Shacked up in Mojo Land
09/04/08 16:46
We have set up shop in the Electric Blue Shack for a few days to digest the impressions from New Orleans, and write a portrait of The Big Easy. The move from a 4½ star hotel to a wood cabin with tin roof is quite a big one, but we are doing alright. Our basic needs are fully provided for, and as this upload goes to show we even have internet access. We spend our days sitting on the porch with a mug of coffee in one hand, and a few stray thoughts in the other - sometimes writing, sometimes just watching the trucks go by. And the only blue things about it are the house and the sky.
The area is by far the poorest we have visited so far. We found out this morning when we went into town to do a bit of shopping. We stopped by the local Save-A-Lot supermarket, and walked straight into a wall of canned everything. The vegetables looked about as fresh as corpses dragged out of the Mississippi River on a hot summer's day, and the favourite meat seemed to be salted pork fat. We bought white bread, yellow cheddar, and pinkish ham sliced at a quarter of an inch apiece.
On our way back we saw state prisoners working by the side of the road. Their overseer seemed to have gone off to lunch, and they were perfectly camouflaged in stripes of green and white. It was the perfect day for an escape, but nobody was going anywhere. Perhaps because they would not know where to run. It is all fields and swamps out here, and even our janitor carries a rifle across the back seat of his lawn mower. So don't worry. We'll be just fine.
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