Third chapter

Living with literature in a big SUV

The Mississippi Delta was shining

Like a National Guitar

I am following the river

Down the highway

Through the cradle of the civil war

Paul Simon

Early in the morning, I am on an Amtrak train from Memphis to New Orleans. The taxi to the station arrived in good time. The train is significantly more comfortable than Greyhound buses and moreover cheaper. The wagons seem to be furnished for basketball players. I have difficulty reaching and folding the table from the backrest on the chair in front of me, but it does not matter.

Much of the journey goes through the state of Mississippi and I see huge cotton fields. Most are already harvested, but some fields shine dark white of flowers that seem to begin to wither away. I wonder if they will ever be harvested.

Farmers' homes are very simple, small wooden houses that can go on wheels, trailer homes, but I guess they stand in the same place for many years . Poverty here in Mississippi seems worse than I could have imagined.

A stroke of an old Neil Young song, Southern Man, appears in my head:

"I saw cotton

and I saw black

Tall white mansions

and little shacks.

Southern man

when will you

pay them back? "

I see so many "little shacks", little shed on wheels, but I do not see any "tall white mansions" no big white mansions. Poverty, but no wealth. So different from Nashville. Where are the owners of the big plantations? Do they live in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans or maybe in California?

When I arrive at Union Station in New Orleans it is afternoon and I will take a taxi to the air bnb, where I am booked. It is located on St Roch Avenue, about three miles northeast of the station. First of all, in the queue of taxis stands a huge black SUV, a Lincoln. The driver is a dark-skinned, gray-haired lady almost without teeth.

She seems surprised that I'm going to such a shady area, as I today is almost neatly dressed with a gray jacket and white shirt in the heat. There is no hotel there, she protests, but I tell her I'm going to a private address.

Finally she accepts and drives me where I want to go. Before she drops me, she tells me that in these neighborhoods I should not go out alone after dark. She gives me her business card so that I can call her when I need to get here and there in the evenings.

Then I check with my hostess if it is safe to go here from the French Quarter in the evening and she agrees with the taxi driver. Although the area is being refurbished, she recommends that I take a taxi when it is dark.

I'll listen to her advice, even though I am not usually scared of crime. In the past, I figured out how to handle robbers without giving them anything, but now I think that with the right of my age I can be a little more careful. Or not.

In the evening I walk down to an old market square nearby, St Roch Market. It has been transformed into a food court where it smells of strong seafood pots. I order a traditional gumbo, stew, based on seafood. So good.

When I get home and enter the bathroom to empty the bladder there is a naked woman, tall, narrow, probably in her 50's. It turns out that we are two hiring rooms that share this bathroom, which she also was unaware of. Embarressed, I quickly return to my pleasant room and my friend the computer. The catheter can wait.

Then my hostess pops up and tries to persuade me to accompany her on a ghost walk the following day, but ghosts does not attract me. I have the same attitude to the ghosts as to gods. They do not exist.

Instead, I intend to walk the streets of the French Quarters. I look at the map and discover that the street name is known from many good songs. Basin Street, Burgundy Street, Bourbon Street, Canal Street, Clinton Street, St Louis Street. I can hardly wait to see them in reality.

The night after I'm at a jazz club at the edge of the French Quarters. The singer has a small acoustic band behind him and they do not play what I would call jazz. It does not matter because I like it and music without labels can be fun.

There is a Swedish singer here in New Orleans, Theresa Andersson. She does not work within the framework of the most common musical labels. She is her own orchestra and works to make musical loops on different instruments at the beginning of the songs, loops being downloaded and played by a computer. It would be fun to see her appear here in her new hometown. I have checked, but she has no concert the nights I'm here.

With a full stomach, happy and not thirsty I'm leaving the jazz club. No taxi is in sight. I'm waiting ten minutes on the sidewalk, but no taxi shows up. I have understood that in many cities in the US, Uber has taken over from the traditional taxi companies, but I do not have the Uber app in my smart phone. It is time to call the toothless woman with the giant SUV. I have her business card in my trouser pocket and I'm somewhat surprised when I read her name – Tina Turner.  

When Tina answers, she says she has left the shift for the evening, but the car is outside and she has nothing else to do so she can come and pick me up. Ten minutes later her big black Lincoln shows up at the sidewalk. Somewhat unexpectedly she comes with a suggestion. Her sister has a small bar in the direction I'm going, on St Claude Avenue. Do I want to have a beer with her and her sister? Yes I do.

The sister's bar is small and nice with a lot of paintings by local artists on the walls. There are many skulls there. The sister is big and equipped with many white teeth. Her name is Mia and is more talkative than her sister. It is also easier to hear what she says, probably because she has teeth.

There are no other customers in the bar so we sit down and drink  together. Tina wants a small glass to be able to drive home to St Roch a little later.

The sisters are making a lot of jokes and after a while they want me to guess their age. I realize I’d better go for the low side. I say Tina is 57 and Mia is 50 and it turns out I've guessed just right. Then I get revenge by asking them to guess my age. They get a bit worried but Tina quickly guesses that I'm 65 and Mia that I'm 62. They're amazed when I tell them the correct answer.

In any case, it will be an unusual opportunity for me to take the conversation into the field of old age. It turns out to be a topic that is not even Tina and even less Mia has reflected so much over.

Tina is kidding her toothlessness that has already made her an old lady. After losing her teeth and becoming gray-haired, she is left in peace by the men. If she had known how nice it would be, she would have pulled her teeth and tainted her hair a long time ago, she said with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. I get the impression that she does not mean it.

Mia says that she sometime dreams of being able to sell her bar and use the money to travel. Unlike many other Americans, she knows a lot about continents, countries, and even towns far away. I ask how she learned so much and she answers that she is reading a lot of fiction from other countries than the United States. She likes watching maps to create her own images and googles all the time to replenish her interest with new knowledge.

Where does she want to go?

Directly from her head, she tells me her ten top travel destinations of her dreams.

1. Rome

2. Berlin

3. Stockholm

4. Beijing

5. Saigon

6. Sidney

7. Havana

8. Buenos Aires

9. Valparaiso

10. Lima

Two other cities on her list are Venice and Cape Town.

She gets a bit impressed when I tell her that I was born in city number three on the list. I tell her that my priority would be almost the same and that I have already visited seven of the cities on her list, but I have cut down a bit on flying to save the climate for my grandchildren. So I don’t know if I will be visiting Beijing, Sidney and Lima before I die.

Talking about my grandchildren usually brings a big and happy interest in women from 50 years upwards, but none of the sisters Turner makes the slightest sign of responding to the word.

I ask if Tina reads as much as Mia and she says she does not. She reads more. Even though the two sisters are the right different personalities, it appears that they have a similar taste in books. As I should have been able to guess Mia's list of cities to visit, Graham Greene is one of her absolute favorites. Tina also highlights him, but has a more contemporary favorite: Richard Ford.

Both sisters have the advantage that they read a lot while they work and at the same time do not work. Tina reads when she is in a taxi waiting for customers. She has a small bookcase in the luggage compartment. Mia reads when she is in the bar and no one is thirsty. Her bookshelf is under the counter.

The sisters are also regular customers in a public library centrally in the city. Tina helps Mia by driving her to the library for free with the taxi.

Now two gangs come into the bar, a total of a dozen people, and Mia is very busy serving beer.

Tina and I continue to discuss our favorite books. The feeling is heavy when a favorite author dies and when there are no more books to read, Tina says. She felt that when Graham Greene died in 1991, although Tina was not so old at that time. She thought what have I left to live for now?

I had the same feeling.

Does Tina have any favorite among female writers? Yes, Selma Lagerlöf, she says. Oh, I like to be surprised! She also mentions Nadine Gordimer, Joyce Carol Oates and Doris Lessing. They are authors who are also represented at home in my otherwise too male bookshelf.

I'm telling her about the English author Jenny Diski, who recently died. Her literary travel stories would be perfect for Mia and her sister. Begin with the book, where she travels by train through the United States. That book was an important inspiration for this trip. I’ll read it again when I get home.

Now I feel it's time to go home and empty the bladder. I have understood that catheters are not a good way to charm old ladies, so I find another excuse and we say goodbye to Mia before Tina drives me to St Roch Avenue.

My new interest in the old age also has the effect that I am interested in various aspects of death. I have become a cemetery tourist who has visited Marilyn Monroe's grave in Hollywood, Karl Marx tomb in Highgate on the outskirts of London, Jim Morrison's tomb in Paris, Evita Peron's tomb in Buenos Aires, Salvador Allende's tomb in Santiago and Berthold Brecht's tomb in Berlin. Of course, I visited the Kennedy brothers’ tombs while I was in Washington.

Now I have seen that one of the most famous cemeteries in New Orleans, St Roche, is only a few blocks from where I stay. I go there, but find no grave where somebody that I heard of earlier rests. I'm wondering how to find the grave of someone I've heard of in this city. I'm a bit uncertain, but think that the LSD scene at the end of the movie Easy Rider was filmed in a cemetery in New Orleans. Could it have been St Roche?

Suddenly I come to think of voodoo queen Marie Laveau, who died sometime in the late 1800's. I google and discover that she is buried in a cemetery that borders the French Quarter and the city's more modern center.

I will immediately go there. The cemetery is easy to find, but I realize it is next to a big building project. How do I get in? I try to look innocent and enter the construction site. Immediately a construction worker comes up to me wondering what I want. I explain that I want to see Marie Laveau's grave. The friendly construction worker says that I am welcome, but I have to have my helmet go through the construction site. Since I do not have a helmet in my pocket, I refrain from seeing the voodoo queen's grave.

I'll go down to the river, because I'm would like to do a touristic tour with a steam ship, which looks like coming from Mark Twain's time. I guess that the river steamer is really a new copy and that the big wheels that spins the stern is just a decoration. There is a regular propeller under.

When I check the cost of a two hour river tour, I decide to stay at the shore.Expensive and artificial does not thrill me. Some days, I am holding my money tight.

At the kiosk where they sell tickets to the steamer I meet a woman who looks familiar. I do not get it. Who is she?

After some confused conversation, it understand that she is the French tourist who lives in the second room on the same Airbnb as me. I tell her that I did not recognize her with her clothes on and hurry to the other side of the street walking in the opposite direction.

One day later, it's time for me to leave New Orleans. I will call Tina well before taking the Greyhound bus from Union Station to Dallas. She is quickly here wondering how much time I have. It is several hours before the bus will leave. I had thought I would leave the suitcase at the Greyhound station and then spend a few hours in the nice French Quarter.

Tina has another suggestion. Because it's soon Halloween, she would like to show me a fun cafe a couple of miles out of the city center. I don’t have to pay for the trip if I pay for our lunch or afternoon coffee. Of course, I agree.

Now we are in a much nicer neighborhood than I have seen before in New Orleans. Here is a café called Zotz, which has something to do with bats. It is located on Oak Street, almost seven miles from the French Quarters.

The décor is full of bats and skulls. The waitress pulls up her mini skirt and shows that she has a big bat tattooed on her thigh. I cannot help asking her about her bat tattoo. What can she do if she changes a job? If she starts at a jazz cafe, should she tattoo a piano on her second thigh?

The waitress claims that she never wants to work elsewhere and that bats are one of her biggest hobbies. She has lots of books about and pictures of bats at home as well. At home she has some kind of electronic instrument that recognizes the high-frequency sounds of the small animals and makes it easier for her to find and watch bats.

The menu contains a variety of bagels. It attracts both Tina and me.

While we are eating several bagels, Tina starts a conversation on the issue of music. She says that many older men are obsessed with their old rock heroes, who are now somewhere between retirement age and death.

It's just to admit that I'm one of those who can imagine traveling around half the globe to listen to Neil Young and his friends. But what about the Turner sisters' interest in music? Tina surprises me again. It turns out that both she and Mia listen mostly to hip hop.

She does not think it's strange at all. Hip hop is the black music. When she was younger, she preferred listening to soul music and she listened to the singer she shares her name with, but hip hop is more contemporary and relevant even for older ladies.

I flatter her by pointing out that she is more a middle-aged lady than an elder.

It's time to get into downtown and the bus to Texas. Finally, I have to ask her about something I've been thinking about: why are women as intellectual as Tina and Mia living in a taxi and behind a bar. I emphasize that I do not want to underestimate what they do, but perhaps they could get more stimulus from other jobs, such as teachers or nurses.

Tina does not give the expected answer that she could not afford to study, although it may still be one of the answers. She says she drives a taxi to meet people and Mias motives to buy her bar were that she came so close to so many people of different kinds. Unfortunate people confess to Mia at the bar and she becomes a counsellor for her regulars. Even during taxi rides it is common for people to open the door to their innermost rooms. Both sisters agree that they want to work for as long as they can stand up to keep on meeting new people all the time.

For example, they had not met me if they had worked in a school.

Tina has already suffered from a physical age problem that worries her a lot. She has had osteoarthritis in her hands, which, combined with reduced muscle strength, makes it difficult to lift customers' heavy suitcases into the high luggage compartment of her big SUV.

I suggest she will trade it to a lower car. She says that customers are usually helpful and lift themselves when they see how small she is.

Tina is curious about the rest of my trip and I offer her to follow it on facebook. She is not there, but Mia is. Tina suggests that I add her sister, so she can get reports. I promise to look up the sister next time I have access to wifi and invite her as a friend. Tina gets my email address so she can report on all the exciting taxi customers she meets.

In the queue for Greyhound’s ticket desk at Union Station, two men who stand behind me looking at the address label on my suitcase. One of them, an old white man, begins to apologize for the American people being such idiots that they may vote for Donald Trump in next week's election. The other, a young black man, thinks he is innocent of this madness. He will not vote for Trump.

They want to know what we think in Europe that the US may get a racist to president and they seem satisfied when I tell them that people in Europe are scared of the thought that Trump will have access to the button that can be used to fire nuclear bombs.

The ticket queue is slow, so we can get into more personal questions. I'm telling them about my trip, that I want some fun even though I have prostate problems. The older man tells me that his family used to own the young black man's family in the old days. They were slave owners and slaves. Now he tries to make good by helping the young man, including paying his Greyhound ticket to Chicago.

I think again on Neil Young's song Southern Man. A text line says "Southern man when will you pay them back". Here I have met someone who is paying back.

When we finish our ticket purchases we keep standing in the middle of the waiting room and continue our conversation. We deal with aging and religion. The older man thinks that it's a good idea as an old man to have a religion that gives hope for a life after death. The young man shares my religion allergy. Even if I would like to believe in a life after death, which I do not want, I do not think there is anything that proves that such a life exists.

God is not dead. God never existed. The young man and I agree on that.

The older man says that he has a picture proving God's existence. He is picking up his smart phone and browsing a picture of a young beautiful woman. He claims that she is God. I think it's his daughter, but despite my religious allergy, I do not want to be rude, so I keep quiet. We are going to part and I ask my obligatory question about Facebook.

No, none of the men are there.

On the bus I devote myself to Facebook. I find a film that makes me happy. It is one of all these films based on surprise. They show children singing unlikely good or old people dancing as gods, if gods dance. In this film, it's an old lady, born 1934, who stands out with a stick on a square, regrets his osteoarthritis and then launches a dance show that takes the breath out of the audience. Very few young people could do what the old lady did.

I continue to watch funny movies on YouTube past Baton Rouge and Lafayette, where the bus stops. Then I sleep to Houston, Texas.

From Kurt Andersson's Facebook

Mia Turner, New Orleans

Kurt! Thank you for asking me to be you friend on facebook. I have really enjoyed following your travels so far and I have already learned some Swedish words. I look forward to following the rest of your trip.

Sonny Smith, Memphis

Hi! Today I got a letter in my physical mailbox. It contained a ticket by air to New York next weekend. Thank you again for giving me the inspiration to contact my children and grandchildren.

Robert Nelson, Kansas City

Hi Kurt! Thanks to your advice to look up the Italian singer Christiano de André I found on YouTube a concert with his father Fabrizio de André. It is a fantastic concert in a theater in Rome just before he died. You should really try to find that on You Tube.

Facts about New Orleans

• New Orleans is located in the state of Louisiana on the Mississippi River.

• New Orleans had 378,715 inhabitants in 2013.

• New Orleans has several major universities. The private Tulane University has approximately 13,500 students while the University of New Orleans has about 8,500 students.

• Mardi Gras is the major festival taking place in New Orleans at the end of the winter and is characterized by parades and parties on the streets.

• Oil is a major industry in New Orleans, as well as the big harbor and shipyards.

• The airport is named after New Orleans great trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong.

Read more at www.neworleans.com

French Quarters