Ode to Checkpoint Charlie's
Why do I go to Checkpoint Charlie’s at 4:00AM? For the same reason I rubberneck at a car wreck. I enjoy staring into the abyss. The void has no answers but possibility. This fallen world is full of broken dreams.
And, then, the bottom fell out.
I am thinking about Jane Goodall, of all people. Gorillas in the Mist. She and I lived in the same town. Maurice Sendak, too. Where the Wild Things Are.
When people blow their noses at Checkpoint Charlie’s their napkins end up all bloody. Why would that be? They are constantly blowing their bloody noses. I do not think it is because they all have post-prandial motor rhinitis.
You know what I think as well as I do. There is no point in saying it.
To name something is to kill it.
What is New Orleans? It is is Checkpoint Charlie’s at 4:00AM. This much is true.
Even at Checkpoint Charlie’s at 4:00AM, people are nattering on and on about what it is like to live in New Orleans. There are few tourists at this time of day. Only people from the neighborhood have laundry to wash at this time of day.
$1.50 per wash cycle. $1.50 for fifteen minutes of dryer time. Or, you can set your wet clothes over the backs of chairs at this hour and they will be dry by the time the sun comes up. The choice, like all choices, is yours.
When New Orleans calls, you have to answer. This is why I am here. Where are you?
The children are nestled all snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums in their heads. I am here at Checkpoint Charlie’s. I am not aghast or agape. I am your man-in-New Orleans. I am not a voyeur. I am a flaneur. There is a difference of both degree and intent.
This is the time. This is the record of the time. This is Checkpoint Charlie’s. The ambulance is flashing its lights outside. Something is happening on the sidewalk. Something always is. This is new Orleans.
A man was shot in the French Market. He stumbled, bleeding, as far as the fire station across the street from Checkpoint Charlie’s. It is two blocks from here to there. He collapsed here. The EMTs, when they finally arrived, attributed his condition to blood loss. Things happen.
Dark morning New Orleans is different from afternoon New Orleans. Is it? We like to think so but I am not entirely sure.
It is cooler when the sun goes down.
The police are cleaning the scene. It is not a crime scene, per se. The crime was committed at the French Market, still, someone has to clean up this puddle of blood before the sun comes up. It would not look good to have a bloodstained sidewalk, even in New Orleans. NOPD is on the scene 24 hours a day, unlike the Department of Public Works.
Checkpoint Charlie’s is open 24 hours a day, too, every day of the year, year after year. You can do your laundry. Life is a cabaret.
If you live in New Orleans, you spend most of your time working around the system. It becomes reflexive. This as true at Checkpoint Charlie’s as it is at Clancy’s, or Patois, or Gautreau’s.
There is more.