GOING HOME: DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO MISS NEW ORLEANS? 11/05


Almost seven and a half weeks after boarding up our houses and fleeing New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina, my friend, Chloe and I came home to live. We had returned ten days prior with my husband, Michael to view the damage. Our last few weeks had been spent in Colorado gathering information on our city like we were cramming for a final exam. Still, as we turned off the City Park Exit, we knew no amount of research would prepare us for what we were about to experience. We drove past Lake Lawn, one the cities grandest cemeteries. Ironically, it was not a place I usually associated with death. With its lush grounds, elaborate gravestones and sometimes scandalous past, I looked at it as more of a historical walking tour, not a final resting place. Now the colorless landscape signified death. It was eerily symbolic that the cemetery was the first landmark to greet us.




Once off the exit, we encountered National Guards men sitting on lawn chairs under the freeway pass. They had guns slung across their laps and bottled water at their feet. They waved to us in such a manner that without the automatic weapons, Hummers, and camouflage you would think their main job was Official City Greeters, not there to keep the peace by any means possible. There were few people on the streets and with the stoplights not working, everyone drove at a guarded pace. The streets, littered with trash and debris, had a stench of baked swamp sludge that filled your nose and rooted to the top of your mouth. We continued our drive down City Park Avenue. The majestic oak trees that once witnessed pistol duels in the late 1800s and survived countless storms, now looked like that they had been ripped up like a mischievous child tears up blades of grass. Possessions that once marked individuals’ identity: antique furniture, photo albums, or framed prints of faraway vacation places, were now regulated to garbage. While we were shocked by the state of the various houses (roofs caved in, walls completely torn out, trees reclining in people’s living room) we were looking for that one ominous feature- the water line. The water line, which looks like ground-up coffee grinds, encircles miles and miles of houses. It was an automatic indicator of damage. It told you if you could move forward with your life or if you had to move away. Water was the greatest threat; any amount could create inexplicable destruction. Our friends got less than a foot of water and returned home to find three different types of mold scaling their walls and covering their possessions. They lost everything.










Aside from the obvious destruction, the military had spray-painted messages on houses. They marked the unit, the date and the number of bodies found. The SPCA came in after and marked the type of animal found and if they were alive or dead: Dog starved to death 9/27, Two cats found 10/2, Pit Bull Rescued 9/21. It was just another way to identify tragedy. We didn’t know what to expect when we drove into our Bayou St. John neighborhood.







Chloe, who I met in Washington State over seventeen years ago, lives four doors down from us with her husband, Jason and nine-year old stepson, Jake. We knew from various reports that our neighborhood sustained three to four feet of water. Our houses, like most old houses in the city, were raised. It was just a matter if they were raised enough. Homes two blocks away from ours were in shambles.


















The business owners, who were allowed back in the city before the residents, had already begun piling their ruined wares on the street. We could barely breathe as we turned on our block. Miraculously, we both suffered roof damage and lost all our landscaping but we escaped the water: Michael and I by four inches, Chloe by one. Opening our front door we encountered a musty smell, but all our possessions were unharmed. Standing in front of some of my favorite paintings, I cried.




We were both blessed.





BEFORE


AFTER








The next few days, in the heat, without water and power, we cleaned. Michael worked in the yard, chopping up and tearing out our dead oleander and crepe myrtle trees, azaleas, dwarf orange shrubs, gardenias, jasmine, and lavender plants. We couldn’t do anything with our enormous, one-hundred year old magnolia tree that was lying on our neighbor’s roof. I scrubbed the walls and floors to prevent any future mold. Our refrigerator was duck taped and wheeled outside. The meat had liquefied and the refrigerator was filled with maggots. We learned through our friend, Josh’s folly not to open the door until it was safely on the sidewalk. We had a large ice chest on our patio filled with drinks and snacks and handed them out to anyone who returned on our block.

Our next door neighbor, Gwen, whose two-story house was on ground level, took water. She had just lost her husband, Bobby less than two months before from a heart attack. Bobby was the first one to welcome us to the neighborhood two years before. He was a former Mardi Gras Indian and worked at the Krystal Hot Sauce Company. On Fridays, you could always count on Bobby and Gwen sitting in their lawn chairs on the sidewalk, drinking Milwaukee’s Best, listening to R&B from a boom box and shouting “Happy Friday” to anyone who passed. It was heartbreaking after Bobby’s death to see Gwen sitting out by herself on the sidewalk. We always had a friendly competition with them over holiday decorations. It seemed every weekend Bobby was either taking down or putting up decorations, “Gotta keep the wife happy,” he’d chuckle. Since his death, the only decorations that hung were a garland of white plastic flowers around her windows. Surprisingly, they were still up as Michael and our friend, Glenn helped her salvage what she could from her second floor. Despite their respirators, they were gagging within minutes. Michael said the horror of the mold was only overshadowed by Gwen’s devastation.


During our stay, we slept at our friend’s house in the Garden District who had power and miraculously didn’t suffer any storm damage. The only working grocery store was twenty minutes away from our house and only open from nine to five. In the morning we loaded up on ice and snacks under the watchful eye of the military. We stayed for four days; our power came on the last few hours we were there. Our last night, Michael and I walked down our dark street. No lights, no music, no barking dogs or arguing spouses. It was completely silent. New Orleans is many things but quiet is not one of them. The stillness was staggering.






Ten days later, Chloe and I came back to New Orleans to live and I returned to my real estate job. Michael stayed in Colorado to work while Jason stayed so Jake could finish the school semester. We foolishly believed since we had spent a few days in the city before, we were prepared to return full-time. We were wrong. Living in New Orleans is a daily struggle. After eleven weeks we are still without gas, which means no heat, hot water, or cooking. When we can’t use a friend’s shower we either take cold ones or boil water on the electric burner we purchased and fill a camp shower to hang in the bathtub. We don’t have a phone, cable, or internet. Our cell phones are sketchy so communication can be limited. We don’t have any restaurants or gas stations in our neighborhood. The only grocery store is still the one twenty minutes away. With its limited hours and supplies it’s like shopping the day after Christmas every day.






More people are coming back in the city which is a sign of hope but also a sign of more refuse. We’ve had garbage piled in front of our homes for over a month. It has overflowed onto the street, making it difficult to park, and we have no idea when it will be removed. The flies are everywhere and the effort to keep everything as sterile as possible is a never ending task. We are the last block to have power, behind us is only darkness and devastation. There are areas in the city that are completely empty and abandoned and every day we see something that makes us stop and sigh. The Military has taken over NOCCA, the local performing arts high school. I used to drive by on the way to our art studio and see aspiring dancers, artists, actors mingling in the courtyard of the beautiful brick building. Now, it’s filled with Jeeps and Hummers while men and women in camouflage sit outside with their automatic weapons and wave to passerbys. The military is a constant presence and a odd juxtaposition of comfort and apprehension. It’s something I am yet to get used to and probably never will.










Our first trip back into the city, Chloe and I started documenting photos. I chose to concentrate on the messages that the citizens began to paint on their own houses, abandoned refrigerators and vacant businesses. It was their way of expressing their faith, their fury, their feeling of desperation, or all of the above. Chloe focused on the destitution and emptiness that Katrina has caused. Chloe’s brother, Kilian Wicks, who owns the Kilian Wicks Gallery in downtown Bremerton, Washington was in New Orleans during the time of the evacuation and wanted to try and give people an understanding of the loss from a local’s point of view. We had the photos on display in his gallery for the month of November. Despite our fastidiousness in attempting to capture the true situation in New Orleans, we know our photos only warrant a quick glance into the city’s desperate condition






















Regardless, of the daily events that bring us to tears, it’s also a reminder of not only how lucky we are to emerge relatively unscathed but also how fortunate we are to live in this city. It is the loss of the irreplaceable structures in the city (Greek Revivals, Creole Cottage, Shotgun Camelbacks) that taught me a valuable lesson. While the houses are part of New Orleans’ heritage, they don’t make up the identity of the city. The people do. Where else on a Wednesday afternoon do you stop your car to give a girl on a bike wearing chaps, a bikini top and a tiara the right of way? Where else on a Thursday night at 3AM after listening to jazz band does the trumpet player lead you and the members of his band who aren’t too intoxicated outside to the back of his pickup truck for barbeque? Where else would your dentist understand that you were late for your appointment because of an impromptu second line? This is the magic of New Orleans. Yet, before Katrina hit, the city was already in a storm of racism, poverty, illiteracy, corruption and crime. Now, with the rebuilding underway it is crucial that we take this opportunity to not only preserve the qualities that make this city so unique but to reconstruct with social reform in mind. It wasn’t the hurricane that tore the city apart, it was the aftermath. New Orleans will no doubt be reborn but it can not forget the beauty and the angst of its former life. We are home to stay and ready to contribute.









Published in The Kitsap Herald 12/05
Some of these photos appeared in The Kitsap Herald 12/05 and Square One Spring 06