One Hundred Pennies

There was a penny on the sidewalk, on Esplanade Avenue, between North Galvez Street and North Villere Street. 

A man in a plaid jacket walked by it, never noticing it.  A man in a wheelchair rolled over it, not noticing it.  It started to rain.  A woman looking down, under her umbrella did not see the penny in the puddle.  A little girl carrying a plastic bag full of soda pop and eggs hurried home, looking at the sky.  The copper in the penny turned another shade of green.

One hundred pennies make a dollar.  One hundred dollars make a hundred dollar bill.  

The rain stopped sometime after midnight, and the moon came out.  The leaves overhead rustled in a light breeze.  Everything was fine.

A baby was born at exactly 1:01 AM, across town.  His mother fell asleep with him on her chest.  His father was not there for the birth, except in spirit.  The baby’s grandmother read a magazine a few rooms away.

A trashcan on the sidewalk overflowed with cardboard and rotten fruit.  Someone dropped an empty pint bottle into it.  All the windows along the street were dark.  A light went on in one of the houses.

There were less than a hundred stars visible in the sky past the glow of the streetlights.  They were all bright.

The filament in the lightbulb glowed yellow.  The bare room had white walls, a white ceiling, and an unstained wood floor.  The window was black from the inside.  There was a jar of pennies on the mantle, some of them old, some of them new.  There were more than a hundred of them, mixed with nickels and dimes, mixed with some quarters.  Not a hundred dollars in the whole bunch, but enough.

La Belle de l'Avenue d'Esplanade

La Belle de l'Avenue d'Esplanade

Who is the most beautiful woman on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana?  I know her well. I've been keeping time with her on the sly, fulfilling daydreams and while she whispers sweet somethings in my ear.

Regular readers have noticed that I haven't been posting as much as usual.  I've been keeping time with a lady and I'm being coy about it.  Please do not flood my inbox with mail.  All will be revealed in good time.

This venerable blog, started in 2002, to the best of my recollection, which is a pretty good run in internet terms, may be discontinued soon.  Not because I have no use in keeping the public informed of my scintillating observations, but because it may be more worthwhile to put them elsewhere.

The most beautiful woman on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans, LA, has been whispering her wishes into my left ear, and her notions haven't slipped out my right.  It is more than pillow talk.  There are contracts involved.

Baleanius Rex! will be up and running for another month at least.  Even when this venerable blog, that has given so many people so much pleasure over the years, folds, there will be another media outlet where regular readers can get their accustomed fix.  Since money will be involved with this new platform, a more regular and reliable schedule can be assured.  Stay tuned.  In the meantime, enjoy the parade.

With a handshake,
and a tip of the fedora,

Whalehead King

New Orleans Now and Then and Then

Our Lady of Prompt Succor, patroness of New Orleans, LA

Memory Lane is a two way street.  So is Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana.  So is Bayou Road.  If you can bounce, drop to the floor.  Shake it if you have it.  Flaunt it if you have it.  Who’s that?  It just might be you.  The mirror refuses to lie.  When you are in New Orleans, you haven’t a care in the whole wide world.  New Orleans is like no place else.  Nights do not end after midnight, unless it is twelve o’clock AM tomorrow.  

Freedom is spelled phonetically, with the accent on communal liberty.  You cannot spend twenty-four hours in New Orleans without making a friend.  No one is alone in a big city with a big heart that is bursting at the seams like a red bean that has been soaking all day in a stewpot.  When there is nothing to lose, there is nowhere to go but up.  Vive l’esprit.  Vive le coeur.  The heart is not a lonely hunter.  Happiness loves company.

No one means to be rude.  There is no need to excuse.  When people stop their foolishness, there is nothing left but wisdom.  A catholic city, a universal metropole, where citizenship is earned with a song, one breath of New Orleans air sets a spirit free.  Home is where the heart is.  Home is where the soul resides.  Once you go back, baby, there is nowhere to go but up.  There is a sea change at sea level, and a river runs through it.  Uptown, downtown, West Bank or East, when you dance like you mean it, you have rhythm in your blood.

You cannot pave over paradise.  There is no blight in the night.  When the air is too thick to be stirred by a breeze, thunderheads rain.  Life is a parade.  You know what I mean, baby.  The future is now and the past is now.  Now is the sum of all of its parts.  Barbers and carpenters practice their trades.  Grandmothers will their homes to their grandchildren’s children.  A dime is as good as a doubloon in New Orleans.

The most beautiful women live in New Orleans, LA.

Crawfish get boiled.  Crabs get boiled.  Oysters are shucked.  Sausage is more than the sum of its ingredients.  Turkey necks are simmered.  Gumbo is full of herbs.  Everything is consumed in New Orleans.  Everything is nourishing meat.  Manna is picked up on the street.  When you shake your money maker, you will eat fat on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and throughout every week of the year.  It is as easy to make a living in New Orleans as it is hard.  It is a city of opposites.  It is hard to tell who is rich and who is poor.  When property is measured in arpents, regular yardsticks are tossed to the side.

New Orleans has a long, tangible, prescient memory.  You may get lost in the moment, but you always know where to find yourself.  Here.  Now.  Happy.  

New Orleans' 7th Ward Smells Good

Ladies love the scent of New Orleans's 7th Ward

In my role as a flaneur, I was walking down St. Bernard Avenue on my way to Sidney’s saloon.  I noticed a flyer taped to the remaining pane of glass in a window that had reflected many happier days than this one.  It was nothing fancy.  A few sheets of plain white paper had been inscribed with black ink.  The penmanship was sharp and permanent:

FOR SALE:  GENUINE 7TH WARD BAY RUM from an AUTHENTIC, SECRET, FAMILY RECIPE handed down by MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER’s generation.  Jacques Washington was always known as a ladies‘ man before he married Josephine Marie Egale.  From the day he turned thirteen years old, he was seen with a different, shady lady on his arm every week.  He loved them all and he left them all until he stayed with Josephine Marie Egale.  I know his secret.  So do the many successful men who purchase MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER’s 7th Ward Bay Rum.  Ladies love the scent of 7th Ward Bay Rum.  Purchase a bottle and learn the secret for yourself!

To make a batch, I concoct a distillate of one fluid ounce of dark, Haitian rum and twelve ounces of Taaka vodka.  I assemble a cheesecloth bag of bay leaves, muddled bayberries, crushed cloves, thirteen cinnamon sticks, and the zest of twelve limes and three oranges.  I tincture this recipe for a full 27 days, agitating thoroughly on days of Luminous Mysteries.  After straining the cologne water through my GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER’s patented filtration system, this GENUINE 7th Ward Bay Rum can be your catnip for the fairer sex.  Sold by the quarter ounce.  If you don’t want to leave enough for the next guy, buy two.  7th Ward Bay Rum has been proven to make six ladies out of ten weak between their knees.  7th Ward Bay Rum delivers six-in-one, and you can keep the change.

To purchase, contact myself, sole proprietor and chief chemist of the Great-Great-Great-Grandfather Seventh Ward Bay Parfumerie, LLC, at (cell) 555-7BA-YRUM.  I am Jaxavier Egale, the great-great-great-grandson of that famous cock-of-the-walk, Jacques Washington.  He and Josephine Marie Egale had a son named Louis Philip Washington.  He was a vegetable dealer in Saint Roch Market, brewing GENUINE 7th Ward Bay as a lucrative sideline.  Louis Washington’s son was Louie Washington, who continued the family tradition of making men smell irresistible to women.  Louie, the son,  worked at a haberdashery on Canal Street, advising gentlemen of distinction of how to smell their best.  He never did anything official, like soft-selling the merchandise on the shelves, or even developing a house blend of aftershave, which he was certainly capable of doing.  He would just ask a customer if he wanted to get wet even if it wasn’t raining.  If the customer knew the answer, he would slip Louie the requisite fee, and Louie would hand over a small vial of GENUINE 7th Ward Bay Rum that he had prepared the month before and was keeping in his vest pocket.

My father was the honorable Martine Oriole Egale, and my mother was Mdm. Clarisette Euterpe Miret.  They owned and operated the One Stop Grocery Plus on North Dorgenois Street, selling hot plates and fresh vegetables, beer, cigarettes, and liquor, lottery tickets, and over the counter medications twenty-four hours a day.  They also had the most extensive lines of gentlemen’s toilet water between Gravier Street and Miami, Florida to the east, and Corpus Christi, Texas to the west.  My father and my mother taught me everything I know.  

Ask any of my clients in the Garden District, or the clients who live within sight of Lake Vista, and they will tell you that my bay rum is the best.  Free delivery available in the Warehouse District and in Bywater.  Wholesale inquiries welcome.

Brown Derby Number 3, New Orleans, LA

When a cockroach runs over your foot in New Orleans, it is the same size and just as heavy as a mouse.  Welcome to a tropical clime in a city as flat as a puddle and as dry as a slurry.

Many people muddle their way through a New Orleans night.  When you are thirsty in New Orleans, you will always be able to find a drink.

Wake up and smell the chicory in the coffee.  When you need a tonic, there is more than one big shot of vim in New Orleans.

Don't confuse Music Street with Frenchman Street, or Agriculture Street with Arts Street, or Duels Street with Law Street.  When a cemetery is five short stories tall, you know you are in New Orleans.  If you find yourself weeping from joy, or laughing from loss, you are probably on Piety Street, or Magazine Street, or General Pershing Street, or General De Gaul Avenue.  Uptown, Downtown, or Old Algiers, the same song keeps playing, the same pulse keeps beating.  The policemen perform their patrols.  Business goes on uninterrupted.  There is more than one way to keep the peace.  A city's nature can be eternally lush and eternally chaste in any given circumstance.

I was at the Brown Derby Number 3 at the corner of Jefferson Davis Parkway and Tulane Avenue getting an order of fried chicken livers when I bumped into Misery Childs as I paid for my order.  Only a capricious, or an unconscious, mother would call her daughter Misery.  We all grow into the name we are born with.  Sometimes it takes a lifetime, but once a seed is planted it has no choice but to sprout.

Misery Childs and I know each other.  We took a food handler's safety course at Delgado Community College last summer.  Misery got the highest grade in the class.  "Hello, Mr. King," she said.  "Can you spare a quarter?"

I had spent my last dime on fried chicken livers.  We went to the neutral ground at South Jefferson Davis Parkway, and I opened the styrofoam container.  I only ate two livers.  Misery ate the rest of the ample portion.  She ate like she hadn't eaten for days.  She licked her fingers.  She licked the styrofoam.

It was getting late and I had to go home.   Misery told me she had business on Airline Drive.  "Thanks for the nice evening, Mr. King," she said.  She added, "Balaenius Rex!" as we shook hands.

I smiled halfheartedly.  "Balaenius Rex!" I said in return.  We shook hands, again.  I headed toward Canal Street.  She headed toward whatever errands she had on Airline Drive past the Crystal Preserves Building.

I am sitting on my back porch as I write this.  A cockroach has just run over my foot, fleet and light as a mouse and just as furtive.  I wonder what Misery Childs is doing right now.

Balaenius Rex, indeed. Vita brevis et novum orlaenium longa.  Humid city air can set a person free for a spell.  It must be dark before dawn breaks, even when every morning begins in gray fog.