Dull, Dull, Dull

From the Times-Picayune:

The city of Hammond was dull, dull, dull, said Whitney Jefferson, 76, a retired New Orleans siding installer displaced there by the flood.

"It's a country town. No buses or streetcars, no nothing," he said.

Not that Jefferson has ridden a city bus in years.

"But I like to know it's out there," he said, pushing his wheelchair to the third-floor window of St. Margaret's Daughters Nursing Home in New Orleans, which recently moved into the former Bywater Hospital building on St. Claude Avenue.

Whitney is a lady after my own heart. I lived in Hammond, La. for five years, and it was dull, dull, dull. All three of my children were born there. It's their place of birth. How could that be?

I feel like Whitney about New Orleans. Even if I don't live there, I like to know it's out there. Fortunately, I can visit often.

Another lady after my own heart, a resident of the same nursing home, had this to say:

"I've never been so lonely in my life," said Odessa Maas, 92, who was displaced to what she called an "isolated" Avoyelles Parish facility.

"You looked out the window and all you saw was trees, trees and maybe a little traffic," she said, rolling her eyes.

Oh, Odessa, I get it. I really do get it.

Avoyelles was such a backwater, Maas said, that she'd had no liquor in two years' time.

"Not a drop," she said.
....

Last week Maas offset her long temperance with an outing to Cy's Bar in Chalmette, where she drank Budweiser and caught up with people she hadn't seen for two years: her son, daughter-in-law and 25 fellow VFW club members.

"I was the star attraction," she said coyly, rolling down beige support hose to reveal still-toned calves.

Whitney and Odessa were overjoyed to return to the nursing home in New Orleans, and I know exactly how they feel. They wanted to go home.

There's nothing wrong with the town I live in. It's just not New Orleans. You're going to hear this until you're bored silly, but New Orleans will always be the home of my heart.

I had this post written and ready to post last night, when we got the news about Diana, so I'm posting it anyway. No use wallowing in gloom all day.