Red Beans and Rice

I used to live off Lewis Street in a little white house on a hill with a tin roof and a weathervane shaped like a rooster.  The weathervane is over 2,000 years old and it's utterly useless. It spins in a circle when it's windy enough but ours wasn't too steady and fell off the roof and if you've ever been under a tin roof it sounds like the world's crashing down when it's sprinkling. My grandfather would have to climb up the roof the next morning and stick it back on its rod until next time. They originated in China on the palaces of Chang'an, the Vikings put them on ships, and the cockerel was the emblem of St Peter and held its place on the steeples of every church in medieval England, but again useless. I used to ride a yellow bicycle up and down an alley hill after it rained and the potholes turned into birdbaths and I'd get my socks muddy and fell on my knees a couple or a lot of times. But there was an older man a little older than my grandfather who used to have these kinds of neighborhood dinners every Monday. His name was Albert and he lived down the hill in a red barn on the edge of the eastern piney woods with a furnace on the back porch that smelled like charcoal and paprika. You'd know it was Monday because the screen door would be wedged open and a smoke plum tempted the sunrise, which isn't saying a lot, but it was enough to pay attention. The smell took the neighborhood kids like fruit flies. Albert was bent over some garden squash, radish and others incased in chicken wire and often guarded by silent neighbors that flocked amongst the tall branches. It was a Sunday so I was the only one riding his little yellow bike sliding down the road. 

"The woods a beautiful thing." Albert said nursing a cooled soda can against his forehead. "It's in your toothpaste and paper."