A fortune teller leaves submerged New Orleans for Homosassa, where his family lives, to start anew. But he misses his Big Easy life.
By EDDY RAMIREZ
Published October 9, 2005
HOMOSASSA - In a remote aisle, far from the busy chatter of people haggling over antiques and used power tools for sale at Howard's Flea Market, Ken Halhober is slumped in a chair, staring at his crystal ball.
A sign by his booth reads, "House of Ishlan. 14 Years Experience." It has a drawing of a howling wolf carved inside a full moon. A separate sheet lists his fees. A palm reading is $20, and a reading of three tarot cards goes for $5. But it has been a slow Friday morning.
"Today, I will take anything," said Halhober, 31, who was known as "Timber Wulff" by other fortune tellers and close friends in New Orleans.
On this morning, he misses New Orleans, he said. He misses the crowds, the liveliness. He misses the money. On most weekends, he said, he made as much as $500 from the tourists who packed the French Quarter, where he lived in a second-story apartment for 14 years.
But since Hurricane Katrina emptied out the city, Halhober has had to start anew.
For the past month, he has been sharing a house with his mother and stepfather in Homosassa.
Necessity and nostalgia have brought him and his crystal ball to Howard's Flea Market.
He is sitting behind a table wearing a burgundy, button-down shirt that matches the table cloth. Two different decks of cards are stacked together on the table. A pyramid-shaped figurine and two quartz stones are placed atop each deck to keep the wind from blowing them away.
Seeing no interested fortune seekers, he takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights one up.
To hear Halhober tell it, his flight from the flooded city was as surreal as most everything he tells about his life. But Katrina, he said, has really left a mark.
"I don't know that I'm ever going back there," he said.
Halhober said he evacuated New Orleans a day before Katrina flooded the city. But he and a friend turned back after hearing reports that the storm had veered east and spared much of the city.
He soon realized he had been misled.
The levees had given way, and the city was quickly becoming submerged in water. But, Halhober said, he had become annoyed with his friend, and, rather than leave the city with him, he decided to ditch him and set out for his apartment on Royal and St. Ann streets, a half block from the historic St. Louis Cathedral.
He said he walked down the center line of Interstate 10 toward the French Quarter for almost 7 miles after being caught in a deluge. He said he swam for about a quarter mile in water that was almost 15 feet deep until a New Orleans police officer spotted him.
"Do you need any help?" the officer yelled.
"Yeah, I need 10 bucks, a pack of cigarettes and a Pepsi," he replied.
"I was trying to keep my sense of humor," Halhober said. "I had learned when I took swimming that panicking is about the worse thing you can do. But it was hard. The water tasted horrible - like salt mixed with liver and little-used car oil."
Halhober said he was pulled from the water and eventually allowed to walk to his apartment. He produced a photograph and an online news clip to corroborate his story.
When Halhober arrived at his apartment, he found his collection of fantasy and role-playing comics and magazines in tatters. His clothes were soaked.
But nothing upset him more than seeing his tarot cards destroyed.
"They were my bread and butter," he said. "They were my friends."
He realized at that point that without his cards, his livelihood had disappeared. After a few days of walking around the city, after all the tuna and the 2 liters of Pepsi in his apartment were gone, he set out for the convention center with only a bundle of clothes.
Along the way, he said, he stumbled upon a working pay phone. He called his grandmother, who contacted his mother in Homosassa.
Eventually, Halhober was flown out of New Orleans. But, he said, he will not forget performing last rites on six dead people, including a woman who sat next to him at the convention center for two days. Halhober said he is an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church Online. He said he asked for the victims' forgiveness.
"I didn't know if these people were even Catholic," he said.
Once out of harm's way, Halhober said, his mother wired him $50 for food and cigarettes. He had landed in Arkansas, and, shortly after that, he boarded a Greyhound bus for Homosassa. His mother waited for him at the station.
"She hugged me and just about choked the life out of me," he said.
Since then, Halhober has tried to start anew, but it hasn't come easy, he said. Halhober has been trying to hunt down a job to help his family pay the bills. He will do just about anything, he said. Throughout his life, he has moved from one state to another holding a long series of odd jobs. His latest stint, while he was reading cards in New Orleans, was wrestling.
"I was teaching amateur wrestlers how to take falls," he said.
On Friday evening, he planned to make an appearance at a karaoke bar in Homosassa.
"They tell me I have a good singing voice," he said.
For now, he said, he is doing fine at the flea market. He made $120 last week from curious visitors.
"There's good energy here," he said.
Except for a few people who told him he is in bad with Jesus Christ, saying he is a pagan - including one woman who gave him a Bible last week - Halhober said most people have been nice to him at the market.
As he talked about his plans, a woman approached his booth and glanced at the sheet with the fees. He looked up eagerly, but the woman walked away.
"I haven't given up," he said. "I hear tourist season is coming soon."
In the meantime, Halhober has other tricks up his sleeve.
A big Rocky Horror Picture Show fan who enjoys role playing, Halhober is busy planning a horror movie convention in Tampa.
It was originally supposed to take place in New Orleans.
"That was supposed to be the starting point of my new life," he said.
Halhober said he is beginning to feel a little burnout after 14 years as a professional fortune teller. He said he doesn't want to end up like the other fortune tellers, who "die reading cards."
"No," he said. "My dream has always been to make movies."
Halhober said he has written four horror screenplays, though he hasn't been able to sell any of them. He is working on a script that is partly inspired by locations in Crystal River and Homosassa. He envisions a horror movie that possibly takes place at Howard's Flea Market, he said.
Halhober said he hopes to sell one of his screenplays at the convention, which has a Web site: www.carnivaleofhorror.com He has invited Robert Englund, who plays Freddy Krueger in the film series A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Jason Voorhees, the masked killer in the film series Friday the 13th. So far, neither has confirmed.
"Jason vs. Freddy," he said. "That would so great."
