Reasons to Smile

New Orleans is currently associated with crisis, with distress, as well it should be. That will not change anytime soon. But where there is hardship and turmoil, there’s also very likely to be inspiration and achievement. I’m trying to see and focus on more and more of these types of stories. The point is not to ignore reality and what is really going on here, but rather to provide a balance. If I want to use this site to raise awareness, I need to provide the good, as well as the bad and the ugly. This past weekend I had several tastes of the ‘good’.

On Friday I was making some stops in the neighborhoods of Violet. The streets were alive with activity. Neighbors were chatting with each other, Habitat for Humanity houses were going up and groups of volunteers seemed to be everywhere, working on various projects. It was one of those afternoons where the air and energy was all positive.

Turning down on street, I noticed Coach Williams standing on the corner speaking to someone. I know Coach from over at Andrew Jackson Elementary. He’s one of the gym teachers there. I stopped to say hello, and ask him how his summer is going so far. He’s taking the summer off for a much-needed break. I know we sometimes associate being a gym teacher with having a cushy job, but this is not the case for the ones at Andrew Jackson. Three and four classes come in at a time each period, rotating in and out of games of volleyball, basketball, etc. They’re more like free-for-all races than they are organized games. When playing basketball, the kids just run and in volleyball they just throw the ball, at each other. All the teachers can really do is try to keep the kids on the floor from hurting each other while at the same time doing everything they can to make sure the ones waiting to get back on the court are behaving. Coach Williams does as good a job at that as any gym teacher I watched there.

Anyway, while catching up with the Coach Williams I noticed a little shed to my left and could see people in it. I asked what that was, and Coach told me it was a barber shop. A barber shop? Here we are on the corner of a residential street, surrounded just by houses, and sitting there alongside a gravel driveway is a barber shop posing as a shed. Interesting.

I opened the door and peeked, only to see that sure enough, it was a barber shop (see photos above). Orlin Brown’s barber shop used to sit on that very corner, in a much more standard barber shop-type building. In other words, it wasn’t a shed. That structure is gone now, a victim of Hurricane Katrina and a lack of funds. He hopes to have a new one someday, if and when his Road Home or Insurance money ever comes through. But Mr. Brown wasn’t going to sit around and wait, so he went to Home Depot, bought a shed that normally houses lawn mowers and gardening tools, threw some sheet rock up, smoothed out the walls and now it houses a barber’s chair and a mirror.

I couldn’t help but smile the entire time I was in there. No, it’s not the ideal set up for Mr. Brown or his customers. But so what. Here’s a guy who clearly wasn’t feeling sorry for himself and is making the best of his circumstances. There are plenty of Orlin Browns around here, and I’d like to meet more of them.