NORTH.(The Talk of the Town)(David Crier, car salesman from New Orleans )

David Crier was doubtless flouting the spirit, if not the letter, of United Airlines' carry-on-bag regulations when he boarded Flight 1403 out of New Orleans one day in mid-October. Crier is a stolid, businesslike gentleman of sixty-six, with the stony expression and rumbling voice of one of those tough inner-city high-school principals who show up in Disney movies. Shortly before the jet's door closed, he came huffing up the aisle under the weight of two enormous satchels; one he barely squeezed into an overhead bin, and the other, once he sat down, left little room for his legs. It wasn't only the size of the satchels that attracted notice; it was their smell.

"What I got in here is my seasoning meat--some ham hocks and some smoked pig tails," he said, patting the case between his knees. Although Crier was dressed in a conservative suit, he had carefully manicured fingernails that were half an inch long. "And I got me some red beans, because you can't use just any kind of kidney beans; a slab of ribs; some Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning; and a few other things." The entire front of the plane was starting to smell like a barbecue. "I don't know when I'll be back," Crier said matter-of-factly. "I got to make sure I can eat."

Before Hurricane Katrina, Crier sold cars at the Rimrock Chrysler dealership, on Canal Street. He knew that the dealership's owners were from out of town, but he had never focussed on exactly where, until, after the storm, they offered him a job at the home office. So, after a lifetime in torpid New Orleans, he was on his way to his first real winter, in Billings, Montana, where, if the 2000 census is still accurate, he would be the two-thousand-six-hundred-and-ninety-third African-American in the state. "I imagine this will be something of an experience," he said.

One brisk day a few weeks after arriving, Crier was pacing the showroom at his new job. Most of the other salesmen wore golf shirts with the company logo on the breast, but Crier had on a green suit and a crisp white shirt, with a yellow necktie and matching pocket handkerchief. A jewelled Shriner pin adorned his lapel. His fingernails had been worn down to cracked nubs. "It's the cold and the dryness here," he said, rubbing his hands. When a visitor invited him to lunch and asked whether he knew a good place, he thought for a moment and said no.

The past weeks have been harder than Crier expected. He earns minimum wage--five dollars and fifteen cents an hour--and ...