Big Easy Summer

I’ve chronicled my summer job in New Orleans many times. I worked for a now defunct geophysical company named GTS Corp. They had an office on St. Charles Avenue, near Jackson Circle.

The seedy front door opened into a modern office that employed at least a hundred professionals and technicians. I developed many of the characters in my French Quarter mystery Big Easy during that summer in New Orleans.

I lived in a broken down wood framed building in Arabi, a little town located between the Lower Ninth Ward and Chalmette - all three areas decimated by Hurricane Katrina. My rent was only seventy-five bucks a month but there was no air conditioning and someone should have paid me to stay there.

I lived across the street from a convent of cloistered Catholic nuns and the entire time I never saw a single occupant of the large building. I generally walked the half mile, or so, to St. Bernard Avenue, the road leading to downtown New Orleans, and took the bus to work. I usually slept all the way there and all the way home. This practice got me into trouble on more than one occasion.

The worst situation occurred at the Arabi Station. I awoke to find the bus deserted except for me, the woman sitting next to me, and a desperate-looking man brandishing a pistol. I grabbed the woman’s shoulders and pulled her down behind the seat, the crazy man’s pistol pointed right at us. We held our breaths, hoping that he didn’t shoot in our direction, even though I knew that the ricochet of a single bullet would probably get both of us more than once.

Instead of shooting us, the loony fellow ran out of the bus where police officers quickly apprehended him. Cops are often hard asses but considering the service they perform for the public and the constant danger they are in, I can only commend them for their almost daily acts of bravery that rarely earns them an atta boy.

I didn’t make much money at GTS, even in those days, but I spent what I earned having fun in the Big Easy. All the fun and work left little time for sleep and I –like I said – spent lots of time sleeping on the bus. One way from the bus stop on Canal, next to the old Saenger Theatre, took about forty minutes. More than once, I awoke about two hours after boarding the bus and finding myself in the same spot where I had started. When this happened, I usually felt newly invigorated and simply headed for an evening on Bourbon Street.

Growing up in the little town of Vivian, I was familiar with many poor people but I had never seen the masses of derelict winos such as those that populated St. Charles Avenue. I’ve since seen many others since in Boston, New York, Oklahoma City and even Amarillo but that summer in New Orleans was my first day end, day out experience with humans little more alive than voodoo zombies were. Hmmm! Sounds like the makings of a suspenseful murder mystery novel.

Gondwana