January 30th, 2020
Mercedes Benz Superdome
New Orleans, Louisiana
I wouldn't call the weather warm in New Orleans. A few days, it has rained all day. One day, the fog covered the sun. At night, the cold returns and brings chills. I have worn my Carhartt jacket every day and only on two days have I regretted bringing the heavy canvas jacket along on my walks through the city. The idea that I see trees, branches heavy with ripening kumquats or oranges, surprises me. Urban oranges I call them. Florida and California have to be warmer now, better conditions for growing citrus. I look for stunted fruit and all I see is yummy fruit almost ripe.
Last time I was in town, I met a man at an urban garden, a man retired from a government job. He took up growing citrus as a hobby and grew all kinds of oranges and grapefruits. He brought in a few cases and gave visitors slices of blood oranges and valencias and oranges with names I cannot remember. He was a bit gruff and matter of fact, and he reminded me of all the orange salespeople I met during my two month gig at Sunkist oranges. One salesperson came over to talk to me every day and would declare hard truths: "Life sucks. And then you die". I don't think life was that awful for him. He could sell millions and millions of dollars in citrus in a year. And he would get a cut.
I began a play called Urban Oranges, taking the government retiree and making him talk the way the salesman talked. The idea lasted for about three days of writing. The story now awaits in my archive of stalled scripts kept on Celtx.com, an online program for writing plays and screenplays. Maybe if I visit Grow On Urban Farm again, I'll find the retiree farmer, following his hobby. Maybe by listening to him, I'll have the insight to finish the play.
The Urban Farm stands on Urquhart Street near the Saint Roch market, and I would be surprised that the same people would be living in the Jetstream camper on the double lot. On my first visit, the manager and partner had lost all of the crops to a freeze that had also killed off all the banana trees around the neighborhood. The farm had to start from scratch again. I can't imagine the two living in a Jetstream three years later, but what do I know. Some people like the nomadic life, people who will take to living in a van and might give in to owning a home if the home comes in the smallest possible size.
We never made that big a deal about our farming, and maybe that's why we are no longer on the land. Wyatt Stevens, my nephew, owns the house and the five acres, but he hasn't planted a crop in the time he has owned it. I wish dad had never torn down the outbuildings where we had once kept sheep and chickens. He sold off the corn crib and a farmer came and disassembled it and carried away the parts to reassemble elsewhere. I used to read in a loft under the corrugated steel ceiling, warm on an autumn day. Wyatt keeps talking about erecting a house made out of a shipping container. I never ask if I could start a garden because Wyatt has never granted even Eddie permission to walk about the property.
Mom had a name for the farm, though, and a name is the first part of a brand. She called it the Funny Farm. We were successful enough growing sweet corn and tomatoes that we weren't ridiculous. We did well amending our loam and silt soil with horse manure gathered from the Wilman family stable, getting vibrant vegetables that didn't quit bearing tomatoes and melons until the frost killed the vines. I wonder if the sign "The Funny Farm" still remains bolted near the kitchen door in a protected corner of the porch. Mom painted the face of an cow with a hopeful expression to go with the title. While I'm swiping signs in my imagination, I should pull down the "No Fishing Without Permission" sign hung on the telephone pole near the path down to the Bixby's dock on Euler Lake. She ornamented the message with a figurine of a bass rising to the bait.
The items belong in the collection of the Smithsonian Institute. The institute has a museum focusing just on folk art. Mom could have created fine art, but her depression and lack of confidence limited her to producing what she thought would sell. The folk art did sell, thousands and thousands of dollars of it. But no one collects her for being Grandmother Bobber as far as I can tell. Not the way people collect the paintings of Grandmother Moses.
#farming
#intuitiveart
#wilbo_the_tourist
#fishing
#urbanpoverty
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