Blog on Miscellaneous Topics, Mainly Life and Shelter, from NOLA
September 18, 2011
Peter and I came to see my parents across Lake Pontchatrain from here in Covington, with my brother Will for five days (Will) to a week (Peter—who then got Southwest Airlines to extend it two days more for no cost, after he realized taking my mom to tea twice was not enough, on what might be our last time seeing her alive). My niece Kristin had told us this year they were deteriorating fast and we should come ASAP to be sure to have them competent at all to see us.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to travel. Even they, however, sounded surprised when I said I was going to fill in the time from 9/14 to 10/6, after ANSWER, Code Pink, Courage to Change, AFL-CIO, and a lot of other progressive organizations announced they would be occupying Freedom Plaza in Wash DC starting then, to protest the 10th anniversary of the US occupying Afghanistan. Adding a week for the Plaza occupation would make my trip five weeks. A few days into last week I realized everyone was right—I can’t do that. Since everything else was set already when I realized that, even though the occupation had been the reason for extending the trip to start with, that is what I had to cut. So I changed the trip home to be from NY instead, a week earlier. However, it’s still four weeks, and I have realized I am not as young as I was the last time I backpacked for four weeks, across Europe sleeping on trains when I was 27, 41 years ago. Today, though, my right knee got better and I thought maybe taking buses, climbing stairs, walking from place to place was just what I needed to do to start feeling as young as I did then.
Seeing my parents in their late 80s and unable to do many things for themselves made me really aware how important it is to live every day we can as fully as we can. Cliché, but sayings become cliches because they are basically true. Maybe overstated, but at base true. We were happy to hear when we got there and saw Momma and Daddy really deteriorated, that my brother Dave and his wife my wonderful sister-in-law Dr. Patricia S. Braley had already decided to move my parents to a place with more care than where they have been. That is just assisted living, but they need more now, especially my mom, who has Alzheimer’s so bad that if my dad has to go to the hospital she thinks he’s cheating on her because she sees him with all the women there—the nurses. So sad. Now they need hourly care, not just someone there and preparing meals, which was enough a few years ago.
What are we all going to do when we are that age???
Segue to new subject: This week I am in NOLA by myself, to stay actually here and do nothing but enjoy it. All other times I’ve been here I had jobs to do and/or people to visit across the Lake and/or the AAU nationals girls’ basketball tournament my granddaughter Autumn was in when she was 11 to attend in Kenner. So I never got to spend more than a little time actually in this wonderful city, but it was enough for me to know how much I like it, so I wanted to immerse myself in it this week.
The first two days were true bathos, even for something I–known for biting off more than a whale could chew and then feeling like a failure when I can’t–would do. Peter almost cried when he saw where and how I was having him leave me here. I had made reservations in a campground—gated, a Good Sam Park, nice in website pictures, five miles from the French Quarter, on a bus line. It was only $150 for the whole week, so that saved the money I needed for the whole trip. However, this is where I made my big mistake. Since the space I reserved was a tent space, I decided it would do to make a “tent” out of two sheets sewed together and draped from two garden stakes in the middle. We added a tarp and a canvas drop cloth attached with clothespins.
The air mattress bed I bought went up with the pump in three minutes, and the bed was actually fine, covered with two more sheets. I had brought my own pillow from home, so I was fine, I thought.
However, the first night was awful. I heard trains and motorcycles and sirens all night long. I slept, kind of, a few hours on and off, at most.
That, however, was nothing compared to the second night. By then mosquitoes had increased since Tropical Storm Lee came through last week. The word must have gone out that there was fresh California flesh to be had here. By morning I was covered with huge red welts, and the ones on my ankles, wrists, and upper arms were so itchy I could hardly bear it. Nonetheless, birds and people got me up early and at first I was just putting things up to be ready to come back that night. Then it came to me that I couldn’t do the same routine again. Next I thought I’d have to find someplace to stay inside, the YWCA or wherever. Then an hour or so later I thought it probably wouldn’t cost that much to buy a real tent, and then I’d be safe from the bugs, so I’d be OK. The noise had not bothered me at all the second night, so I thought I’d be OK if I could avoid West Nile Lyme disease or malaria or just itching to death.
So I went to buy a tent. It took me like five hours, since of course I don’t know how to get anywhere, and I went to Bridge House first, my favorite thrift store ever, which I found when we were here for Autumn’s AAU Nationals. I had to buy a few gifts there, new great things they had, so with the tent I had a lot to carry and was walking very slowly. When I got back here to the Park the owner’s son Kevin came out to help me carry things in and then the owner Kevin helped me put up the tent. He asked me if his wife Marla, the other owner, had told me they had a room for rent for only $13 a day more than I paid for the campsite. Next thing I knew Marla was there and said I was coming to stay in the room and it was on the house, no more than I had already paid.
Wow! What a difference! I have air conditioning—well, first off, electricity! My phone is charging all the time and my computer is attached to the Internet just as though I were at home! And most of all, I am not being eaten by mosquitoes or anything else. It’s just a great bonus that I have a lock on the door so I don’t have to carry my computer around with me all the time. The last two days have been heavenly.
So this makes me think what shelter is. It’s so little difference from no shelter, but so much difference, too. And yet I am staying happily in only maybe 200 square feet with a shared bathroom and a microwave and tiny fridge. I would be fine in half as much space, since that much of the floor is just empty. Similarly, here they still have many of those tiny tiny tiny square wood houses, which were everywhere in the 1940s. This is part of the poor South, where little houses like that have not been torn down and replaced with newer styles. I heard a woman say today she had rented, something like 100 square feet, 10 built on an ordinary city lot, like a courtyard of playhouses, for $60 a month. Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which is about $1,100 a month, so if your rent were that little, you could have a decent life on one minimum wage job, or even a half-time one. If you had a full-time job, you could afford $350 a month and still cover bus fares (where, like here, there is really good public transportation), food (especially with food stamps, which you would qualify for), and health care covered by Medicaid. It’s not so bad, as long as it is minimally decent.
I learned in two days it’s just totally impossible, and not even shelter, if it is not minimally decent.
Brenda Barnes, President
Home Grown Food Network, Inc.
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