New Orleans, Two Months Later
By Tom Andre
16 November, 2005
CounterpunchTwo-plus months after Katrina, I have made a circle around the country and for the time being, I am settled comfortably in New York. On October 29, I returned to New Orleans for a week. The main reason was to help my mom pack up her house for her temporary move to Baton Rouge; the house wasn't flooded, but inspectors found mold anyway and it needs to be gutted. I also wanted to see my friends, many of whom had returned, and to spend some time and have a look around my wounded city.
New Orleans is a bizarre combination of boomtown and ghost town. By day, the Uptown area is a flurry of contractors and residents who are "back." At times it seems there is more traffic than usual. But beginning just after dinner, the streets empty to the level you would find at three in the morning--confirming that a high percentage of daytime traffic is simply made up of contractors going to and from their job sites.
On many streets, it seems that most houses have power and their occupants are living there. Around a third of businesses are open, and many more seem set to open soon. This translates to long lines at almost any restaurant or coffee shop. And other than sit at the coffee shop and check your email, there's not much else to do.
Never big fans of rules, we New Orleanians now flout them more than ever. People don't pay parking meters--there's no one to write a ticket. People park on the neutral ground on St. Charles Avenue--why not? There are no streetcars. Like two drivers in front of me, I casually made an illegal left turn, taking petty satisfaction in thinking it was a stupid spot for a No Left Turn sign in the first place.
There were moments when I felt, It is so damn good to be home. The weather in New Orleans this time of year is gorgeous--think Southern California without the smog. To once again experience the simple pleasures of seeing familiar faces or nestling into your favorite table at the coffee shop or sipping Abita beer, or the bigger pleasures of the "Only in New Orleans" moments, was wonderful. These moments don't happen every day, or even necessarily every week, but I did have a few. Maybe the most comforting sight was seeing my favorite substitute teacher from high school was still stumbling drunk along Bourbon Street.
Halloween is always a great holiday in haunted New Orleans. This year the usual vampires and witches were joined by refrigerators, mold, blue roofs and lots of costumes bearing the word "FEMA" next to some expletive. I donned a brown skirt, blue shirt, knee-high brown socks, a brown sash and a latex bullet hole on my forehead and went as "Brownie" Returns to New Orleans ("Brownie" is Bush's nickname for former FEMA director Michael Brown). Some people got it. That was enough for me.
Halloween was one of those "Only in New Orleans" moments. You can still drink adult beverages on the street, a law which we took full advantage of, and then some. With the doors of Café Brasil on Frenchmen St. pinned wide open, there was no distinction between the party on the street and the party in the bar. The bar closed in anticipation of the 2 a.m. curfew, but everyone just stayed on the street. 2 a.m. came and went, and the DJ outside kept going. The police finally showed up just after 3 o'clock, and politely but firmly "reminded" us that we needed to go home. Otherwise, we might still be there.
Restaurants are almost without exception serving limited menus, often on paper plates with plastic utensils, as there are is no one to wash dishes. "Now Hiring" signs are everywhere. Burger King is offering employees bonuses of $500 a month. No one can get enough workers.
But there is another New Orleans, less than a mile away. I made a point of seeing both. By day, Lakeview buzzes with construction workers, most of whom wear masks to protect against the dust. The whole area is brown and dusty. Streets were never smooth in Lakeview, thanks to a habit of shoddy construction and the rapid subsidence of the soft soil--the same soil, it turns out, that was used to construct the levees which, it turns out, did not protect the city. Now driving is downright hazardous, with household debris and tree branches complementing the uneven roads. We have country roads in the city.
It wasn't entirely clear to me what the construction workers in Lakeview were doing, but it seemed like their primary job was just to clear the debris from roads and from homes. There are literally mountains of it: the highest point in the city is now somewhere in the middle of West End Boulevard, where a steady stream of dump trucks deposits people's sheet rock, furniture and memorabilia. I imagine my stuff will end up there, too.
On Sunday night, I drove from the river down Canal Street, towards my house. Just past the French Quarter, maybe a mile from the Mississippi, the city ends. The lights quite literally go out, forming a distinct border between recovery and ruin. I've driven that stretch hundreds of times, and it was easy to picture all of those homes and businesses hulking there abandoned in the darkness.
The "border" was shocking, and I was afraid to drive into the desolation. Instead, I drove along Claiborne Avenue through Central City. There were intermittent street lights and traffic lights on, but on my right, towards the lake, an awful darkness seemed to threaten the precarious recovery. Empty houses stretched down forsaken streets, blacker than the night sky. By the time I got to Napoleon Avenue my curiosity got the better of me, and I turned right and out of the lights for a short detour into the neighborhood where I used to ride my bicycle as a kid. On the entire mile-long stretch, there was one house with a light on. It was great that they had power--but who would want to live in the only house with power in the entire neighborhood? How long can they hold out like that?
On Halloween evening, just after dark, I drove out Carrollton Avenue and into my neighborhood. I was encouraged. Here, the border had blurred. There were streetlights on, and a few buildings had power. On my street, the streetlights were on, on my block only--beyond that, the blackness. Around the corner, a small law office had reopened. Levees of sheetrock and wet furniture lined the street--a sign of life, not abandonment. I parked my car in the middle of the street and just sat on the porch. I heard music and voices coming from the direction of the law office. That was more like it. Next, I drove over to my favorite neighborhood bar to see how it had fared. It was open, so I stopped to have a beer.
My friend Greg was in there; so were the usual bartenders and neighborhood folks and their dogs, who are also regular characters in the bar. Yes, seeing familiar faces in a familiar place was extremely comforting. Mid-City is slowly coming back--I had never thought I would be so happy to see pigeons--though some streets remain in total darkness. We traded evacuation stories. Like me, Greg had made a big circle around the country. Unlike me, he was back for good. Then I drove back into Lakeview.
I drove slowly along the edge of City Park, and stopped on top of the I-610 overpass that roughly marks the beginning of the neighborhood. To the West, towards Jefferson Parish, there were lights on. Straight ahead, all I could see were three points of orange light near Lake Ponchartrain. I drove with my brights on down a random street--street signs were hard to spot--and just parked in the darkness, turned off the lights, and listened. I could hear traffic passing on one of the thoroughfares, but nothing else.
Late one afternoon, I drove down St. Claude Avenue, the main thoroughfare into the Ninth Ward, and not as flooded as other areas. Two wrecked city buses still sat on the neutral ground. No businesses were open, and many showed signs of looting and wind damage. Then I turned down one of the devastated streets.
This was different from the rest of the city. Two months after the flood, the smell was still there, stronger than it had been in my neighborhood only three weeks after. The thick, cracked mud covering every lawn formed oddly beautiful patterns. Signs hung at awkward angles. I saw the back of a truck balanced on top of a fence. Trees and bushes were brown. Some structures sat at odd angles, moved off their foundations by the waters. The brown water line was at least halfway up the doorway of every building. On an afternoon in a neighborhood where many people would be gathered on front porches, I saw three cars and maybe five people.
This was not the worst of the destruction. The worst was fenced off.
Looking back over the last nine weeks, things have changed quite a bit for me. The last piece I wrote was from Baton Rouge, during the worst days. It was surreal. In the bad moments, I felt like there was a huge donkey standing on my chest. I learned what it is like to want to throw up when you're not sick. For some reason I was squinting a lot; I was sure I could feel wrinkles forming. I read all news coming out of New Orleans, even though it depressed me even more. The low point came when water poured back into the Ninth Ward. There was no more damage to be done, but I just couldn't fathom more bad news.
The uncertainty was the hardest part. I did not know if or when I could go back, or what I would do if I did. Like many people, I didn't bother to shave for a while. Most days I camped out in a Starbucks in Baton Rouge, and ran into plenty of people I know, including a banker from New Orleans who was also unshaven and wore a coffee-stained t-shirt. We just didn't care. On the radio, there was talk of Red Cross waiting times, FEMA fatigue and of course post-traumatic stress disorder. We all had it.
There were good times, too. We joked about how much we were drinking, and how happy it made the restaurant workers in Baton Rouge. Ironically, the most fun I had in Baton Rouge was during Hurricane Rita. A bunch of us holed up in a hotel room with a couple of candles, a lifetime supply of beer and a video camera. Good thing none of us are running for public office.
But in Baton Rouge it hit me that I could not go back to New Orleans for a long time. It became clear that I could no longer develop the non-profit cultural institute I was working on. The festival I produce in Brazil would have to be postponed for lack on sponsorship. So I am starting over again. All of my possessions can fit into eight garbage bags and two suitcases. It is, in fact, liberating. When I left for New York, I also left the weight of the hurricane behind.
That's the end of my report, as it were. If you're still awake, well, I have more to say: Here are a few words on the future of New Orleans and the meaning of the hurricane as I see it: the city will come back, and to most visitors it will feel very much the same. There will be less crime, less poverty, and less inefficiency. There will also be less jazz, less tradition, and less business. Too many times, I heard a barely concealed giddiness in the voices of unscathed Uptowners who are just so thrilled that many or most of the city's poor (read: black) people have gone and won't return.
If that's true, our country stands to lose what I believe is America's single best ambassador to the world: the New Orleans brass band. New Orleans has consistently produced some of the most talented musicians and artists in the country--and for better or for worse, this was in large part because of the way the city was.
Sadly, I feel that this loss is inevitable. The damage was too widespread and too severe. People have now been away too long, and there is still too much uncertainty. Many have now found better jobs and better schools. One guy waiting outside the overcrowded Department of Motor Vehicles in Baker, La., summed it up: "I'm not going back to New Orleans. For what?" The woman standing next to him said, "I'm going back to see what I have left."
There is good news: New Orleans now has more good jobs than available workers. It looks like the State will take over the failing New Orleans public schools, finally rendering the incompetent School Board obsolete. There is hope of decent public education in Orleans Parish. But damn it, why did we wait until the city was wiped out to do that? Yes, you can fault the poorest New Orleanians for not demanding better conditions. But if you've never had a chance to leave New Orleans, how would you even know better conditions were possible? Far worse, in my opinion, are the upper- and middle-class New Orleanians--myself included--who knew better and never shouted loud enough.
Here is what I mean: when images of the desperation of New Orleans were beamed throughout the country and the world, many Americans were outraged not only at the slowness of the Feds, but also that such conditions could possibly exist in the United States. "I don't want to live in a country that allows this," they said. Many Americans just didn't know it was that bad. In New Orleans, we have known this for centuries, and have nothing to show for it.
None of us want to live in a country that allows something like Katrina to happen. We may very well have lost the soul of a great American city, and it was preventable. I think we might have all lost a bit of ourselves, too: this is America, and it did happen here. My hope is that the long-term legacy of the hurricane is that now there will be enough people who shout loud enough to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Tom Andre is New Orleans writer, now living in New York.
