Well, trailer life is pretty good so far. The weather has been so shitty that I haven’t really been getting much done on the shanty, though, and now we’re into parade time so I don’t anticipate getting much done in the next two weeks. I’ve resigned myself to this and I’m alright with it. I’ve consoled myself by making lists of the next things to be done along with materials lists and costs in the hopes to at least use this time for planning if nothing else. Work is going well. I’m taking some classes online and they’re going well. Scout is just about over her little bout with “kennel cough” and is more active and growing like a proverbial weed. Funny thing is she’s still got that puppy mentality, she’s just getting bigger and more difficult to neutralize as far as getting into stuff. Her time with me in the trailer may be short so I’m making arrangements for her in the shanty where she’ll be more comfortable during the day while I’m at work.

I do have an interesting story about propane and propane accessories though (and its long so pack a lunch or something).

FEMA was unable to get their shit together enough to get the last few things done to the trailer before I could move in. The stuff was originally there, but it was stolen during the year and a half or so that it sat there unoccupied. In the mean time, it was getting colder and colder while I was getting crazier and crazier living in that gutted house so I sort of took matters into my own hands (not in a masturbatory way, but just as necessary).

I thought all I needed was a couple of propane tanks so I went on a hunt to find some. The FEMA tanks are bigger than the ones used for the family grill (6 gallon tanks instead of the 4 gallon standard tank I found out). Found a couple at this little place off Jefferson Highway which only cost me a little over $100 once I had them filled. So I took them back to the trailer and started hooking them up….but it was not to be. See, I didn’t realize that there was a little fixture thingy that allows both tanks to be hooked up. Turns out, as I was to learn, it also controls the pressure coming out of the tanks and steps it down quite a bit – thus, it’s called a regulator. After trips to several hardware stores and asking everyone I thought might know, I found a little place up on Jefferson Highway that sold me one, plus the hoses for each side of the splitter. It doesn’t have a gauge on it, but it does have a little floater that tells me if the tank is full or empty and it switches from one tank to the other automatically, which is nice.

With the tanks hooked up, I felt pretty good. The electric had already been set up so the refrigerator was running and the microwave was working. I hooked up the water hose, and had water. I turned on the AC and it worked just fine. I turned on the heat and after a bit of a disturbing swooshing sound like a water heater coming on, the heat worked. It set off the smoke detectors so I opened the windows and let it air out. No problem.

But there were still some other issues, like the water heater. I couldn’t get the water heater to come on. I knew where it was and I checked it out and it looked fine but it still wouldn’t come on. Finally, after I mentioned it to a neighbor, she told me there was a switch that had to be turned on near the light over the kitchen sink. Swoosh! Worked like a charm and I had hot water. The cool thing is, you can turn the water heater off so it doesn’t keep wasting propane reheating the same 10 gallons of water the water heater holds when you aren’t using it. With gas pumped in by Entergy in your home it isn’t a big deal, I guess. But I have been looking into “tankless” or “on demand” water heaters for the shanty so that’s kinda cool.

And then there were the lights. They didn’t work at all. It was very confusing until I started looking at them and realized they’re little low voltage led type lights so there must be a converter or something that might be off, I thought. I couldn’t find that shit anywhere and eventually found out what the deal was. See, there’s a battery that plugs in behind the propane tanks. The battery runs the lights and a little charger near the main fuse panel recharges the battery like the alternator in a car does while the engine is running. so I was off to buy a battery and a water proof box for it. Ah, light. How nice. I tested everything and all was well for the low, low price of around $300.

FEMA did their little inspection and the paperwork was signed….blah blah blah. skip forward about two months around 11:30 on a Sunday night during a cold snap and guess what I learned? That propane tanks are finite and they will run out eventually. But hey, I don’t know how long that shit lasts. It’s all about how long you leave the water heater on, how often the heat kicks on and how much cooking you do. The thing that got me was that the air handler (which is electric) still kicks on and after a couple of months I had started tuning it out a little so I didn’t notice the lack of a big swoosh. I was out of gas and it was cold – a three dog night kinda thing and all I had was a 7 pound puppy. Damn it. It really wasn’t that bad – I’m being dramatic for effect. The next morning I took one of the tanks and threw it in the truck and got it refilled at this joint on Tchop for around $27. I figured, I’d get the other tank filled over the weekend and leave the valve turned off and wait for the first tank to be empty and then I’d know about how long a tank will last. Turns out a tank lasted from Monday morning until around 6pm on Saturday night.

Eh, that’s not such a big deal I thought, I’ll just get it filled tomorrow morning since I was walking out the door to Krewe du View and knew the two places I knew of to get them filled were already closed.

Trying to get a propane tank refilled on a Sunday in New Orleans during Carnival Season turn out to be a real adventure. It took me about three hours of driving around asking questions (with Scout in tow). The two places I knew could refill them were closed. I tried to locate another place using 411 at one point to no avail. I called my buddy, who was sitting in front of a computer to see if he could Google me some place to go to no avail. I ended up at the Home Depot in Elmwood just trying to see if anyone knew where I could get these damn tanks refilled. Then this nice girl at the Service Desk, which in the past I’d thought of the name as irony, actually made a phone call….to her dad because she knew he’d gotten his tanks filled that morning. Sweeeet. Turns out, he’d got them filled at a True Value hardware store off of read blvd on Chef Meteur. A bit of a drive but worth it at that point.

And this, my patient reader is where the moral of the story starts to take shape. You’ve heard it before and I’m hear to say it again: New Orleans East is FFFFUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEEEEDDDDDD UP! If I didn’t know better, it would be very easy to convince me that a storm had destroyed that place last month. It was an amazing jolt of reality. Like everyone else, I sort of hang out in my part of town and I don’t really have a need to go to Lakeview, Chalmette, or anywhere out of the sliver other than to the west bank for work or to Metairie when my blood pressure feels low and I need to ratchet it up a couple of notches. I keep seeing in the news how the nation has forgotten us and all that shit. Well, I’m right here and I forgot about us too. I get all wrapped up in the Public Housing stuff going on, or the Northshore crowding problem, or any number of little horror stories about dealings with contractors, and the murder rate, and the preservationist extremists, and the copper thieving…… there’s a lot going on and its very distracting. And somewhere along the way, I forgot that the places where there’s nothing in the news and nothing of interest is going on, might be important too. Like the silence should be more noticeable and it isn’t. It reminded me of those days after the storm when there were no lights at night and I’d just lay there in the dark listening to the helicopters flying over, one after another for hours. There were no distractions: nothing to see, nothing to do, and not a sound at all except those helicopters – the only signs of life in all that stillness; so distinctive.

So, when my tanks are empty again; and I know they will, I’m going back to that hardware store in New Orleans East if its at all practical to do so. Partly because it was only $40 to fill both tanks, partly because even though they have plenty of business they could probably use the company, and partly because the guy filling the tanks had a pistol, in a holster hooked onto his back support belt and that was pretty cool. But mostly, I’m going back because I don’t want to let those blinders back on my head. I don’t want to lose perspective. It’s a big city and an even bigger world and it seems to me there’s something dangerous about forgetting that. It’s how you lose your sense of humor and that’s usually the first of many steps into a bad way to live. Besides, I have a good life – I really believe that most of the time. I have, after all, side-stepped the one thing I never wanted for myself: a boring life.