Abigail's Birthday. Chapter 648.
It is Abigail’s birthday. That is what the chalk on the sidewalk says.
Then, I ran into Kettle-Head.
Kettle-Head is a local character who roams our neighborhood while wearing a 20-gallon crawfish pot over his head. He can see. He has cut eye holes and a mouth hole in the pot, the way the Unknown Comic did with his paper bag.
His pot only used to have eye holes but no one could understand what he was saying. That’s when he cut the mouth hole into the pot.
Everyone calls him Kettle-Head but that is not the name on his birth certificate. Everyone knows his real name. It’s not a secret identity. Kettle-Head has nothing to hide. Some people think he’s a knucklehead, a chowderhead, a dim bulb. He is none of those. He is Kettle-Head, in a class by himself.
Everyone calls him Kettle-Head. For him it is a badge of honor and they call him Kettle-Head with that intention. He’s respected. Everyone knows his real name. It’s not exactly a secret identity.
Kettle-Head wears the same clothes when he doesn’t have a crawfish pot over his head as when he does. He doesn’t try to disguise his voice, though his voice does sound somewhat different coming out from a hole in the side of a 20-gallon pot.
When he has the pot over his head, everyone calls him Kettle-Head, even his mother. He isn’t a man of mystery in the usual sense.
Kettle-Head is a man of the people. He is a New Orleans institution. He’s no Leah Chase. He isn’t anything like Dr. John or Alan Toussaint. He’s Kettle-Head. That is enough.