West we go

You don't have to go far from New Orleans to reach Louisiana.  For jurisdictional purposes, they might be one and the same within certain contours.  But for those who have been inside the castle walls, the place where grow men sway on cobbled streets with plastic cups is not quite the same as the land that elects the likes of David Vitter.  This here's New Orleans.  That there is something far different.

So I have seen.  The past couple weeks I've been pushing down the handlebars on a rusty green Schwinn through something resembling Real America.  It's the kind of place where the women call you "sweetie" and some whites use Blacks as a noun.  The roads are terrible, the rain is harsh, the radio stations begin with "K," the means of transport is by pickup and people live a proud existence hovering somewhere near the classification of upper lower class.  They are the 18%.

I have been the Stranger in a Strange Land before, but this time I feel both parties have been accentuated just a little more slightly toward our opposing poles.  I do recognize this place, I've let Hollywood and mass media do the set design and arrange the cast for years.  It's a bit like The Truman Show if he had been a viewer long before setting foot inside the bubble.  We all know what stereotypes are, but what about when the papyrus, not just the print, has been set before?  What do we call it when an entire world exists that is exactly as it had been painted for your mind's eye?  That's the West Bank. 

With a little added tension, of course.  To hear one cabbie tell it, Madame Katrina brought some new demographics over the Old River and the residents didn't exactly bake them cookies.  It's not so much that old habits die hard as they live hard, firmly, entrenched into the social fabric of this port town.  For a town accustomed to passing water and itinerant traders, verdant growth from below and hell-breathed cleansing rains from above, it's damn impressive that anything has staying power.  The old formula of poverty and isolation, sprinkled with a little too much credence in Granddaddy's worldview, leaves us with some heel-stompin' racism. 

Of course, that's just my take.  And just who am I?  That's still a work in progress.  Older and firmer than before?  Aye.  But also still subject to the whim and winds around, taking in my surroundings and trying new companions on for size.  A bit cautiously, as you can imagine.  I sure do love the gumbo, but there are a few water-borne illnesses to which I care not to be susceptible.