Siblings tattle on Laurel Street’s holiday miscreant

Several days of holiday down time found me in New Orleans during perfect weather unless you are of the persuasion that I am and my wife especially is, that this city needs regular washings of rainfall. There’s been none. November may be its driest on record.
Yet it is hard to find fault with lows in the upper 40s, highs in the 70s and, most important, low humidity.
The common conversation topic among neighbors has been a body found Wednesday near the intersection of Annunciation and Robert streets, a couple of blocks over. Stench led someone to its discovery that turned into a homicide investigation when officers found the man’s hands had been tied behind him. Neighbors said they heard no shots. Most said they thought the man had been killed elsewhere and dumped in the narrow passageway between the exterior wall of a duplex and a tall, catclaw vine-covered fence. It was November’s twelfth murder in the city, 147th for 2017, and places a red dot on the New Orleans Murder Map 2017, the first for this part of town.
Regularly seen around Wisner Playground while school has been out is a junior high-age boy who is followed by several younger children, perhaps siblings. We see the younger children go running around a corner followed by the older one, a chunky fellow, fleeing the scene of his latest mischief. He’s at it continuously, apparently to impress the others. He’s taken books from the little neighborhood library at the Swans’ house and thrown them into several peoples’ yards. Sometimes he just throws rocks, dumb stuff, and just runs away with his entourage preceding him.
Yesterday he threw a ball at a bicycle rider, then another from a hiding place and hit the side of a passing car. The driver got out and tried to confront him, but he ran away. The driver caught up instead with the younger kids who told her of his ongoing activities and said that he would be in trouble if his parents knew. The lady at the coffee shop on the corner said that she banned him after he made himself a nuisance there. No real harm done but when enough neighbors figure out where he lives, someone will talk to the parents. That’s when we will learn whether they will respond positively or whether they will take a “my-kid-does-no-wrong” attitude.
In the backyard, the lemon tree is loaded down with the first crop it has produced. I am still puzzled about when to pull them, but Rosemary has been pulling as she needed them for weeks. They are large and juicy even still green.
The neighbors next door who are over-trodden by our damncats are planning to replace the fence that separates our yards, undoubtedly with something more effective at slowing feline traffic. They approached us very cautiously about it because Rosemary always has a row of beautiful flowers blooming along the row. She is all for it. Anything to help her keep those damncats out of their yard and in ours.
And that’s the way things are on Laurel Street in Uptown New Orleans where not everyone can play a ukelele and not everyone can ride a bike but one guy who can do both went pedaling by on Sunday.