What do Albuquerque and NOLA have in Common? Hurricanes

When Avi was a child during my graduate school years, he and I had a weekend breakfast date at a local dive called Hurricanes. At least once or twice a month, we would find ourselves seated in a red Naugahyde booth across the metal-trimmed formica tabletop from each other. If it was crowded and we were hungry, we might park at the counter on red swivel barstools to expedite the meal. We celebrated the day we became regulars and the waiter brought my coffee with creamers and Avi’s orange juice without asking for our order.  Sometimes we ate pancakes or French toast, but more often than not, Avi ordered huevos rancheros—Christmas style (red and green chile) with hashed browns, and I got the burrito supreme with bacon, smothered with cheese and red chile. While waiting for Frank to bring us our meal, we played "football" with the empty single-serving creamer containers, shooting them across the table through the goal posts of the other’s upright fingers. And we talked. Sometimes about school, sometimes about family, sometimes about the future.

Avi was born in August 1987. At 17, he was done with high school and ready to leave home for college.  He landed at the New Orleans airport in time to head to Tulane University for his Freshman Orientation. Instead, he had to evacuate with his girlfriend and her mother to Arkansas to escape the incoming hurricane. Tulane said “we’ll reopen on Wednesday.” But on that Monday, Avi’s 18th birthday, he awoke to newscasts of Category 5 Hurricane Katrina plowing into New Orleans. He called from Arkansas – “Mom, WTF am I supposed to do now?!” With Tulane closed, he returned to Albuquerque, attended UNM for a semester, and then went back to Tulane.

Fast-forward to 2012 and you will find Avi, a Tulane graduate, still in New Orleans, now the CFO of the Broadmoor Development Corporation, a post-Katrina housing recovery effort in the Broadmoor neighborhood. (See link at the top of this blog, left side.)

During the recent slow passage of Hurricane Isaac, Avi hunkered down in his landlady's house, upstairs from his own basement unit (not a good place to be during a hurricane/flood!). They lost power, sleep, and, briefly, perspective. He also lost many of his books and other belongings to mold and water damage. But I think his crockpot still works, and you can bet he’ll be making some good New Mexico green and red chile stews this fall. And if the Saints cannot get their act together, there are always Mimosas, and creamer football.

Just Say Hello.....

We invited a long-time but seldom-seen friend to come over for dinner the other night. We spent the afternoon preparing a small feast for the three of us: barbecued salmon, chicken, and pork; roasted corn and green chiles; coleslaw with bleu cheese and cashews; greens with sliced avocado, and cilantro dressing; and steamed brown rice. When he arrived, we opened a bottle of California Pinot Noir, filled every inch of the table with food, and sat down to eat and share stories.

Laughing our way through accounts of university politics and the perils of Internet dating, we somehow landed on the subject of the common courtesies missing from human interactions.  In the 1960s, as an undergraduate at a Franciscan college, our friend was taught at freshman orientation that students, faculty, and staff were to say hello to everyone. No matter who, or what their job, class, race, gender, or standing in the college community – greet everyone.

The next day, I set out with the intention of walking 10 miles (I’d done almost 8 the day before) and experimenting with saying hello. Equipped with “camel,” granola bar, hat, sunglasses, cell phone, and pedometer, I left the house. The Beatles’ refrain, “hello, hello…. I don’t know why you say good-bye, I say hello” suddenly played in my head (I have no iPod!) as I rounded a curve in the road and saw another walker coming toward me. “Hello,” I said. She greeted me, also, and told me that she had just seen 2 coyotes, a little further down. I told her about the desiccated but very recognizable rattlesnake carcass I had almost stepped on, a few yards back.

I waved hello to passing cars and bicyclists, and said hello to blue-tailed skinks, white-tailed bunnies, plume-crested quails. I greeted the man walking his golden retriever, and the woman in a large straw hat and long white sleeves. As I passed through a nearly empty parking lot on my way to the main road, I said “Hello! How was your run?” to two African distance runners who were toweling off and changing shirts. They smiled. One said, “Very good. We just finished. Are you starting your run now?” I laughed. "No, only walking." “Well, that’s good, too” said the other.  “I am getting ready for a 60-mile walk,” I said. “Sixty miles?! I could run maybe half that far,” said the second. “It’s 20 miles a day, for 3 days,” I explained. The first runner tapped his head, saying “it’s all mental.” We waved and grinned our good-byes.

By the time I returned home with an empty camel, I had walked 9.78 miles and greeted the gas station attendant (“thanks for the clean restroom!”), the vendor selling a cord of split wood out of his pick-up truck by the side of the road, several bicyclists, a few pedestrians, and the sun that kept disappearing into the clouds and reappearing in a blaze of light and heat. It felt good to connect. Hello, world!