I have spent a few hundred thousand hours trying to get out from behind bars. There was a short timer’s job picking up trash in the French Quarter. And that reminded me of a guy whose drug dealing partner went to jail in Texas, but who had himself managed to remain free in New Orleans, with a LoJack and a five year probation trailing him everywhere he went. He’d write letters to his incarcerated pal trying to show him the light. “You’ve got it easier,” he’d tell his federal inmate friend. “I have to watch everyone get fucked up in front of me. New Orleans rubs up against me wherever I go and I can’t touch it back.” Maybe he had a point, but me, after I got stuck in Tent city, I lost my shoes in the mud. When I got out, walking down Tulane avenue barefoot was the best feeling I knew up to that point.
by Hank Cherry
