Lessons From a First-time Hustler

There I was in my pressed black pants and suit jacket, the infinite florescence of the New Orleans Superdome ceiling draining the color from my cheeks, poised on my linoleum stage and ready for an audience of hundreds with weapon in hand: the Amazing Rubber Broom. That's right folks, step right up and watch us clean this same piece of carpet all day long. It's amazing! And not only that, I will personally spread shredded hair on a carpet all day long for this demonstration. Two for the price of one.

I never thought my first trip to the Superdome would be this glamorous. Looking above me, I can only imagine how fearful I would have been watching pieces of this endless cave collapse during Katrina. We watch a balloon travel upward and lose it in our vision before it hits the ceiling. All day families pass by and tell us how they would buy a broom, but then they are still waiting for their homes to be rebuilt. That is amazing.


And so, thank God!, I have landed this job selling brooms in the Superdome. For I have become a connoisseur of random money-making schemes and a professional hustler. In fact, my favorite occupation thus far has been to distribute fliers. I walk through the streets of the richer neighborhoods advertising whoever, whatever for a reasonable wage. The direct benefit of this work lies in the wealth of neighborhood trash out on the street, the occasional item that missed the last yard sale. I'm on the scene. The challenge is that I get lost in the similarity of the houses of suburbia, and it therefore requires reading a map.

I work with a woman called Mrs. Mama, although that's not her real name. She doubles as a housemother in a local strip club. Mama tells me that if she had enough money, she would improve on any one of her looks, buy her some breasts and straighten her face out. I challenge her on this, although it's not fair to judge someone who spends her livelihood staring at fake breasts and fake tans, telling the dancers that they are beautiful. She would probably dance, except for a limiting beauty mark on her face and the way birthing three children have stretched and strained her body through the years. She feeds the dancers, is paid by the club to keep a small store with the essentials. She sees flesh and naked humanity entertained and intertwined in a dance that is about survival; there is a story here.

It's two in the morning and my body hurts from the restaurant, from crunching toes into these shoes for too long now. I want to go home. But I know I need to make ten more dollars. In the morning, my neighbor comes by and asks if I can spare eight dollars. He'll wash my car, which I can't afford to drive anyway, and serves as my dresser on good weeks when I can keep the mold at bay. Um, okay. Can't eat money, I hear my friend John saying in my ear. And there is always a small way to make more.

This is the story I continue to hold about New Orleans: there are so many ways to survive a storm. The woman on the porch in the downpour, talkin' about how she always should have learned how to swim, the restaurant owner who gets drunk daily and tears up recounting his grandmother's stories of being the first free black woman in her family, the street artist, the shotgun house spilling its contents onto darkened streets like a doll house, a Sunday on St. Claude Street in a second line parade, a migrant worker courageous every morning he watches for work. There are many stories about others and about myself that it may never be right or safe to share. I hold them in this sacred root cellar of my being, keeping them firm and ready for soup.

I will miss this place.

Below Sea Level from the Stars...Back to New Orleans

Today I went on a bikeride out to the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. On the way back, I passed a neighborhood where two trumpets playing were dueling out a tune, each from a distance of four blocks from the other. Then I went out for some coffee and heard kids from 4 to 14 be taught a free lesson by some of the best brass players in town while the rain outside our window teased out its own cacophony in competition. The music of New Orleans.

Avocados are called alligator pears in New Orleans. Their rough skin is like the roads I pedal down, covered with potholes. I pass flowers in bloom, lizards, and like, for we live on top of a swamp.

This magical, wonderland of sounds and sight I am leaving. I have come to the end of my journey with this place. The swamp- what is the hold she has had on me? I have heard it rumored that she takes her prisoners, sucking them into her skirts as they fall for this siren bayou. Musicians feel it, they just don't quite feel the same anywhere else. Even a young bible-touting fellow traveler at a hostel called it out, proclaiming that New Orleans was full of sin. Aw, but isn't that sinful inciting spoonful just delicious?

Beyond Saguero Bliss

I'm standing at another crossroads, la otra encrucijada. I am alone again, but this time I have no guitar in my hands. From the Rio Grande/Bravo the multinational forest of US/Mexico borderland stretches out before me. I have arrived at the banks of decision , muddied by the struggle as hands and hearts gasp for last breaths in the chilly waters of her currents. This river is split down the middle and owned by two countries, patrolled by one. This river-receiver splits a whole land in two. I search through the half eaten elotes (corn cobs), the multicolor plastic bags hurled up into tree branches by an errant windstorm or car tires, looking for a sign of movement.

In this deserted park, residents of Nuevo Laredo are taking Sunday, parked in vehicles with little bands of people, all too aware of this psychological journey. Yet just one mile across asphalt and river the same land offers a different landscape. As I turn river rocks over in my fingers and contemplate how people who have never learned to swim ford the stream tied to car tires, I am again struck by the answer to the question...why would you cross a river you can't swim across?


I traveled through Texas to complete my trip from Maine to Mexico, and to look at programs that assist migrants across the most dangerous leg of the journey. My first stop in US borderland was Laredo, TX and it's twin, Nuevo Laredo in Mexico. As luck would have it, I met a young woman in New Orleans who invited me to stay with her family, her Mexican parents and their Mexican-American children in Laredo. My first night with the Hernandez family convinced me that I would do anything to stall my departure. They were warm, open-hearted folks with a foot on both sides of the debate. Interestingly enough, they have two daughters working as civil servants, one as a probation officer, and the other as a parole officer. They have a range of experiences with US Border Patrol. They would become my escorts into Mexico.

Fernando and his wife work in Mexico and live in Texas, as many Mexican families have done for years. Their children were all born in the US, and my friend in New Orleans grew up without learning the language of her parents. In fact, we train as interpreters together, and I often catch her inventing words in Spanish. Reflected in her language is the survival of her parents; to become more "American" meant having greater benefits in this society.

Between dinners of stuffed chiles and hot Mexican chocolate and bread, slumbers filled with dreams of cactus fields and native drumbeats, I find "New" Laredo. Traveling with Fernando I visit a social worker friend of his at a public hospital, a crowded waiting room in the middle of the city. This gentleman describes what it is like to work with a population dependent on travel to the US. He is a team of one, and I apologize to at least ten people as he ushers me into his office for an appointment. His primary responsibility is to talk to people about benefits, but he sees a lot of mothers caught in the real war at the border, the drug war.

We travel to the Casa del Migrante, a drop-in center for migrants at all stages of the journey. I speak with a young man there, himself a Mexican native who lived in Chicago for years. I feel very much at home in their kitchen, where there is an industrial-sized pot cooking for many, the smell of burnt rice warm and inviting. The Casa provides housing, food, resources.

Over the border back into her US counterpart, Laredo, we have no trouble passing through immigration. Mine is an unearned privilege, I think, as I watch the faces of my hosts turn to relief as we pass the checkpoint.And they do this everyday....

Back in town I ask a young man what you could do for fun here. He suggests I climb up to the top of the highest building in town and check out the Border Patrol checkpoints. Hmmm.....

A call from a friend in El Paso sets my next course, and I have to say goodbye to the Hernandez family. But not before the grandmother in the family, a shy, girlish woman in her seventies, presses a twenty into my hand. Get yourself something on the road, she says...I know she somehow means to keep me safer.