About Lake Ponchartrain…

Earlier today, while writing about James Lee Burke, a memory of my dog Troy Russell was triggered by mentioning Lake Ponchartrain.  What James Lee Burke, my dog, and Lake Ponchartrain have in common is pretty much zero, except for some sort of connection made by the random firing of neurons in my brain.  It would be good to understand how that works, except for the fact that it would be scientific, and I’m allergic to scientific. 

Troy Russell was a Chow mix I adopted off the streets of New Orleans in 1993 when he was a year to a year and a half old.   Unfortunately I have no electronic pictures of him.  He was red, with a big fluffy flag of a tail, and weighed about 55 pounds.  We lived just outside the French Quarter in Faubourg Marigny, and had no yard.  We had a courtyard, postage-stamp size, but I couldn’t even let him out in that because he had this tendency to crawl under the house and never come out.  Hiding was his specialty. 

So on occasion, I would take him for excursions to West End on Lake Ponchartrain.  There was a park there on the lakeshore, where there was a seawall consisting of steps from ground level down into the lake for some distance.  TR was not a big fan of water.  The ocean scared him senseless.  But he loved, for some reason, to wade along the steps of the seawall, as long as only his feet got wet.  The problem is that the steps were slick with algae and he would sometimes fall in.  Eek! he would say.  Or at least, the dog version of eek. 

Once we were there and I let him off the leash (forbidden, but in his case, I knew he would stick close by).  I was, of course, reading, and I lost track of him.  I looked up to see that he had managed to worm himself through a hole in a fence surrounding what looked to be a power substation of some kind.  And couldn’t figure out how to get himself out.  TR was beautiful and sweet, but no one would ever accuse him of being the brightest bulb in the chandelier.  Actually, no one would ever accuse any Chow of that. 

Once while we were there, I saw a waterspout out on the lake for the first and only time in my life.  It was one of those moments when you wish someone else was there to see it with you, especially since Troy Russell wasn’t interested. 

One year, my friend Bernard and I took a break in between Mardi Gras parades and went to West End with a pound or so of boiled crawfish.  Bernard taught me to eat the crawfish, then throw the shells up in the air.  Seagulls would swoop down and catch the shells in mid-air.  I thought that maybe was kind of cruel, since how disappointed must the seagulls be to find they were eating only empty shells? 

Another memorable Lake Ponchartrain experience involves crossing the Causeway.  This 24-mile long bridge looks about as stable as something your five-year old might build out of toothpicks.  Every so often, there are variable message boards telling you the windspeed, since at times it has to be closed for high winds when your car can be blown off the roadway.  Very comforting.  What happens if you’re already on the bridge when they close it down?  According to their website, 42,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day.  http://www.thecauseway.com/ Trust me:  this is Louisiana.  One day the bridge will fail, and 12,000 vehicles or so will plunge into the lake.  Bring your lifejacket if you plan to cross. 

My other memory of Lake Ponchartrain is going to eat at Brunings, a legendary seafood restaurant restuarant that opened in 1859.  I have two memorable moments from Brunings.  Once while sitting at the bar, with friends, waiting for a table, I struck up a conversation with a fisherman sitting next to me as we were each eating a dozen raw oysters.  (Sometimes, I don’t want to be bothered.  Then sometimes, I’ll start a conversation about something with a total stranger.)  I said, “Good oysters, huh?”  His reply:  “Not salty enough.”  Fishermen are men of few words. 

My first time at Brunings, I was looking out the huge windows and there were all these fish jumping in the lake.  They were amazing.  They jump really high.  I asked the waitress what they were.  She gave me this look like, what spaceship did you arrive on?  They were mullet.  Now I know where the lyrics come from (Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high).

I only learned today that the West End, including Brunings,was completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.  From Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_End,_New_Orleans  Not nearly the worst that happened.  That occurred in the Lower 9th Ward.  I lived in the Upper Ninth when I was there.  Between me and the Lower Ninth was the Bywater, but it still means that the majority of people who drowned were my neighbors.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Ward_of_New_Orleans

But I’ll end this as I started, remembering Troy Russell, the New Orleans dog.  I had to put Troy Russell to sleep in 2005 when he was at or near 13 years old, because he could no longer walk properly.  He had outlived both of his best friends, my friend Lebron’s lab mixes Timmy and Douglas.  No one ever expected that, since TR had had such a hard beginning and Timmy and Douglas had been pampered since puppyhood.  I can only just now, after four years, start picturing Troy Russell in his prime when he was having fun and I was having fun with him, instead of picturing him in his decline.  Old dogs never really die.  They pop up in your memory at odd moments, like when you’re thinking about Lake Ponchartrain.

Reading With Fakename: James Lee Burke

In a previous post I mentioned that James Lee Burke is one of my favorite writers ever.  The first of his Dave Robicheaux novels that I read was In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead, and since that time I had read 10 of the 11 that followed.  The exception was Pegasus Descending.  This week I finished that one, and believe it was the best of all. 

I don’t believe it’s humanly possible to top Burke in his ability to evoke the ambiance of south Louisiana.  His descriptions of the scenery are breathtaking.  It makes me nostalgic for south Louisiana, although I sort of have a love-hate relationship with it.  And to be truthful, in the four years I lived in New Orleans, I only ventured outside Orleans Parish on two occasions.  Once I went across the Lake (no need to ask which lake–there is only one lake that counts in Louisiana, and that’s Ponchartrain) to Lacombe, for the Bayou Lacombe crab festival.  My most memorable experience there was trying to buy a soft-shell crab po’-boy.  The vendor told me he couldn’t sell me one because they had run out of bread.  I said, that’s okay, just gimme the crab!  I’m not going to eat the bread anyway!  I don’t do fried seafood on bread!  He said, You must not be from around here.  No really, he didn’t say that, I’m making it up.  But he did look at me like I was an alien while handing over the crab.  He’s probably telling that story to his grandchildren now, under the heading of, “You won’t believe this…”

My second excursion was to Houma, which bills itself as The Cajun Capital of the World.  It’s the largest “city” (population:  just over 32,000) in Terrebone Parish.  In Louisiana, where any food, nationality, or holiday calls for a party, a parade, a festival, or all three, Houma has the best-named one of all:  the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival.  What I remember most about Houma is actually the drive there, down Highway 98.  For a good part of the way you’re driving through swamps which come up to just below the roadbed.  In any sort of bad weather event, it would be completly impassable.  This road has the highest quantity of roadkill I’ve ever seen, as well as the greatest variety.  Animals you’ve never even heard of have crawled out of the swamp and met their Makers.  So much for wetland and wildlife preservation in Louisiana.  Houma itself is pretty desolate–ugly, flat, treeless, and stifling.  You’ll find “Houma” in the dictionary under the definition of “godforsaken”.

Another part of the ambiance Burke captures with total authenticity are the people of south Louisiana, their strange names and peculiar dialect which is unmistakably derived from French syntax.  Questions are phrased as statements with an uplift of tone at the end implying a question mark.  Example:  I could have an oyster po-boy?  “Me” or “you” are used for emphasis at the end of a sentence.  Example:  I like oyster po’boys, me. 

Two parishes to the northwest is Iberia Parish, where James Lee Burke makes his home part of the time.  The rest of the time he lives in Montana.  If he has any sense at all, he lives in Montana in the summer, where hopefully the mosquitos are smaller.  His character Dave Robicheaux is a deputy sheriff in Iberia Parish.  Dave is a complex character, to say the least.  He is barely on the side of the law, in some ways, and barely has control over his violent impulses.  He’s a bit like the Archangel Michael–a protector of the weak who would be more than happy to slice your head off with his sword if it seemed appropriate.  There is a certain nobility to him, living uneasily in the same skin with a stone-cold killer who, without some sort of restraining  influence, would just go on a rampage because it felt good. 

Now I will give you some exerpts of the scenery, the characters, and of course, the sex.  That being a necessary ingredient to books that keep your attention.

The scenery:  “In the west, the sky was the soft pink of a flamingo’s wing, the air heavy and damp and clean-smelling.  Water dripped from the trees onto the bayou’s surface, creating a chain of rings that floated away in the current.”  Or this:  “Sometimes ground fog hung on the bayou, and inside it I would hear a gator slap its tail in the lily pads or a nutria or a muskrat roll off a cypress knee into the water.”  I think even if you’ve never been to south Louisiana, you can imagine yourself there perfectly with these descriptions. 

The characters:  A man named Bellerophon Lujan believes a black drug dealer named Monarch Little has killed his son,  although Dave is convinced Monarch is innocent.  Bello, as he’s called, confronts Monarch on his “corner”.  First he looses his Rottweiler on Monarch, but Monarch’s cousin kills the dog by whacking it over the head with a shovel.  Then he attacks Monarch with his fists.  Then: ”Monarch wrestled Bello against the Buick, trapping him there, holding him tight against the hot metal while sheriff’s deputies spilled out of three cruisers, Monarch’s sweat mixing with Bello’s inside a cone of heat and dust and the smell of engine oil and rubber tires.  The expression of despair and loss and a lifetime of impotent rage on Bello’s face was one I will never forget.  No greater injury could have been imposed upon him.  A black man had not only bested him in public but had treated him with mercy and pity while others watched, a deed that Bello was incapable of forgiving.”  Later, Dave has an angry encounter with Monarch and is immediately ashamed of himself.  He realizes he’s been deliberately cruel to a guy who is “clinging to the sides of the planet with suction cups”.

The sex:  “Molly would stir in her sleep, her hip rounded by the sheet, her hot rump brushing against me.  I would put my fingers in her hair, trace them down her shoulders and back, and along the deep curve in her waist.  I’d kiss her baby fat and the two red sun moles below her navel.  I’d kiss her breasts and stomach and mouth and eyes, then slip her close against me, burying my face in the thick smell of her hair”.  Oh.  My. 

Pegasus Descending though, in the end, is the best because it has a complicated and interwoven plot.  It’s a whodunnit that you cannot unravel by yourself.  The characters are bonded to one another in ways they can neither control nor avoid, and in the end it’s as if their fates were sealed long ago, as in Greek tragedy.