For those who haven't already heard enough, here's something being circulated that a friend of mine wrote a couple of weeks ago. File photo from pbs.org.
REQUIEM AND REBIRTH
By Grady Hines ©
Email: Breakaleg1@footlightsonline.com
It’s Friday evening, December 2, 2005—6:40 PM
I’ve just returned from New Orleans. My life and outlook will, I believe, be forever altered by my experience there.
On Wednesday last, I had arranged to join my son, Wyatt, for lunch today at high noon. The visit was eagerly anticipated. Visiting with Wyatt is always great fun. He’s a vibrant conversationalist and an incisive thinker—forceful, independent, resilient, sturdy and kind. He set our agenda for the day: first, he’d show me the apartment in Uptown where he and Catherine are now living: then, we’d lunch at Mona’s Café on S. Carrollton Avenue, a favorite of mine; finally he would give me, as he put it off-handedly, “the disaster tour.”
The odyssey began simply enough: a pleasant drive from Baton Rouge along I-10 under mostly cloudy skies. Every few miles there would be a break in the clouds and I found myself captivated by the brilliance of the azure spaces that shone high and off in the distance, with jagged margins demarcated by the gray of the clouds. The passing landscape was, of course, familiar—thick swamp forests for most of the way below LA 44, southwest of Gonzales.
Traffic was moderate until I reached the Bonne Carre Spillway. I wondered why so many cars and other vehicles poured on at LaPlace. The increased traffic demanded that I pay less attention to the sky. The speed limit signs were ignored by everyone. But, that too was usual. Most of the drivers were courteous and canny, except for two: a middle aged man in a white Chevy “longbed” who darted dangerously from lane to lane around every car, truck and van, causing any driver that he passed to hit the brakes to avoid being slammed by his back bumper; then, there was a young woman driving a battered black Neon who did the same thing. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was in angry pursuit of the man in the pickup—she looked so determined! Fortunately, these two were well down the highway by the time I reached that point where suddenly the beautiful expanse of Lake Ponchartrain appears, pulling one’s eyes to the skyline of the City off in the distance. I’m always awed by that view of the lake and somehow it was reassuring to see the familiar skyline. For a split second I had the crazy thought, “What’s this? The City looks fine! Maybe I’ve been off in a bad dream and I’m now awake and all is normal.”
True, everything looked normal—the beautiful lake to my left—the railroad track just below to my right—airliners rising and falling from the sky as they departed and landed at Armstrong nternational Airport afar to my right. Then there was the occasional fallen tree, but that seemed hardly a departure from the usual. Trees are always aging and falling in forests. That’s the natural course of things.
The first sign that something ominous had happened here was the sighting of a familiar fishing camp house—one of those metal buildings, bright blue—now slanting grotesquely, yet comically on a spot of land near the railroad. The wooden pier and the two boats that always before had been tied to it where gone.
Then the landscape returned to normalcy. For a while. Maybe an excessive number of fallen trees. I couldn’t decide. The elevated, curving bypass to Boutte had a steady flow of traffic. I’ve long admired it’s height and elegant curve and I thought back to the time when over many, many months its pilings appeared one by one--giant obelisks rising out of the swamp.
At once, I was in Kenner.
Kenner is today a sea of “blue roofs!” There are other stark and gaping signs of wind damage. Everywhere. While only an occasional building is totally shattered, many roofs and porches and balconies are torn off. Sometimes whole sides of buildings are sheared off, exposing interiors with grim immodesty. Many structures were still boarded up, paint splashed with graffiti and/or cryptic messages left by inspectors. Unmistakably, all these were signs of the city having been assaulted—savagely. Nonetheless, there were obvious signs of life all around. People coming and going. Laundry hanging out-of-doors. Open businesses. Construction workers at many sites. Renewal clearly a major occupation. The same was true as I passed by the Metairie exits. Quick glimpses from the raised expressway confirmed that Jefferson Parish is, in fact, “coming back.” Just beyond the I-10/I-610 “split” the Metairie Cemetery appeared to be intact. And, then I came to the S. Carrollton exit. I was now in the City (yes, I always think of it with a capital “C”).
I had a sick feeling in my stomach. This area, to the south for several blocks, almost to Claiborne had taken four feet of water. After the storm! Yes. After the storm! The street lights don’t work until you cross Claiborne. The Five Happiness Restaurant (which in my mind has the best Chinese food anywhere in the South) is closed. Oddly, it looked pristine, unlike all the surrounding buildings which still bear the distinct wide brown “watermark” of the flood. I was later to learn that as soon as the floodwaters went down, the industrious owners of the Five Happiness where there for days working as a family, gutting the interior, and scrubbing down the exterior of their complex of buildings. Reconstruction is now at a standstill, because there’s still no power to that section of Carrollton. Rubbish and trash lines the street. But salvage work seems to be going on. Though every intersection is now a four way stop, traffic seems to move with amazing efficiency. And, if one errs there’s the distinct absence of blaring car horns that used to tell you that, yes, you were in the City.
After crossing Claiborne things begin to look up. The street lights work. But, drivers are still courteous. Many businesses are open. Local establishments only. None of the chains. Except for Subway. Lots of pedestrians on their way to lunch.
Left on Sycamore and then three blocks down, I turned left again onto Burdette, arriving at 2218 a split second before Wyatt did. He’d told me I’d be able to spot his abode easily. It’s a purple (well, lavender with purple trim) raised Victorian style “double,” probably built sometime between 1915 and 1921. Well kept. Actually rather charming. The front door is “gated”—an attractive ironwork safety door. The large doubled paned windows, interestingly, are not “barred.” I concluded that the door was more of decorative architectural feature than a security feature. The interior of the apartment is constructed in a “shotgun” arrangement. A living room, with a fireplace, massive pocket doors open to the master bedroom, a single door leads to a small hallway, with a small, but pretty bath off to the right. The bath has a shower over a vintage clawfoot tub and Catherine has accessorized the bath nicely. Through the hallway is Ashlyn’s room and beyond it the kitchen. Beyond that is a large storage room shared with the couple on the other side of the “double.” He teaches at Tulane. She’s an administrator with one of the health networks in the City. Wyatt and Catherine have wisely chosen their new furniture. They bought the basics. They were of the mind to buy quality in the furniture and functionality, rather than to go for “fit” with purple Victorian. Sturdy and stylish Scandinavian is apt—best suited to a brick, cypress, and glass house, I’d say. Maybe that’s their dream. I didn’t ask.
After a bathroom break and a quick tour (in that order) we were off to Mona’s Café, just a few blocks away. The restaurant was quite busy. The waitress was charming. She quickly handed us menus, noting that “the things highlighted, we don’t have.” (Only three dishes were highlighted, two of which I wouldn’t have ordered anyway!) Wyatt ordered the gyros plate. I ordered the beef shwarma and we shared an appetizer of falafel. Twenty minutes later the waitress brought the gyros plate and a chicken shwarma plate, but apologized and offered to right the error if we didn’t mind waiting another 15 or 20 minutes for the beef. We quickly decided that we’d each eat some of the gyros and the chicken, rather than wait. We were mainly there to talk anyway. Though the food was very good, as always, and the chicken particularly good. Mona’s chefs make their own meat entrees, unlike most mid-eastern restaurants which purchase those “spits” of chicken, beef, lamb, and gyros already constructed, from New York suppliers. So, eating at Mona’s is always a treat, albeit, a garlicky one!
Good conversation. Wyatt volunteered reassuring news about the insurance settlement on the house. No check yet, but they have been advised of what the settlement will be. And, he’s satisfied that it is adequate for a new start. Date of settlement is still up in the air. And, besides the area where there house is located is not ready for reconstruction and rehabitation anyway. The famous levee question has to be resolved first. We talked about plans for our traditional spaghetti dinner on Christmas Eve (Wyatt and Melanie, his sister, grew up thinking they were Italian) and he shared wry, comic takes on some of the many planning meetings in the City that he’s attended in recent weeks. He also talked seriously about his hopes for the restoration of his life and the restoration of his beloved City. In addition, we talked politics and philosophy, as we always do when we’re together.
Our plates cleaned, the check paid, we headed north on Carrollton, retracing at first, the route I’d taken when I got off the expressway. This was the start of a two and a quarter hour, fifty-six mile tour of the “disaster area.” The tour did not include Uptown, the Central Business District, or the French Quarter which, by Wyatt’s report, had fared well comparatively.
As we drove toward Canal Street, the scene, block by block grew grimmer. Less activity, fewer people, save fairly frequent cadres of utility workers, salvage crews, and street cleaners, all driving massive (and specialized) vehicles (if not on the ground or on a ladder, working). At some sites there were the ubiquitous platoons of superintendents watching one or two laborers. Up Canal Street and briefly on to Canal Boulevard before turning onto Navarre, there was more and more damage but recent “clean up” waspointedly in evidence. But, very few people around. Few if any businesses open.
Wyatt pointed out the railroad underpass, where on the day after the storm, he and his friend and neighbor, Dudley, had launched a heroic rescue mission. That day they had commandeered a canoe and paddled to their neighborhood in search of an elderly neighbor, Wally, who had refused to evacuate prior to the storm. Unsure, but hoping against hope, that they had heard a faint cry in response to their calling out at Wally’s house, they had chopped through the roof to find their friend, dehydrated and near delirium, and pulled him to safety. Minutes before, Dudley had retrieved an ax and a hammer from his own garage by diving into the murky floodwaters. Miraculously, these tools were still hanging in their accustomed place that day. After passing Wally off to two NOPD officers in a motorized bateau, who agreed to take him to a triage site, Wyatt and Dudley had gone on to rescue eight other people stranded on rooftops. Today the floodwaters are gone. The hole in Wally’s roof stares blankly at the sky.
When we turned on to Navarre, Wyatt’s demeanor changed. Though conversant and informative, he seemed detached. I became acutely aware of the pall hanging over this area of the City. Stillness turned to absolute, utter silence. No vehicles, no people, no dogs, no cats, no birds. Silence. Block after block of empty houses, with gaping windows and doors. Surprisingly little rubbish and trash left (it had mostly been picked up and moved to “holding dumps” elsewhere). The grotesque floodline watemarks where just below the rooftops in this area. We stopped at Wyatt’s house—silent, empty, marred hideously by black mold. He’d removed all the contents to the street a couple of weeks ago. All that was left inside were splinters of branches washed in by the flood, pieces of fallen plaster from the walls and ceilings. Ghostly flood-stained pictures hanging on the walls. A set of dishes in the kitchen cabinet, left over, and now left here, from his first marriage. A neat tray of cleaning products, brushes, and cloths. A coin, a quarter, I think, on the floor of Ashlyn’s room watched over by a flood-stained framed and matted poster, that read: “A-S-H-L-Y-N” in jauntily slanted letters, once brightly colored. I wept. I saw Wyatt swallow, hard.
Outside in the driveway was a Honda Civic, parked there the day before the storm by a neighbor, because Wyatt’s house was on “higher ground” than the neighbor’s house. Most of the windows of the car had been shattered by the flood. It sits now, a silent token of the devastation. There are thousands of such tokens all over the City, though Wyatt says that thousands have been removed.
We drove on to Lakeview, then to Gentilly, then over the Industrial Canal to the Upper Ninth Ward (the Lower Ninth Ward remains closed). Then back across the London Street Canal on to the BiWater area, and then back up Elysian Fields and then to the site of the breach of the 17th Street Canal. Here houses were not only empty and silent, but many had been pushed off their foundations. Then on to Old Metairie.
I repeat this “tour” lasted two and a quarter hours and registered 56 miles on the odometer. Unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes, you cannot fathom the expanse and extent of the damage and devastation. Hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of blocks of empty, silent houses. Ranging from million dollar homes to hovels. Again, all now silent, now empty. Waiting for either restoration or the bulldozer. There’s no power, no people, in this vast, vast area. There are no floodmark lines at all on many of the houses, because the water topped the roofs. Just the tinge and sometimes splotches of gray-black dried mud.
The silence. The emptiness. That’s what gets next to you. It penetrates—to the bone. On TV you see a single structure, a pan shot of a block or group of structures, or a skyview of rooftops. It’s very different to see it first hand—to feel the emptiness and hear the deafening silence, to see the gaping doors and windows. Note, the area that remains silent and empty, has a footprint about the size of the city of Alexandria or Monroe. It’s devastated. It’s devastating to see the devastation: both the extent and the expanse of the devastation is massive.
The Lakeview area comprised the majority of the middle class tax base of the City. It’s now empty.
Orleans Parish, the City, once numbered 340,000 permanent residents. The best estimates place the nighttime population at, conservatively, 50,000 or extravagantly, at 70,000.
In the areas that are populated, the vibrancy and determination are palpable. People are busy, upbeat, forward-looking. But, the City is strangely white. Virtually the only black people I saw in the City, today, were workmen—a handful of professionals, only an occasional black driver of a car.
This once beautiful and vibrant city can’t pull itself up by its own bootstraps. Louisiana can’t pull it up by itself. This Nation must rally to rebuild the City. We did it for Germany and much of the rest of Europe as well as Japan after World War II. Now, as Americans, we must find the heart, the will, and the means to do it for our own!
It’s now 1:42 AM, December 3, 2005. I’m at home in my office. I hear the ticking of the clock on the wall in the room across the hall. In the distance, a dog barks. There’s the sound of a car passing on the street out front. Yet, I’m drawn back to the memories of the haunting silence that hangs over Navarre, Lakeview, Gentilly and the Upper Ninth Ward. It hangs—heavily.
It has three months now since Katrina blew in from the Gulf, creating a storm surge that overpowered levees and flooded the City.
The City is at great risk today not so much against the ravages of great forces of nature--whether measured in fifty or hundred, or three hundred year cycles—but at risk of neglect and of being forgotten because of disaster weariness, human indifference, political sidestepping and finger pointing.
What a tragic irony it would be if New Orleans were allowed to slip away and become, as it has been lightheartedly labeled in the past, “The City that Care Forgot!”