CONTENTS:

1) Freedom and Fire

2) Electric

All stories ©Kenny Klein 2001

Freedom and Fire

The Traveler Community in America's Delta

Kenny Klein

(Orignally published in the Green Egg e-zine, August 2011).

It was a few days after Christmas, and New Orleans was freezing cold and dreary with clouds. The mood of December twenty-eighth was both festive and somber. We had all gotten the news a few days earlier: our friend Flea had been shot and killed on Christmas Eve, in New Orleans' infamous Ninth Ward. The day of the twenty-eighth had been spent by many Travelers in a second line, a traditional New Orleans jazz funeral, that had paraded down Saint Claude and ended at the Saint Roch Tavern.

The Saint Roch is a dive bar with so little imagination that it is simply named for the street it sits on. It probably hasn't been cleaned or painted in forty years, and there's not a stool or bench that isn't broken or torn. It's the perfect place for the Traveler community, a favorite hangout and music venue for buskers. Today everyone on the second line ended up there, drinking to Flea, and talking of how dearly he will be missed. Life in the Ninth Ward is dangerous. Travelers accept that.

As the festivities ended, the cold was setting in. A deep chill, carried by moist air, blanketed New Orleans. The shotgun apartments we all live in were not built for cold, but for subtropical weather. Good at keeping cool air in during the sweltering summer months, but nearly impossible to heat.

But nine of the Travelers who had drank to Flea that night did not have shotguns to return to. They were squatting in a cavernous old warehouse, abandoned since Katrina, a perfect place for the Travelers to set up camp in the months their rounds bring them to NOLA. Beds had been set up, a makeshift kitchen was in place, and a community had formed, as it did year after year.

In the paralyzing cold, the squatters huddled for warmth. Six young men, ranging in age from their teens to their thirties, and three young women in their twenties, lit a fire in a large barrel, burning garbage to stay warm against the chill. They were sad about Flea, and they were drunk. They should have kept shifts to watch the fire, but dull with alcohol and grief, they did not. They fell asleep, and late in the night the fire spread throughout the warehouse

Eight of the squatters were burned so badly they could not immediately be identified. The ninth had gotten out alive, and let our community know who had died. Early on the morning of the twenty-ninth I got the text from Hank, who was in Wisconsin for the holiday. His friend Sammy had been there, and Hank was beside himself with grief. I knew my own friend Josie squatted there, and I spent three days searching the streets of the Quarter to assure myself she was alright. I found her on the third day, and she told me it was just luck that she had decided not to stay in the warehouse that night.

The fire and the news coverage that followed made many Americans aware of a community and a subculture that few have seen, and even fewer have known well. They live completely off the grid, they travel in unconventional ways, they play music that one might not associate with their age and social upbringing. They are called many things: Buskers, Crusties, Gutter Punks, Dirty Kids, Dog People; but if they call themselves anything, it is most often The Travelers.

While the term is a blanket for people of many different ideologies and paths, by and large most Travelers are independent, unconventional, and bear a look that represents their tribal identity. Almost all spend their lives eschewing real jobs, credit cards and checking accounts. Many travel by hitchhiking or riding freight trains, though some drive cars and trucks. The community is united by common lifestyles, by talent, and by a common look and an intense generosity and caring for each other. Most have very strong ethics about environmentalism, fighting for social justice, and living by one’s own rules. A few are Pagan.

Any of my readers who know me know that I have a foot in several worlds. I have been in Traveler circles nearly all my life. From my days as a New York Gutter Punk in the eighties, to my adventures on the Ren Faire circuit, to my time here in NOLA, I've known the Travelers, played music in their bands, and have been proud to call many of them my friends. After the fire I read horrible media reporting, trivializing the lives of those who had died by simply calling them “homeless” and implying that they were unwashed intruders. Subsequent media saw them as specimens under glass, a strange community that might be worthy of a few headlines and a good deal of curiosity from readers. That very biased reporting made me want to air my thoughts, using my own voice and the voices of my friends within the Traveler community. Over several days I spoke to my band mates and my buddies about their lives, their work, and their feelings about the beauty and the danger of living the way this community lives.

Sitting on my kitchen floor, I started my project by speaking to Bob and Echo, who joined me in scarfing down chips and salsa.

Echo on my kitchen floor

Bob

Musicians like myself, Echo left home very young when his father “lost his mind” and his mom remarried. “I didn't like my step dad much,” Echo says, “and I realized I could make some money playing music.” Echo, a very good banjo player, busks on Royal Street each afternoon with Bob and other band members. In the morning they work repairing houses which allows them to live rent free. While Bob is still in his teens, Echo is nearly thirty, and has been doing this for a good many years.

The talent present among my friends here is amazing, and awes me constantly. Musicians like Echo and Bob, whose peers are busy listening to hip-hop and Lady Gaga, hone their skills on guitars, washboards, accordions, banjos, ukuleles and musical saws by playing Ragtime and Delta Blues. They know songs by bands most people have never heard of: the Memphis Jugband, Robert Johnson, Memphis Minnie, the Cheap Suit Serenaders. They learn these songs and styles from older musicians. Echo told me “[I learned Ragtime] from a fellow named Wiley Workman, who had a music jam at his house. He'd call it a 'Drinking Club with a Music Problem.' He was a cool guy in his sixties, and I'd go there every Thursday and hear all this Ragtime on the ukulele.” The musicians of all generations play these types of songs when they busk in the French Quarter. As Bob says, “don't feel bad taking money from tourists. We provide them a service. They come to hear the string bands on Royal Street.”

Kenny, Corey, Taylor and Hank,playing music

I play these styles, Ragtime, Delta Blues and Swing, pretty much daily with my friends and band mates Hank and Corey. Corey is a brilliant, talented musician in her mid twenties who plays ukulele and bass, and has a versatile, lovely singing voice. Hank is one of the youngest of my friends, just emerging from his teens, though he's been on his own for quite some time and has a maturity rare for someone his age. He's the guitarist in our band, and plays an old style metal bodied resonator guitar.

Corey's story is typical of a lot of Travelers. She tried to live a “normal” life but she realized it wasn't working for her. “I was going to college in Reno Nevada and I got kicked out for smoking pot, and I decided to hitchhike and then I never stopped. And I ended up in New Orleans.”

That failure to live a normal life is echoed in Nikki's story. Nikki is a tall, striking woman of about thirty. Her hair falls in a tangle of uneven dreadlocks on one side of her scalp, and her head is shaved on the other, revealing a jangle of hoops and studs lining her ear. Her chest is decorated with large circles tattooed in a 'U' shaped pattern, and she wears quite a few facial piercings. We sit in the Saint Roch, Nikki and her best friend Molly drinking beers and talking into my voice recorder. Nikki tells me “I was really dissatisfied with life. I graduated high school and I was supposed to graduate university. I was going to art school, which was really unfulfilling. I dropped out. Then I started working, which was also really unfulfilling. I did a bunch of traveling by car after I dropped out of school, then I just sold everything and quit my job, and hopped my first train a few weeks later.”

Hank and Corey at the Saint Roch

She talked about her first experiences riding trains. “I didn't really know what the hell I was doing. My first ride was out of Wooster, Massachusetts, me and my boyfriend. Someone dropped us at the hop out spot and we got on the first train, but it didn't stop, we had to hop on the fly. It was going all the way to Chicago, but by three o'clock in the afternoon we were out of water and it was record heat, it was like a hundred and ten degrees in upstate New York. As soon as the train stopped we got out and found water.”

The first bumbling days of riding trains is echoed by Molly. Molly is a stunningly beautiful woman, also about thirty. She has thick dark hair in piles of dreads, with bolts and washers and a small watch braided into her locks. Tattooed stars frame her eyes, and she dresses daily in black tights and torn tops. She is one of my best friends in New Orleans, and I love that she is intelligent, conversant and very outspoken. “When I first started [riding trains] I didn't tell anyone, because other train riders were all assholes, like they'd say 'how many miles you got? What do you know about riding trains?' Every community has assholes. Now I meet really cool people who are like 'come ride a train with me.' The first train I rode I was by myself. This girl said 'come ride to L.A. with me,' but I got to the yard early and hopped the first train that came by.”

Train riding can be exhilarating and addictive. Nikki says “You get on a train and it starts moving, it's an adrenaline rush. I'm gonna get to where I'm going, and I'm going for free, and I'm gonna get there!” Molly adds “There's a commitment to the sense of freedom that comes with this life.”

Corey glorifies train travel in a song that our band performs, about riding trains with her boyfriend. It's a lovely, yearning and sensitive song echoing the joy of her early train travels:

I got train grease in my vagina

I got train grease in my vagina

But I came twice so I don't much mind,

I got train grease in my vagina

Cause we were fucking, we were fucking

On a freight train

(Fucking On A Freight Train, by Corey)

But train riding, like pretty much every aspect of the Traveler life, can be dangerous. Echo, Bob and I spoke about this. Echo and Bob have a good deal of train riding experience, and take train safety very seriously. Bob says “I know people who have gotten a limb cut off. Alcohol is the main cause of any accident on trains.”

Echo adds “My friend Sarah hopped a train, Portland Sarah, she ended up in the salt flats, no water, no food. She grabbed a train, but she grabbed the wrong one. The workers actually saved her life. They didn't throw her in jail or put her on probation, they saved her life.”

Echo's surprise at this is justified. Railroad workers are encouraged to arrest and detain riders, but often feel the temptation of being in isolated areas where they can do as they like with no real repercussions. In their minds, Travelers are homeless people with no one to miss them or search for them (an assumption that is simply untrue). If caught, a Traveler is lucky to simply be arrested. Young women Travelers have been raped and beaten by train workers.

Ciara's story of train riding illustrates both the thrill and the danger. Sitting in the garden of the cafe in which she works seasonally while in NOLA, Ciara tells me “I found out about train riding when I was sixteen or seventeen, but I met train riders who were more rough. They knew I was naive. They let me know not to romanticize it. They sacred me out of it. But hearing their stories I wanted to ride trains. I started riding trains when I was twenty. My first train experience I got arrested. I spent almost a month in jail.”

Then why do it? Why live this lifestyle, with the dangers of train travel, hitchhiking, and squatting in slums? Nikki expresses it well, saying “Every day is a struggle in its own way, but the good things that come from traveling and the freedom that we have, weighs so much more than the bad stuff. The bad times make the good times better. It makes me want to keep doing what I'm doing.”

Molly agrees, adding “It's the basic idea that we're not in a car or in the office, then back to the house taking prescriptions to pass out every night. We're in a squat that we've made our home, or outside under the stars. A lot of people ask me 'why do you do what you do,' and I say so I don't have to do what you do. It's not what I'm into.”

And Ciara has perhaps the most well thought out answer. “In order for you to do radical things that have the consequence of your comforts being taken away, your truth has to be greater than your comfort.”

Shalina

Shalina is a pretty girl of twenty one, new to train riding. “I've been riding trains since July. I had my first actual rodeo, I rode across country from Eugene Oregon to Baltimore. Buffalo to Richmond was really cool cause I got to go where the Whitehouse is at. It was really cool to ride past like the U. S. government on a train.” As I speak to her I am driving her to the hop out spot, a length of track in New Orleans' City Park where friends have told her that west bound trains stop to change crews. She's about to travel to Austen, Texas. Her best friend has left a few days ago, and she's tired of the drinking and partying her friends are involved in here in New Orleans. Accompanied by her dog and a by a male friend, she's heading out.

Shalina is aware that train travel can be dangerous. She speaks of the dangers she's faced as a hitchhiker as well. “People always think I'm a hooker, so I immediately start talking about their families and their wives and their kids, and they feel bad! And they're like 'Oh, well, I guess I won't ask you to suck my dick for twenty bucks now.' Cause I made them realize why they shouldn't. One time I was hitching and this guy yelled out his window 'give me a blowjob.' He passed by me twice. I hate that.”

I met Shalina when she first arrived in NOLA (our shorthand for New Orleans, Louisiana). I took a liking to this spunky, expressive girl right away because she looks exactly like my own sister. I sent my sister photos of Shalina, and received back a short and excited e-mail: “Wow, She really does look like me!”

Shalina tells me about her background. “I've been taking care of myself since I was fifteen. I had my own apartment when I was seventeen. I was working at a burger place for two and a half years, and an Italian pizzeria, and Domino's and baby sitting. My friend Billy used to live with me and he went on the road. He was telling me about [traveling]. Then I started drinking a lot, and I got evicted. I lost my job and my car, so I started traveling. I hitch hiked out.” Shalina is a fine banjo player and has a sweet voice, but busking just isn't her thing. She prefers to fly, which means hold up a sign and ask for money from passing drivers. With her sweet, innocent looks she makes a good deal of money this way. “I used to busk, but flying is easier, and it's fun. I find out where to fly by word of mouth, or I just look for an intersection. I've never been arrested for flying. I've never been arrested before. I'm sneaky.”

Shalina and I talk on her ride to the hop out spot about the issue that plaques our community here, alcoholism. Shalina arrived in New Orleans with her best friend, who left town a couple of days ago. They decided to go separate ways because the friend was drinking a lot. Shalina's struggle with alcohol and her commitment to try living sober is the reason she's hopping out now. “Everyone thinks it's a constant party. I like to enjoy my life sober, finally! [Drinking is] an easy way to be social. Most people get loosey-goosey, and it's easier to talk. When I drink I get really quiet or really pissed off. I get a good buzz, and I think if I drink more I'll feel better, and then I get mean.” She hopes that things will be different in Austen. She wants to enjoy a life free of alcohol there, and feels without her drinking buddies around this will be easier.

Molly said the same types of things during our conversation at the Saint Roch, though she is not concerned by her drinking problem. “My friends make it really easy [to be alcoholic]. Like it's OK to wake up at two in the afternoon. For a lot of people I know alcoholism is a way to be free. A lot of people start traveling really young, and they're like 'no one's telling me what to do,' and then it's really hard to stop. But it is keeping us down.” Nikki agrees, simply joking “my liver hurts. But my skin is still good. I'm not yellow yet.” Both are very smart women, and they are well aware of the addictions they face, but neither is at a point yet where they wish to stop. They are here to enjoy this life of hedonism and freedom.

Elena and Maxwell busking on Royal

It's a typical night on Frenchmen Street in the French Quarter. Tourists are everywhere, bar hopping or just wandering up and down the street. Carriages pulled by mules ride past us, with the drivers giving tours of this storied part of the city. Corey, Hank and I are playing music under the awning at Frenchmen and Royal streets. A huge group of tourists listens to us perform a Swing song from the 'twenties, Sailboat, which Corey sings in her quirky, enchanting style. Hank grins as he opens the song on guitar, and I smile too. It's one of my favorite songs in our pretty vast repertoire. The tune starts out slow and dreamy, a fantasy of two lovers adrift on a lake in summer, then Corey yells out “one two three” and the band starts swinging, my fiddle singing out a quick, fluid riff to the jaunty guitar and ukulele backing.

Travelers walk by as we play, each one greeting us. Between the members of the band we know pretty much every Traveler walking up and down this street. One guy stops to hand Hank a beer, one can from the six pack he's bought with money made from busking that afternoon. Minutes later, a fiddler we all know well hands Corey a Styrofoam take out box. It's full of rice and beans leftover from his own dinner. He's saved half his meal to give Corey and Hank.

The generosity of Travelers is amazing. I joke with my friends “give a Crusty five dollars, and he'll spend three of it on someone else.” I may joke (especially about the word Crusty), but it's very true. The Travelers are a community that gives unconditional love and generosity to those within the tribe. Molly tells me “Travelers are protective of girls and of their friends and of anyone who's younger. If someone wants to look out for me and have my back, that's really important in our community.” In the squats and the apartments shared by Travelers and buskers, food is communal, clothes are shared and given away, and money is often spent on all. It is both an expression of love, and a practical consideration: sharing is survival for Travelers. One gives, knowing that when she or he is in need, others in the community will give back. And when a Traveler is unwilling to share, they quickly get a reputation. My friends warned me about a particular busker who is unwilling to give freely. A few days after getting the warning I asked this guy if I could take a turn at busking in the spot he was holding down. He said I could not. Hank pulled me away from my conversation with him and whispered “I told you that guy is an asshole.”

The next day I was back at the Saint Roch speaking to Molly and Nikki. We got a table in the back of the bar, hoping it would be quiet enough to speak. Led Zepplin blared on the stereo, and Travelers would randomly drop into seats beside us, speaking loudly on their cell phones. Several asked us why Molly and Nikki were speaking into a voice recorder, and each time one of the girls would explain that I was their friend who was writing a piece for the Pagan media. And each time I was suddenly viewed with malice and suspicion. Travelers do not like talking to the press even when the press is someone they know and trust. Too many reporters have insulted or trivialized them. In the wake of the fire, many Travelers who lost friends felt that the local coverage was horrible, and adopted a policy of not speaking to the many reporters who came to the Saint Roch looking for leads on the story. It was only my friendship with a few Travelers that allowed them to speak to me, and to assure their friends I would not cast them in a negative light.

I joke with Nikki about the local news using calling Travelers dirty, or about our own community using the term 'Dirty Kids.' “We are dirty!” Nikki jokes. “I need a shower.”

I ask Molly if she feels that the Traveler lifestyle is a dangerous one. “I grew up in shitty neighborhoods,” she tells me. “You can live the most straight lifestyle, and still shit can happen. I don't see it as putting myself in harm's way, because bad things happen.” I ask her how she got involved with the Traveler life. “I grew up in Ohio and Pennsylvania, I bounced around the East Coast for a while and lived in Florida for a few years. I left home when I was sixteen, I went to North Carolina first, then to Georgia. I stayed in Florida for a couple of years. I grew up in a really harsh environment, really slummy. I saw it all from an early age, and I knew how shitty people are.”

Nikki adds “There was always violence. Last year a waitress was shot riding her bike home, and in past years a lot of girls were raped in the Ninth Ward. Because of the fire all these people died, but it's always been dangerous. It also opened up all these different windows for people to judge us. Everybody says 'there were shelters open,' but I'm not going to stay with a bunch of crackhead Christians. When there's eight people who all love each other, with couples who want to spend the night next to each other and take care of each other, squatting is a way to live on your own terms. I could stay with my friends who pay rent, but I like to take care of myself. I don't feel comfortable leeching off my friends.”

Nikki is right. This is a dangerous life: hopping trains, squatting in less than savory places like the storied Ninth Ward, busking and “flying cardboard,” Travelers are ever in danger of death and the law. They are handy targets: with their dreadlocks, facial piercings and tattoos, they are easy for police to spot, and for predators to identify. In the days before the fire a rapist targeted Traveler girls in the Ninth Ward, who often return home late at night, drunk or high. One of the young women who died in the fire had been raped days before. (The rapist was caught a few days after the fire, a local boy of fifteen). A Traveler girl who had gone to Mexico to do social justice work was stalked by police there. She e-mailed her friends to say she was frightened, and felt something horrible was about to happen. She was right. The police abducted her, raped her, and burned her body so badly she could not be identified. Only a witness who had seen the ordeal but was afraid to take action against the police later identified the girl. And here in NOLA, a young woman was jailed when she went to the local county hospital seeking help with her psychological issues and acted out against guards trying to restrain her. She was imprisoned in shackles, and her warning that she was asthmatic and would not be able to breath if restrained were unheeded. She died in prison.

Some Travelers choose to be semi-settled, like myself. I call these “landed Travelers.” Hank and Corey are among these. I asked them at one point what made them choose to get an apartment and pay rent. “We like to have stuff,” Hank told me. Corey said “It's my second time paying rent, ever. Eight people live in my house. Seven pay rent.” The house she's describing is a four room shotgun.

In my experience, sexism, prejudice and racial profiling don't even seem to be in the Travelers' vocabulary. Males and females are treated in exactly the same manner, and are expected to carry their weight when busking, flying, hopping or dumpstering. Gay and straight are also non-issues; everyone seems to know each traveler's sexual proclivities, but I have never heard anyone's sexual orientation mentioned with anything but respect.

Molly disagrees slightly with me. “It's not that there isn't any sexism in our community, but it's better.”

Nikki nods. “I think there's a lot less sexism, though the gender roles are still defined in a few ways. Men still expect women to do women things.” I ask if her male housemates expect her to wash dishes? “We don't have dishes!” she tells me. “But when it comes to making money and flying signs, men and women are still expected to do certain things, but it's certainly less than any other place I've experienced. When it comes to music, everyone is equal. There's a lot of equality in that way.”

Travelers are very concerned with social justice. Equality of the sexes, equality under the law, and fairness in housing and employment are all platforms for Travelers, many of whom identify with movements such as the Peace Punk movement. “The Peace Punk scene was a big part of getting this culture going,” Echo says. “People were starting to question, during the Bush administration, that all these things you're told to do, get a car, get a house, go to college, was total bullshit. For me it was this one guy named Zack from this band called The Afflicted [a Peace Punk band], and this kid named Doug Scheaffer who was their drummer, taking me under their wing. Bringing me in to the whole thing. They had the idea of solidarity for each other, and looking out for each other.” Echo came into the traveler community with this Punk ethic. “When I started out I was playing acoustic Krass covers,” he says, referring to a political Punk band. Now he plays Ragtime and Old Timey music, but Krass and the Afflicted are still huge influences on his commitment to social action.

Hank also has strong feelings about ecology. “We evolve and evolve and evolve until we kill ourselves off. We keep on evolving and we can't stop and we keep destroying everything and using all these resources until there are no more.” For many Travelers, fighting for social justice, squatting in unused housing, and riding trains is a strong political statement.

Ciara with Oakley

Ciara and I sit on her porch in the Ninth Ward, where she 'squats with permission.' The Ninth, a ghetto six years ago, was hit so badly by Katrina that half its residents were killed. Many others who were evacuated never returned. To Travelers, this left a vast area of unused living space. Ciara lives in a shotgun apartment with permission from its owner, who never returned to it.

Ciara is an amazing young woman. We are very close friends, and she is also my student in the Blue Star tradition of Wicca. I am constantly impressed with her curiosity and her intense fire for social action and feminist values. She does not identify with the term Traveler, and asks me to call her a Pagan and an Anarchist.

Ciara in the Ninth Ward

She tells me about about her background: “I became aware of Paganism because when I was younger my mother would take me to church. She was searching for some sort of community. I didn't resonate with church, I didn't like it at all, to be told things without being asked what I thought. I hated being told how to think, and I started questioning it. When I was seven years old I told my mother “mom I want to be a witch.”

Unlike many Christian parents, Ciara's mother was fully supportive. “I remember for Samhain I buried apples for the spirits. My mother used to say “don't mind my daughter, she's burying apples for Samhain.” Living in Massachusetts, Ciara's mother took her to Salem. “It was the first time I met other people who identified as Pagans.”

“Then as a teenager I was getting more and more depressed. I started learning about what was really going on, I lost my innocence and my whole world shattered. I became depressed and enraged, and suicidal. I was thirteen or fourteen. I rebelled by not showering. I didn't shave my armpits, I wanted to be ugly. Thankfully I was introduced to Punk rock and it saved my life. I found out I wasn't alone. I found out there was this type of punk called Crust Punk, specifically a band called Nausea, and this woman Amy was the singer. Before that all the music was male centric. But Nausea was woman-fronted, and singing about things I really cared about like animal rights, and crimes being committed against the Earth.”

She talks about how she moved from listening to Punk to being involved with social activism. “In the middle of freshman year [of high school] this awesome punk girl showed up. I loved her. She's still my best friend today. She had a shaved head and she was tough. We left home together and squatted in Boston, and we met other radicals doing Food Not Bombs and doing direct action stuff. I got involved with some organizing through a female Punk feminist group when I was sixteen.”

Like all of us here, Ciara lost friends in the fire. We often speak about the aftermath of that tragedy, and what might be done in the future.

For Shalina, the fire was simply one more bonding experience she feels can be used to rally Travelers to work for better lives. “I meet a lot of people who are really into activism. I like listening to it. I went to homestead meetings, and they're talking about like how they're putting these squats together. I brought up the idea of financing and building a place for Travelers to come, like a safe house. The warehouse fire could have been prevented by having a place like that.”

But Travelers are difficult to organize. It is a community of individuals, each running to or from something, each haunted by their own demons. Echo's story is a good example of the shattered lives most Travelers leave behind. “I was an upset suburban kid, I was pretty transient in my youth, with my mom. My father sort of lost his mind. My mom remarried, and at about seventeen I left home, I ran away. I realized I could make a little money playing on the street, up in Mystic Connecticut. I played music with some of my friends, I remember the first song we ever played was Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads. We'd hang out down by the rivers with all these tall ships around, always playing music, we'd have camp fires all the time. That was about twelve years ago.”

Shalina says the same things. Her mom was never there for her, and she raised herself. Quite a few travelers have arrest records, mental illness issues and of course, drug and alcohol issues. So while most agree with the cause of social justice, not all are in a position to stay and fight. We Landed Travelers must fight for them, and we are often busy making a living and focusing on our own lives, like anyone in any community. But the fire has caused some to take a look at that excuse, and invest a little more time and energy into the battle.

I wonder if many of the younger kids will give this life up. I reflect that I never did. In the five decades I've been alive, this is the life that constantly draws me back. I share that with Corey, and she agrees. “My dad yells about [my age], but there's nothing else I want to do.” She cuddles her dog, Pete, and smiles, and speaks into my voice recorder. “ Petey is a Boston Terrier, and he has a punkrock vest with a scumfuck patch on it. He's a fake service dog. He rides airplanes with me.” I nod, but I don't think Pete is a fake. Like many Travelers, Corey's issues of depression and alcohol use are held in check by her rapport with this trusted canine companion. Many Travelers have this relationship with a dog. The animals hop with them, squat and busk with them. When we play on Frenchmen, Pete sits in the fiddle case we use as a tip jar, sleeping as we make music, and coming quite alive when food appears. I reflect that the previous day, when I drove Shalina to the hop out spot, her big German Shepherd followed her to the tracks to hop the train that would take them to Austen, and I hope, to a sober life.

Today, sitting in the Saint Roch, Hank shares a few last thoughts about the fire, and one of the Travelers who died. “Sammy was mine and Corey's first room mate when we moved here, so we knew him pretty well. I wasn't here to grieve with everyone. But the last time I saw Sammy, we were drinking coffee in this cafe, and Sammy says, 'I'm hyper, I shouldn't drink any more coffee.' Then he drinks like three more cups. After that we ran around the Quarter acting crazy, and he's throwing his dog in the fountains.”

Hank learned of the fire at his family's home in Wisconsin. Nikki had the same experience. “I wasn't here [for the fire] and someone called me and said 'do you have our friend's phone number? I need to know if he's dead or not.'

We all know that while these people are our close friends, when we travel we are each truly on our own. This summer I'll go off to Pagan festivals and renaissance faires, as I do each year. Shalina will ride trains to the Pacific Northwest, where she is originally from. Nikki and Molly will travel too, although they've made no plans yet. And like me, Bob and Echo will leave NOLA in search of gigs. Any of us could come to harm, and none of our friends might be there to mourn us. The eight in the warehouse were lucky in that way. The community of NOLA Travelers were there to second line, to drink to their memories, and to cry.

(To see local New Orleans coverage of the warehouse fire, visit

http://topics.nola.com/tag/fatal-warehouse-fire/index.html )