Leo Sam Johnson drives a cab in New Orleans, but he's only one part cab driver. He;s also a preacher, pianist, pool hustler, real estate speculator, autobiographer and general sage. "I don't do a thing until I know all about it," he told us.
Leo doesn't have much on common with Mistuh Jim, the homeowner we met just outside the French Quarter yesterday afternoon. Mistuh Jim told us that he's a Libertarian, and he was sitting in a porch chair in front of a couple million dollars' worth of his prime New Orleans real estate. He offered to let us take pictures of his lovely side garden and told us tht the chain with the padlock was called a "smiley" - because if you whup someone with it, it wraps around their head and the padlock takes all their teeth out. There's no graffiti on HIS block, Mistuh Jim told us.
Leo used to have piece of New Orleans real estate, too, but Katrina took it out. He sold it, apparently at an almost complete loss. He says a friend told him it's fixed up real nice now, the nicest on the block, but he hasn't been back to see it. I asked him the same question I asked Mistuh Jim - where's the Federal money, the FEMA relief, that was supposed to help repair the flood damage? The question made him laugh. Nope, he said. There wasn't any money, or there wasn't enough money, and he said some people got it that didn't even have storm damage; as I think back, I realize he didn't exactly tell me that he got money, or that he didn't, himself. He had a place up in Natchez, and that's where he lives now, but he still comes down to drive his cab.
Leo told us some of his story as he drove us around the Ninth Ward, the hardest hit by Katrina's aftermath. Parts of it look somewhat rebuilt, with derelict houses standing right next to shiny new homes, evidence of building activity, homes for sale, and mostly occupied. Corner stores still stand, and churches, and signs for businesses say, "We'll be back," although when those signs went up and how good those promises are, it's hard to say. But as we go close to the levees, the landscape begins to change.
Mistuh Jim told us his story on the New Orleans street after a heavy rain - or more accurately, between heavy rains. It wasn't really a story. He gave us his politics and his philosophy. "Don't resdistribute the wealth," he said. 'Redistribute the poverty." He has the idea that moving the very poor out of the urban environment and back out the countryside would solve a lot of problems. There would be work for people, and healthier lives.
"Loafers," Leo Sam Johnson told us. "They loaf here, they'll loaf wherever they are." He and Mistuh Jim seem to agree on one thing - that many of the people in the Ninth Ward who were displaced weren't the sort you want in your town. Sam says the city owns many of the derelict properties, and they aren't in any hurry to rebuild and have the same population move back in. Sam tells us the Bible explains that, telling us that people grow up to live what they hear. He leaves us to imagine what they heard, down here.
He explains this to us as we drive into the surreal area down by the new seawall. This was once dense housing, neighborhoods, blocks of projects, businesses and churches and repair shops and schools. It's now gone feral, concrete slabs all that's left of all those homes, mattresses and tires and oddly placed rowboats washed up when the water receded. The trees and weeds have gone wild and taken over the roadways, which are made of deep wide pits, cracks, and huge heaves of asphalt. "The city hasn't repaired these roads," I comment. "They were like that before," Leo says. It's hard to believe, but he says it is so. How can a city leave roads impassable like that? "Crooks," he tells us. He and Mistuh Jim agree on that, too.
I don't know Jim's full name, but I know his kitchen servant calls him Mistuh Jim. He told us that when he explained why he no longer supports school vouchers. "Mistuh Jim, a voucher don't do me no good. I cain't afford the other half of the money, and I ain't got a car to get my boy to a better school anyways." Mistuh Jim sits on the board of several banks - banks he claims didn't make high-risk loans nor have to do any foreclosures. He's big, blond, well-fed, and came from Alabama. He's certainly done well for himself in New Orleans, a city that the Catholic Church is ruining by owning so much land they don't pay taxes on, according to Jim. Leo Sam Johnson is the 72-year old son of a Natchez sharecropper, out where Mistuh Jim would have us redistribute the poverty. He doesn't have an opinion on whether the Catholics cause the city revenue problems. "He might be right, at that," he muses. Leo got stabbed in the head four times in a bar, fought a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force, teaches music theory. The autobiography he's writing will be vivid.
When he disagrees with is, he does it carefully, with charm. Of course we're customers, and we weren't Jim's, and of course both men feel they've seen enough to know that they're right. What they don't know is much of each other. I wonder if Mistuh Jim got any of that flood relief money, and if Leo Sam Johnson has ever driven him across town. Same city, two worlds. I wonder if Mistuh Jim ever goes down to the Ninth Ward and looks at the apocalypse of all those lives, or if he's bought up any of the cheap flood-devastated properties that now sit decaying. And I wonder if his two big solvent banks would approve a loan for a cab driver who would someday like to buy a duplex in this town where he used to live.
.
