Live in fear
I was walking to my truck from NOAC this evening after forcing myself to go to step class. Forcing, I might add again. I parked on Basin Street. I was thinking that people who live in the suburbs would never go to a gym like NOAC, which is on the edge of the French Quarter. They most certainly wouldn’t walk to their truck parked on Basin Street. Because they’d be afraid.
What they would miss is this – NOAC is housed in a beautiful old French Quarter building that was home to a men’s athletic club. I take step class in a ballroom with chandeliers and floor to ceiling French doors overlooking Rampart Street. When I was leaving the stars were bright and on the corner were three men sitting on milk crates with a boombox. Not begging like in San Francisco, they were just hanging out. One of them asked me why I was limping. I said I have a Charlie’s horse. He said, “Uh oh, know what time it is?” I said “What?” He said, “Time for you to see the masseuse.” The other man said, “Yeah, you’re right.” That’s what I’m going to do I told them.
I got in my truck and WWOZ was playing and I headed down Basin Street, passing places that I’m sure Louis Armstrong hung out in when he was alive. And I thought to myself, oh the places you will go and the people you will meet – life is but a dream.