Aaron

I encounterd Aaron's laundry before I ever met the man who filled those huge undershirts and jockey briefs.
Roberta, my mother's oldest sister, did the wash on one of those old washing machines with the wringer on the top, and then filled the lines in the yard with all of the stained wash. Bleach didn't really do much for Aaron's underwear.
Aaron was massive, the whole family was.
Eating was an event that went down in huge quantities all around. Mibby, Aaron Jr. (Junie), Roberta, and Aaron were capable of knocking down two dozen pork chops. Six per person, along with everything else.
And then there was Aaron's RC Cola. Cases of it. He drank more soft drinks than any person I have ever met.
Aaron worked nights along the river as a security guard. But during the day, he slept, and his sleep was something that Aunt Bert guarded religiously.
Nobody would dare wake the sleeping giant.
And in the afternoons when he did emerge from his bedroom, he would wander the house in his briefs with an RC in his hand, directing the meal prep for the family's daily Olympic eating binge. And lthen line up the lunch that would carry him though the night.
Bert and Aaron never shared a bedroom during the time that I knew them. Aaron's room was quite a place. There was his bed, dresser, etc., and then there were cases and cases of the many things that
Aaron stole from the ships and warehouses each night.
Cases of expensive French perfume, watches, cartons of ballpoint and fountain pens, cases of liquor, prescription drugs...all sorts of stuff.
He was part of the corruption that blanketed and soiled the New Orleans' warehouse district...and probably still does.
Junie would brag and call his daddy a "liceman". But Aaron a a thief.
There was a lot of it that found it's way into the homes of Bert's family.
It was insane. The costly jewelry, the watchers, the perfume...all of it in the midst of shabby governemtn housing where there was so much real need that was never met.
And some of it Aaron sold or bribed people with.
Aaron never got caught, but there were close calls. Times when paranoia prompted him to move his stolen stash to the houses of family members.
Once Aaron came home with a mess of tokens for the toll bridge over the Mississippi. How it all went down was never clear to me. But I do remember how sure everyone was that Aaron had finally done it.
While Aaron was a work each night, Bert and the kids would go to various Pentecostal meetings and join in with Charismatic experiences that spoke to both their spiritual and emotional needs.
And increasingly, Bert would speak out Aaron's sinful ways and the influence it had on their kids. But that never stopped the flow of perfume, jewelry, and other trinkets he stole from finding their way to her dressing table.
And it never stopped her from inviting family members over to raid Aaron's stash while he was away at work. She said that there was so much that he'd never notice. And he never did.
I wonder about Aaron. Why was he so ridiculed as a pig and a thief by Roberta and the rest of the family? ....and yet we all gladly received what he stole.
The St. Thomas Housing Project, maybe the whole Irish Channel, was full of Aaron's, grabbing at something or anything that would fill their lives...even for a moment.
Maybe a lot like Mardi Gras. Those glass beads flying through the air seem a lot more significant only because of the many hands reachi grapple for them.
On closer examination, they're cheap...tacky...with no real purpose. But people have been crushed under floats, crippled.....
Aaron was always ready for someone to throw something his way.
"Throw me somethin', mista'!"