Greatly Exaggerated

It wasn’t but a few hours after I posted Odd Words that I drove off to look at an apartment (appointment cancelled en route) and who is coming on foot through the mad dog sun down Fortin Street Jimmy Ross. After a brief, street-blocking conversation of the sort common to New Orleans, I head on my way and call someone who immediately asks: The Jimmy Ross Memorial Book Sale? Is he OK?

No fear: Jimmy is alive and well and riding the bus down from the Bywater to stroll up Bayou Road, cut along Gentilly Road to Fortin to stop and knock at my door on his way to Fairgrinds. I referred to the Latter Library sale that way because Jimmy swears the Latter used to throw out their old books and he would dumpster dive for them and sell them to used book stores. This he claims is the genesis of the Latter’s twice weekly sale, Jimmy’s adventures in dumpsters having inspired them to do their own book selling.

This tale my be taller than one Mr. Lavender but is too good not to repeat, is of the sort of stories that fuel New Orleans meals more than all the natural gas in the Tuscaloosa Trend, facts be damned and let’s have another and did I ever tell you about the time…

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