Leather Tuscadero and I took the Vespa to the old municipal dump in the Upper 9. The houses along those streets border a post-apocalyptic world. This part of New Orleans is right smack in the middle of downtown Nowheresville.
Have you ever seen a rat ride in the middle of a tumbleweed? At the wheel is not stuck in place. The places we can go when we move forward…
I wish you were here.
A train pulling cars loaded with sewage rolled by. It rumbled, tiltingly, along the clackety tracks laid through this abandoned industrial wasteland Superfund site. At least there were butterflies.
We drove past a three-legged dog. We stopped to watch because he was running around blindly with his head stuck in an empty Popeye’s bag.
There were discarded tires everywhere and the dog, who already had a gimpy gait due missing one leg, kept bumping into tires and falling over. All the while, the dog could not shake off this dirty Popeye’s bag. The dog would get up and try again, bump into a tire, fall over, and try again.
If it were not a sense of empathy, the whole thing would have been funny.
We moved on, Leather and I. Leather is heavy on the back of the Vespa but she is really no bother. She keeps me driving on my toes.
Leather and I were on a date with fate to visit this gibbon farm I have heard of.
We found what we were looking for.
Those gibbons, they sure can howl. They are only about two feet tall and they weigh between 14-16 pounds. They are all muscle. They love to climb. They have long arms.
They have monkey bars at the gibbon farm. Those gibbons sure can swing.
Leather and I stood outside a chain link fence, at a safe distance. We watched from afar. There was nothing else to see. Everything else around us was an overgrown, abandoned dump full of household waste and other, unmentionable, detritus.
This gibbon farm is the only show in town. It was not as sad as watching that three-legged dog run around with a greasy paper bag on its head. That was melancholy. At least the gibbons had tire swings. They seemed to enjoy them swinging from swinging tire to swinging suspended tire, like trapeze artists in flight.
It sure looked like they were enjoying themselves more than a dog running around with a paper bag on its head.
It is little wonder that M. Bonobo, the Monkey Wonder of the Third Municipality killed Snuggly Kipper, the Fiercest Fighting Dog on Ferdinand Street.
You really should become a paid subscriber. The total tone of this story is going to take a turn for the better. I am not lying. I know this because I have already written it. I am not making it up.