crawfish etuofee, eh too fee... eh too fyeh

ken, a retired chemistry teacher from new hampshire, "is this a rave?".
"no" and I shove a bottle of beer in his hand and take a drink from mine. club brasil on frenchman street has a half a high school marching band on stage. misty, who asked me if I needed anything from the bar comes back with a cup for ken. "here drink this too." I say handing the plastic cup to ken. He does not complain and drinks both, god bless him. this is not my scene. I feel old in this place. i have an old soul. misty and andrew from the o.c. who have watched the show, i asked, are standing watching the band. They enjoy music, it's their passion and have taken ken and i around to these amazing bars with live bands. soul sucking jazz, i didn't even think I liked jazz, and then we ended up here... their favorite band is dave matthews which makes me feel quietly superior.
john wilks booth, his real name, talks about st. bernard parish. the water rose six feet in the space of a half hour. some of the fire fighters from the parish come in and talk about what happened. they were abandoned. the national guard was occupied at the super dome. people broke into the boat storage warehouse and took the boats. they rescued each other. they swam out their kitchen windows. they broke into the crawl space in their house and dragged their mother in law and sister up in there with them and then sat on the roof for four days waiting to be rescued.
Many people did not have flood insurance. the insurance company would pay to replace to the roof. one of the kids from americorp gets dysentery. we all find this funny, comical. "what is dysentery anyways?" one of the americorp kids said he felt sick and had a headache. "that's dysentery?" in the oregon trail game people were always dropping dead from that shit. you didn't have time to shoot two squirrels without little peggy sue dropping dead from dysentery. i fantasize about my own death: you guys go on without me... i'd only slow you down handing over my ryobi power drill with rechargeable battery pac... I got the... I got the dysentery.
i listen to npr on the way home. it seems to be the only radio station i can find. If I ever post a personal ad on the chicago reader i can put my radio is tuned to npr. i am interesting and intelligent... love me now. they talked about how president bush did not mention katrina or rebuilding the gulf coast and how some people were upset about his state of the union speech. by the end of the week, we have moved on to mudding. mudding is, surprised again, what i call spackle... and does not wash out of clothes. i enjoy walking around with these huge spots of mud on my jacket and jeans, like i'm out there doing things... look at me.
mike from project hope, not to be confused with camp hope which sounded ominous at first but is actually a very nice place has been here for the last seven months. first he was gutting houses and now rebuilding. he hasn't shaved since he got down here and is a hippy, his word not mine, he is working for free and is living on the kindness of the community.
everyone helps each other, it is a very blue collar neighborhood. an electrician who live down the street rewires his neighbor's house who is a carpenter, or knows something about carpentry. hopper, the carpenter, in turn, comes into this man's house and puts up braces and jacks, and raises this guy's roof to where it was before the storm surge hit. the force of the water moved brick houses down the street. this house leans awkwardly to the left. hopper begins turning the jack and the roof begins to groan. we're all underneath the center beam holding it above our heads in place. hopper pauses for a second and tells us to take a look around and plan our escape route if the roof decides to go, we laugh and then nervously look around. I reposition myself closer to the door this time and he starts cranking the jack again.