Unlike coming out of the Delta at Greenwood, where the initial rise is as steep and abrupt as a roller coaster's, this road skirts the hills, turns back toward the river before making  a gradual ascent. On one side you have these sheer red faces of eroding clay...on the other an incomprehensible tangle of vines, branches and brambles...briars in black wet dirt...and old houses and out buildings.

You'd never see this place in the summer. In fact I've driven by it several times and never noticed it there. It's just as well. I would never have stopped here when the ground was warm. And if there had been any flooding? I wouldn't even look in that direction.

The place is existentially creepy enough...

without our arch enemy curled up in the corner you're about to turn. I don't want to give the impression that we're always running from snakes like some kinda action movie...but, this...this, in the spring and summer, would be begging for it.

The floor boards were spongy enough downstairs...that's why I didn't go up...not because I was afraid a forgotten family member might be up there sitting next to a hole in the wall where the fire place used to be.

Our mold and moss are technicolor (almost a chrome yellow in person).

This must have been a very nice spread at one time (though it had to  have been prone to flooding). There were several outbuilding....one of which, I'm sure, was a kitchen.

The roadside is littered with places like this. They'll all disappear here in a month or so...make a wobbly reappearance next winter...and next year and the next...until the vines finally pull them down and the ground swallows them up.

 

Mojo Hand

I'm gonin' to Louisiana...


Y'all know about my issues with that bastard Miro. I told you I'd fix him.

Step One - Go to Louisiana...where they have Mojo Hands.

Step Two - get Mojo Hand. *

This will destroy the power he has over my woman..Martha. Ostensibly I'm goin' down to Baton Rouge to sell Fried Green Beans and Chicken Wings. I will go Cotton Wood Books, eat at Zippy's Tacos and make myself sick on Beinget Fingers. I will not play the penny slots. I will not play the penny slots. I will get the Mojo Hand. I will not play the penny slots.

Then Thursday I'll be in St. Francisville and Angola Farm...Louisiana State Penitentiary. It's not as wretched as it once was...which says more about how bad it used to be than how lovely it is now. There's no more red hats. ...but your prospects aren't good if you find yourself there. It's an odd place with a culture all it's own...there's a feeling of immersion when you go through the gate. Rightly so...most of them aren't leaving.


They got their woodworking shops, their radio station, their football teams (last time I was down, one of the inmates was sporting a golfball sized Angola football championship ring. I imagine they could put together a team to challenge LSU..if not the Saints) but, it's the Rodeo they're famous for. Being in the infirmary means no work and pain pills...they ride hard as hell. I intend to get my hot dogs into the concession stands. Ha.

Step 3 - Learn to paint sneaky landscapes.

A little busy maybe...that's the thing about swamps but, dig it in detail...

Ha. I'm comin' for your stank ass Miro.


*Step 2 1/2 Send mojo hand to gentleman in England who's having a bit of a Ricky Gervais problem.