If you’re having the feeling that the New-New Orleans isn’t you’re New Orleans, go to Harry’s Ace Hardware on Magazine Street. After the storm they finished the enormous task of remodeling, which was very hard for those us of us just trying to function in an entirely dysfunctional city.

Harry’s sells themselves on service you can’t get at Lowe’s or Home Depot which, if you’ve been there in the last year, you will attest, is even more of a true value. We are all tired and they really are more than happy to direct you to the location of wheelbarrows or one of those things you use to tap finishing nails into cabinet trim. They seem to have squirreled away some of their signature service energy so they would have it for us now, when we need most.

I approach the counter with my 20×18x1 A/C filters. One of the unadvertised services that all New Orleanians appreciate is our bold brand of Checkout Clerk Wisdom. This is New Orleans, so the conversation is full throttle, as if we are the only people in the store. But in reality, it’s a hardware store, and right now we are running it. We can say whatever we god damn well feel like. There is no phony notion of ‘professionalism’ amongst the low-wage earner in New Orleans and having grown up in that sector I am always very happy to associate.

I put my filters on the counter just as the check-out woman is delivering a shocked, full-on-attitude question to two skinny young black clerks huddled near each other some seven feet away at the end of the counter “. . . you really believe that?” In my local comfort, I say, “Believe what?”, while placing my filters on the counter for scanning. This experience is a luxury the perfectly efficient church lady I always check out with at the Lowes in Winston-Salem, NC doesn’t offer, she takes herself very seriously.

“They think their boyfriends ain’t cheatin’ on ‘em. I been married for X odd years and you just hafta realize men can’t control theyselves.” Relieved to be right at home in this truly New Orleans situation, I piped right up with, “Yeah, I was just saying to my friend, ‘What the hell is wrong with them?’ Something is wrong with their brains, it’s all about them. They’re a mess.” She says, “It’s the chromosome thing.” I pay for my filters, and as I turn away with them on my shoulder, say loud and clear, mostly for the intended skinny audience in their red aprons at the end of the corner, “Whatever it is, when you get to be our age, you realize they ain’t worth the trouble.”

Of course, as it is a hardware store, four of the chromosomally deficient are standing in line, meekly silent, taking their slashing for the collective offenses of their gender.

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