Charlene Richard

As I was driving back to Dallas from New Orleans, I saw a sign to “the gravesite of Charlene Richard”. I had no idea who she was, but I had plenty of time, and decided to investigate. I followed the signs for about 10 miles, at which point they petered out. A little further along the road, I came across a cemetery, and stopped to see if this could be the place.

A group of people – 3 women and 2 men – were standing just inside the gate, and so I asked them if this was where Charlene Richard was buried. They said it was, and pointed out the grave to me. I asked, somewhat sheepishly, if they knew who she was. They explained that she was a young girl who had died of leukemia in 1959, but bore her suffering bravely and with great faith. To cut a long story short, she is said to be responsible for several miracles, one of which was witnessed by two of the people I was talking to. The mother and daughter had both been diagnosed with cancer on the same day. They sought intercession from Charlene Richard, and are currently both in remission. They are part of a group that is seeking canonization for her, and offered me a “prayer cloth” if it might be useful to anyone I knew.

I’m not really a religious person, but I think that my being there, at that time and in that place, was much more than a coincidence.

Manure

My mother came to stay with us for the weekend, and as usual I drove her home this morning. I came back across country to avoid Exeter, which has a traffic system that requires more patience than I seem to have these days. Passing a farm entrance, I saw a sign: “Fresh Manure £1 - Large bag”. I don’t think I’ve ever had occasion to buy manure, so it’s not an area of expertise for me, but I suppose I’d always naively supposed that manure just came in a bag of unspecified size.

“A bag of manure, please.”

“Certainly – would sir like a large, medium or small bag?”

Doesn’t sound right, does it?

My entrepreneurial side – and, in the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that I’m not known for that particular set of skills: I’m 62 and still working – and not through choice; I once invested $100 in beer-flavoured ice cream, because I liked the taste, and I felt sure it couldn’t fail – that’s $100 I’ll never see again.

Anyway, my entrepreneurial side started thinking of a nationwide franchise – Poobuck’s, say – which would take manure to a whole new level.

“A bag of manure, please.”

“Certainly, sir – tall, grande or venti?”

“Oh, venti, I think.”

“Cinnamon or nutmeg?”

“No thank you – I take my manure straight. Don’t get me started on that Mocha Choka Skinny Caramel Cappucino stuff – it’s bad enough I pay $4 for a cup of coffee, without going all froo-froo …”

Think of the benefits. Manure buyers would no longer need to sneak around under cover of dusk to furtively purchase the wonder waste. New derivative markets would open up: designer bags depicting pastoral scenes in pastel colours; clever advertising slogans – “Ordure, ordure!”; manure-to-go, or home delivery (“half-an-hour or it’s FREE”); manure futures on Wall Street; an advice column in Composters Weekly (“Send in your questions – we’ll get to the bottom of it”) …

I really think I’m onto something – now, who wants to invest $100?

Genetic Diversity

I just picked up my favorite pair of boots from the repair shop, and I feel good about it. It has nothing to do with being “green” – the new soles are leather, and stitched on, and the “Cat’s Paw” heels are meticulously pinned in place. It’s unusual these days to find anything done with such obvious care. The boots themselves are a little ratty, but they’re comfortable, and that’s what’s important.

Almost any of these boots are repairable, and worth repairing. And, as I said before, it has nothing to do with being “green”. It has to do with not discarding things for the flimsiest of reasons, about finding something you like and sticking with it, about not just changing for the sake of change. I’m part of probably the first generation that hasn’t done this automatically, without having to think about it. My parents, and their parents, wouldn’t have wasted anything; they wouldn’t have thrown away something that could be repaired; and they wouldn’t have bought anything simply because they felt like a change. For the most part, we probably never stop to think how lucky we are to have the choices we have; or how cursed we are to have to spend the time to make them.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not really into “saving the planet”. For one thing, I’m not sure what we’re saving it for – it’s a finite resource, and will run out eventually no matter how hard we try to prevent it. And for another thing, I think that the best thing we could do for the planet is to allow ourselves to become extinct. A hundred years on there would be little trace of humanity.

And talking of extinction, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about endangered species. It’s true that it would be sad to see no more tigers or polar bears (especially if you happen to be a tiger or a polar bear), but in earlier times we had another name for it – evolution. We commonly regard genetic diversity as a good thing – after all, it’s why cousins can’t marry cousins (a general rule from which royal families seem exempt, with observable results).

Coming into my hotel via a side entrance the other day, I saw a cricket in the stairwell. Do you know how many crickets there are in the world? Hmmm … neither do I, but I can tell you that it is estimated that there are 200 million insects for every human. I began to wonder if perhaps their DNA might not be unique for any individual insect. Indeed, if perhaps their DNA might not all be the same. And, if it was, that perhaps they have reached a perfect stage of evolution, and that our genetic diversity, far from being an advantage, might simply indicate that we are a long way from perfection. Think how easy it would be to find a mate if everybody was exactly the same!

I’m being ridiculous, of course, but I’m sure you get my point. Just because we think it’s a good idea doesn’t make it a good idea. And although we’re at the top of the food chain right now, it’s only a couple of millennia since Italy had an empire.

Discuss.

New Orleans

It’s over 500 miles from “The Big D” to “The Big Easy” – about 10 hours of driving (or, if you select “walking” on Google Maps, 7 days!). At this time of year, New Orleans is hot and humid, but none the less alluring for that. I chose to drive there staying on the highways, and return by a more leisurely route. So I left Dallas on Interstate 20 (I-20), headed south on I-49, and then west on I-10. In case you’re not familiar with the US road system, I-10 is the southernmost coast-to-coast highway, stretching from Santa Monica in California to Jacksonville in Florida – almost 2,500 miles; in contrast, I-90 is the northernmost, and also the longest at over 3,000 miles – it runs from Seattle to Boston. In between, the major highways increase in number identification as you go north, except that there is no I-50 or I-60. You probably don’t care to know any more than that.

I-10 took me through Lafayette, on an elevated highway across the Henderson Swamp to Baton Rouge, and over Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans. After checking in at the hotel, I took a cab into the French Quarter for dinner. July 4^th is not the best time to visit the Crescent City – every year for the last 15 years it has hosted the Essence Music Festival. Even my Sri Lankan taxi driver complained about the number of African-Americans that inundated the town. I have nothing against any ethnic minority, but moderation is the key, I think.

I found a café with outdoor seating and live jazz, and enjoyed a large plate of etouffee – spiced seafood (shrimp, crawfish, oysters) served over rice. If you’re feeling uncharitable, it’s sort of leftovers-stew – but good nonetheless. Thus fortified, I went to see what Bourbon Street was all about. If you’re young, you would find it fun and vibrant; if you’re older (like me), your jaded palate might find it just a little too much like the “party district” in many other cities. My mental snapshots, which probably would not coincide with yours, include: a pale white girl in a short skirt and impossibly high heels, crying as she is hustled along by her black pimp; a young guy in dirty clothes crouched by the roadside devouring the remnants of a slice of pizza; whiffs of cigar smoke; jelly shots, “big ass beers” and “hand grenades” to go; big bubble-butted black girls with gelatinous breasts squeezed into space-age fabric that defies the normal laws of physics; drains full of old Mardi Gras beads; scantily clad girls trying to attract men inside Larry Flynt’s Barely Legal club, or Babe’s Cabaret, or the Stiletto Club, or Little Darlings, or …

Coffee and beignets - the breakfast of champions!

One block away from Bourbon Street you could be in a different world – art galleries, upscale hotels, a classical guitarist accompanied by a singer with angelic range, a restaurant almost hidden in a courtyard at the end of a small alleyway. I think it is probably this variety that makes New Orleans, and the French Quarter in particular, such a unique experience.

The next morning, I was back in the French Quarter, at the Café du Monde for a breakfast of coffee and beignets. The coffee is different – it contains chicory, and is served half coffee, half hot milk – and so are the beignets – a French doughnut that is square, has no hole, and is drenched in powdered sugar. Beignets are the official State Doughnut (I know …). The café has been there since 1862, and the beignets are the only food item they serve. They’re open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

A born hunter ...

A blue crane in the bayou

When the temperature is above 100  ̊F (38  ̊C), it’s too hot to walk around for long, so I signed up for a “swamp tour”. At 11am I boarded the bus that was to take me to Jean Lafitte’s Swamp Tours, and along the way, the driver explained some of Louisiana’s history – that it has parishes instead of counties, which is a relic of its predominantly Catholic roots (while most of the rest of the US was Protestant); that Creoles are different from Cajuns – Creoles are of mixed race, black and white, and Cajuns were originally refugees of Arcadia (the name is a corruption of “Arcadians”) in Canada (now Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island), and French-speaking[1]; that New Orleans is the second largest port in the US (after New York), which is why the government will continue rescuing it from hurricane damage, even if most of it is 100 feet below sea level; that bodies are buried in above-ground concrete tombs (as in much of the Caribbean) because the water table is so high.

The swamp tour itself followed man-made canals through swamps (some navigable, some treacherous) and into the bayous. The landscape is similar to Florida’s Everglades, but a different experience – the airboats are replaced with a puttering barge, which probably reflects the laid-back Louisiana lifestyle, and they have only alligators, rather than both alligators and crocodiles (shame on you if you didn’t know they were different – try looking here: http://lmgtfy.com ).

Swamp panorama

After the tour, I went looking for a Cajun restaurant, hoping for catfish and Zydeco music. I got the catfish, but, because the restaurant was close to the Convention Center where the Essence Festival was based, they were playing Michael Jackson[2] music. It’s entirely beyond me why the black population would take to their bosom someone who attempted to “adjust” his heritage for most of his life.

I watched the July 4^th firework display from Washington on television. The fife and drum bands made me think that the US is quietly acquiring tradition – I wonder if perhaps nations turn to the past when they no longer have confidence in the future.

Fausto's

Crossroads to Everywhere?

Later, from my room on the 9^th floor of the hotel, I watched the New Orleans firework display. It’s comforting to know that, even in these recessionary times, we still have money to burn …

The journey back took me almost 12 hours, but was relaxing – driving along roads that were sometimes lined with cypress and live oak, sometimes by fields of sugar cane or corn, but almost always flanked by the railroad that predates the road; diverting briefly to visit the gravesite of Charlene Richards; stopping for a crawfish po’boy at Ken’s Fausto’s restaurant in Kinder; pausing at a produce stand for fresh tomatoes, noonday onions and purple hull peas, and scribbling down a recipe or two from the proprietor. I love to drive.

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[1] If you’ve ever heard Cajun music, or heard a “real” Cajun speak, you’ll know that, although they speak a sort of French, it’s probably not anything that a French person would recognize. I doubt any self-respecting Frenchman would say “Laissez les bon temps roulez”.

[2] When Neda was killed by a Basij bullet recently in Tehran, “the world was watching”; as soon as Michael Jackson died, “Errm, we’re busy right now – could you come back in a couple of weeks?”

Something Misunderstood

“This movie has been formatted to fit your screen.”

I used to think, when I was younger and so much more naïve, that technology was wonderful. How do they do that? I am older now, and my attitudes are tempered with the cynicism that, unfortunately, comes only with age. Now, I find myself thinking, “That’s scary – how do they know how big my television screen is?”

At the end of national news, there is always an announcement, “And now we take you to your local news team, to find out what’s happening where you are.” They know where I am. If I’m visiting friends or relatives, they still know where I am. It almost seems superfluous to worry about protecting my credit cards, or identity theft, if they always know where to find me.

Vacuum flasks seem pretty straightforward. They keep hot things hot, and cold things cold. But how do they know? I’ve dismantled one of these things, and I can’t figure it out.

I’d like to think that there are just some things we’re not meant to understand, but we no longer live in a world where we can afford to be so innocent.

Many years ago, the pilgrims left Plymouth, England, in the Mayflower, and made landfall in 1620 in America at Plymouth Rock; more recently, in 1941, the famous baseball player Lou Gehrig died – of Lou Gehrig’s disease! 

In Psalm 46 of the King James Bible, published in the year that Shakespeare turned 46, the 46^th word is "shake" and the 46^th word from the end is "spear."

You could say these things are coincidence, but I know there’s something more sinister going on. The mathematician John Allen Paulos tells us that "the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences." You can believe that if you like.

My birthday falls on the same day every year. Yours probably does, too. It certainly makes it easy to remember, but, if you think about it, what are the odds on something happening every single year on exactly the same day?

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” He knew a thing or two, that Shakespeare guy.

Bonnie and Clyde

Just a week ago, in 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow died suddenly in a hail of bullets, ambushed outside a small Louisiana town by six police officers. Their criminal career had lasted only a couple of years, but was no less bloody for that. Even though they were apparently besotted with each other in life, in death they are separated – at least physically – because the Parker family would not allow them to be buried together.

Clyde Barrow is buried in Western Heights Cemetery – 1617, Fort Worth Avenue; Bonnie Parker is buried 12 miles away, in Crown Hill Cemetery – 9700 Webb Chapel Road. Both addresses are in Dallas, which is where they met, living in the abject poverty that engulfed so many during the Great Depression.

I heard all this on an early morning television “magazine” program (Sunday Morning, on CBS) this morning, and it was enough to give me a goal for my otherwise unplanned Sunday.

My GPS guided me to the Crown Hill cemetery first. The cemetery is surprisingly sparsely populated, given that it is a small oasis in a city of over a million people. Even more surprising was the prominence of Indian (Asian Indian, that is) names on the headstones. I spoke to someone in the funeral parlor next door (mostly because I needed help in locating Bonnie), and he explained that the Indian community in Dallas had a special arrangement with the cemetery, so that the “catchment area” was larger than just the immediate surroundings. Bonnie is buried next to her mother, in a grave that belies the enormity of her exploits: “As the flowers are all made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew, So this old world is made brighter by the lives of folks like you.” Hmmm … more colorful, perhaps – but brighter?

I knew exactly where to find Clyde’s grave in the Western Heights cemetery, because I had seen a reference to it on the internet – “…on the left hand corner just as you enter the gate. The gate seems locked but it is not. Just lift the latch, it is open” – as indeed it was. The cemetery is small and peaceful, in spite of the fact that, from this vantage point, you can almost see downtown Dallas. He is buried next to his brother Marvin: “Gone but not forgotten.”

It was still early in the day, and I was in an unfamiliar part of Dallas, so I followed the road – Fort Worth Avenue – to see if it would ultimately lead to Fort Worth, as the name implied. It did, but I couldn’t resist stopping on the way to take a picture of the “Convience Store” in one of the predominantly Spanish-speaking parts of Irving.

I passed south of Fort Worth, and continued on to Weatherford, where I pulled into “Skinny’s Hamburgers” for a late lunch. It doesn’t sound great, but, like so many of the old-style hamburger places, it is so much better than any of the chains. I had a cheeseburger with mustard, and “all the way on the vegetables” – onions, lettuce and tomato. The tables were covered in a red-checkered plastic tablecloth, and uniformly bedecked with a roll of kitchen towel, ketchup, and Louisiana hot sauce. Other items on the menu included: Chicken fried steak, with fries, gravy, salad and Texas toast[1]; Catfish basket with fries, hush puppies and tarter (sic) sauce; Bowl of chili with onions and crackers; Stuffed jalapenos; Corny dogs. It might not sound like gourmet food – and it isn’t. But at least it’s honest, and cooked from scratch. Wash that down with a tall glass of sweet tea, and I’m ready for the journey back to the hotel! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] In England, we’d call this “doorsteps”!

Fort Worth

St Paul's Lutheran Church

It’s been a Fort Worth kinda day. We went to the flea market this morning – the vendors take over the “small exhibits” barn at the Will Rogers Memorial Center –  it’s much larger than it sounds. On the way we passed a scene you seldom see in England – a Lutheran tent revival that, like all the churches here on a Sunday, was packed to overflowing. When I stopped to take a photo, the attendants rushed over to help me park. I explained that I only wanted a photo because church attendance in England is falling, and so it would be an unusual sight for “folks back home”. When they pressed me to join them (in the nicest possible way), I declined, suggesting that I (not alone, you understand, but as a representative, though not statistically valid, sample) was probably the reason for declining congregations.

Val at Joe T Garcia's

After the flea market, we headed north to the Stockyards – significant historically because Fort Worth was once the last outpost of civilization before the cattle drives hit the Chisholm Trail and the plains, bound for the railheads in Kansas. These days, they are more of a tourist trap. We had lunch at Joe T Garcia’s, a famous local landmark that has featured traditional Mexican food in an outdoor garden since 1935. This is the place to go for “real” guacamole and margaritas.

The Opry

Cattle drive

The Stockyards area has all kinds of entertainment for visitors. Some of it is fake (like the daily cattle drive down Main Street), and some of it is not (like many of the cowboys that drive the cattle, and the White Horse Saloon, where local musicians play most days of the week, and the Fort Worth Opry that play just for the fun of it). I’ve heard it said that the American love affair with Harley Davidson motorcycles is in no small part due to a latent desire to keep the “cowboy culture” alive. The Stockyards, particularly at night, is a magnet for both.

Cowboys old and new

Playing in the Love Shack next door to the White Elephant I found Brad Hines. I didn’t recognize him at first – he’s lost 220 pounds! It was his voice, and his chewing-tobacco habit, that gave him away. It’s amazing what lap band surgery can achieve – he certainly looks much better for it.

Brad Hines