The hardest button to button.
I finally did the trip back to New Orleans. Honestly, it was a nightmare. People told me that no matter what pictures and video I had seen, (and I had looked at everything I could find online and there was a lot), that I would still not be prepared for what I would see. And it was true.
I left Austin Thursday morning with a nine hour IPod car mix; traveling music to last me well into Baton Rouge. It was the first time I plugged the IPod into the sound system in the car and it worked fabulously, helping to speed me along. I got to uno and John's about 5:30 PM after a little stop at WFM for some goodies. Robert had opted for going to New Orleans directly, which made sense since he was coming from the northeast. So, I got up early on Friday morning and headed to New Orleans. All along I-10 there are cars that failed along the journey; perhaps 200 or so over the 70 miles. I got off of I-10 in Metarie and went to visit my store. It's opening in a very limited way; the building has been stripped and sanitized and a small portion of the center space has been isolated to make a sales floor about one fifth the size of the original space. The store smells fresh and clean, like a new store. The area around the center will be rebuilt over the next few months and the total area will be reopened in the spring.
After that, I drove into the city and finally to my house. After saying hello to Robert, I finally unlocked my front door and took a look. The ceilings hadn't fallen in on my side after all! And the power was on, the ceiling fans spinning. I'm not sure why the power was on considering the roof damage and everything in my house had been shut off before I left. Still, it was dry inside and things looked undamaged, although messy, but that's the way I left it. Three months of working on a new store opening and a month of gimping around with a broken shoulder on pain pills had left little time or energy for housekeeping. It was a depressing sight.
As I stood in the doorway, my first thought was "I don't want to live here anymore." A convenient emotion, since living there was no longer an option. I walked through the place and nothing really seemed damaged, but there was this smell, or really a complex combination of odors that was hard to fathom. The refridgerator gave off a strong stench and there were maggot eggs all over the outside. After passing the fridge and almost opening it by reflex, I quickly duck-taped the door shut. And there was something else in the air as well, a sort of sour and metallic taste on the tongue and a smell to match. Allthough there was no visible mold on the walls, the mold spores were there in abundance.
I drove out to Metarie again, went to Lowe's and bought a bunch of 55 gallon heavy duty trash bags, some packing boxes and bubble wrap and box tape and went back to the house and started to sort and bag stuff and drag it to the curb. I stopped about 4:30 PM and went off to find food. I drove around the uptown area and realized that there was almost nothing open and decided to head back out to Metarie to the SavaCenter, which I knew was open until at least six PM. Along the way, I started to get a serious headache accompanied by a high fever and I nearly threw up in the car. I finally got back to the hood and landed on Robert's couch. The fever finally left about two ayem. I woke up around six and felt amazingly O.K., so I had a little breakfast and went back to work. I had obviously had a reaction to the mold, so I was more carefull to wear gloves and not touch my face and to eat every three hours or so. I got through the rest of the work on the house without any more problems.
All in all, I threw out or gave away almost everything. Actually, it was hard to give things away; there really wasn't anyone to give it to. I left things in the house just as they were, a TV or two, the books and the shelves, the bed, the washer and dryer... I could have just left the front door open, it didn't really make any difference; there wasn't anyone around to steal anything. I saved some things that I like; some things that I've had for decades, but there wasn't all that much. It all fit into the Element with a little room to spare. I took a break on Sunday morning to go to coffee at Virgil's, (don't know when I'll be able to do that again), and went back to the house, finished packing stuff into boxes and loaded the car. After one last look, I locked the door. We said goodby to Sammy and Mike, who were still packing their truck and then drove off to Baton Rouge to spend the night at uno and John's.
Perhaps you were wondering about all the pictures of the city that I was going to post?
Well. If you want to see pics, go to nola.com, there are hundreds there. I just couldn't take many pics; it seemed like taking pictures of a gruesome car accident... and truly, the pictures just don't tell the story. You could sit in your chair and look at pictures of what New Orleans is now for eight hours straight and you still wouldn't have an idea of what it's truly like.
Below is a pic of Sammy trying to sort through some of his 22 years of collected stuff. It's taken from the street looking through the front door; he's in the second room.
This next pic is of the front of the house as I was getting ready to leave. The trash is piled up on the curb, but the pile would have been much bigger if they hadn't come by the day before with a Bobcat and a huge truck and carted off the first load. And most of the furniture is still inside. Sammy's standing there and just to his left, you can make out the spray painted cross on the house; the zero in the upper left means that there were no bodies found in the house.
The picture at the top of this entry shows the dead fridge's that dot every neighborhood. "TFC" stands for "tetroflourocarbons" I think, a clue for those who are trying to recycle this Everest of trash. The other writing is of unknown origin; we certainly didn't write it.
Let me try to put this in perspective...
Where my place was is considered a "good area with little damage" and by comparison to a lot of the city, it is. Ten to twenty blocks to the east of where I lived, the damage is fairly bad, and beyond that, the destruction is almost total for maybe twenty miles. Almost everything north of the city, between I-10 and the lake is severly damaged or totally destroyed. When you drive down I-10 east at night, the city and the French Quarter is mostly lit up, but to your left, it is totally dark; between I-10 and the lake, nothing. Uptown and the Garden District is another area that is considered "relatively undamaged". Still, there is little commercial activity since most of the stores were damaged and looted. And as you travel along the streets, some things look normal and then you see an old four story commercial building collapsed or a huge old mansion burned. You know, I didn't even go to the parts of the city that were "severely damaged"; I saw a little of that in Metarie. I didn't wan't to see more.
It's hard to say at any given moment, but maybe 35 or 40% of the city has electricity and gas everywhere. When you take a shower, the water burns your eyes because it is so heavily chlorinated. There always seems to be a smell of some sort where ever you go; sometimes is just there in the background, other times it's strong and offensive.
People are tired and stressed. Those that have a place to live and work are dealing with an enormous load. Nerves are frayed and you can feel it in the air, part of that background.
At a time when the politicians of the city should be rising to the ocassion, they seem to be sinking into the muck; fighting over the scraps and pandering to what they hope is left of their constituancies. The city is broke, the state is broke and there is almost no tax revenue coming in. Charity Hospital, the only hospital in the state right now that could possibly set up a "trauma one" center will be out of money by mid-December and if there is no influx of cash, they will cease operations. The next convention scheduled for New Orleans is for April 2006; the revenue lost from this last September until next April is probably about six billion dollars. Businesses have left the city; the tax burden is less in other places and the cost of energy is going to climb in order to pay for the rebuilding of the energy services. There aren't enough workers in the city to get everything done and there aren't enough places for them to live or the services to support them.
The list goes on and on. The problems for the city are incredibly complex and they won't be solved anytime soon. This disaster totally eclipses anything that any area of this country has ever had to deal with before and so far, the resources to do so are very thin on the ground.
I think that the city has to survive somehow and I think it will, it's just going to be a mess for so many years. It's very sad; this city that I loved for so long is so damaged right now... so why don't I want to be there to help rebuild it?
I lived in New Orleans for thirty years and many, well most of them were wonderful, but the last ten years or so haven't been the same. A large part of what I was in love with about the city has been gone for some time now; maybe in ten years or so, New Orleans will be a lot like the city I found when I first came to live there, but there's the rub. All those years have gone by, I don't have a decade left extra to wait for things to come around.
It's something that I've been feeling for a while now; you know it if you have been reading this journal over the years. It's time to push off and see what else there is.
durlx
I finally did the trip back to New Orleans. Honestly, it was a nightmare. People told me that no matter what pictures and video I had seen, (and I had looked at everything I could find online and there was a lot), that I would still not be prepared for what I would see. And it was true.
I left Austin Thursday morning with a nine hour IPod car mix; traveling music to last me well into Baton Rouge. It was the first time I plugged the IPod into the sound system in the car and it worked fabulously, helping to speed me along. I got to uno and John's about 5:30 PM after a little stop at WFM for some goodies. Robert had opted for going to New Orleans directly, which made sense since he was coming from the northeast. So, I got up early on Friday morning and headed to New Orleans. All along I-10 there are cars that failed along the journey; perhaps 200 or so over the 70 miles. I got off of I-10 in Metarie and went to visit my store. It's opening in a very limited way; the building has been stripped and sanitized and a small portion of the center space has been isolated to make a sales floor about one fifth the size of the original space. The store smells fresh and clean, like a new store. The area around the center will be rebuilt over the next few months and the total area will be reopened in the spring.
After that, I drove into the city and finally to my house. After saying hello to Robert, I finally unlocked my front door and took a look. The ceilings hadn't fallen in on my side after all! And the power was on, the ceiling fans spinning. I'm not sure why the power was on considering the roof damage and everything in my house had been shut off before I left. Still, it was dry inside and things looked undamaged, although messy, but that's the way I left it. Three months of working on a new store opening and a month of gimping around with a broken shoulder on pain pills had left little time or energy for housekeeping. It was a depressing sight.
As I stood in the doorway, my first thought was "I don't want to live here anymore." A convenient emotion, since living there was no longer an option. I walked through the place and nothing really seemed damaged, but there was this smell, or really a complex combination of odors that was hard to fathom. The refridgerator gave off a strong stench and there were maggot eggs all over the outside. After passing the fridge and almost opening it by reflex, I quickly duck-taped the door shut. And there was something else in the air as well, a sort of sour and metallic taste on the tongue and a smell to match. Allthough there was no visible mold on the walls, the mold spores were there in abundance.
I drove out to Metarie again, went to Lowe's and bought a bunch of 55 gallon heavy duty trash bags, some packing boxes and bubble wrap and box tape and went back to the house and started to sort and bag stuff and drag it to the curb. I stopped about 4:30 PM and went off to find food. I drove around the uptown area and realized that there was almost nothing open and decided to head back out to Metarie to the SavaCenter, which I knew was open until at least six PM. Along the way, I started to get a serious headache accompanied by a high fever and I nearly threw up in the car. I finally got back to the hood and landed on Robert's couch. The fever finally left about two ayem. I woke up around six and felt amazingly O.K., so I had a little breakfast and went back to work. I had obviously had a reaction to the mold, so I was more carefull to wear gloves and not touch my face and to eat every three hours or so. I got through the rest of the work on the house without any more problems.
All in all, I threw out or gave away almost everything. Actually, it was hard to give things away; there really wasn't anyone to give it to. I left things in the house just as they were, a TV or two, the books and the shelves, the bed, the washer and dryer... I could have just left the front door open, it didn't really make any difference; there wasn't anyone around to steal anything. I saved some things that I like; some things that I've had for decades, but there wasn't all that much. It all fit into the Element with a little room to spare. I took a break on Sunday morning to go to coffee at Virgil's, (don't know when I'll be able to do that again), and went back to the house, finished packing stuff into boxes and loaded the car. After one last look, I locked the door. We said goodby to Sammy and Mike, who were still packing their truck and then drove off to Baton Rouge to spend the night at uno and John's.
Perhaps you were wondering about all the pictures of the city that I was going to post?
Well. If you want to see pics, go to nola.com, there are hundreds there. I just couldn't take many pics; it seemed like taking pictures of a gruesome car accident... and truly, the pictures just don't tell the story. You could sit in your chair and look at pictures of what New Orleans is now for eight hours straight and you still wouldn't have an idea of what it's truly like.
Below is a pic of Sammy trying to sort through some of his 22 years of collected stuff. It's taken from the street looking through the front door; he's in the second room.
This next pic is of the front of the house as I was getting ready to leave. The trash is piled up on the curb, but the pile would have been much bigger if they hadn't come by the day before with a Bobcat and a huge truck and carted off the first load. And most of the furniture is still inside. Sammy's standing there and just to his left, you can make out the spray painted cross on the house; the zero in the upper left means that there were no bodies found in the house.
The picture at the top of this entry shows the dead fridge's that dot every neighborhood. "TFC" stands for "tetroflourocarbons" I think, a clue for those who are trying to recycle this Everest of trash. The other writing is of unknown origin; we certainly didn't write it.
Let me try to put this in perspective...
Where my place was is considered a "good area with little damage" and by comparison to a lot of the city, it is. Ten to twenty blocks to the east of where I lived, the damage is fairly bad, and beyond that, the destruction is almost total for maybe twenty miles. Almost everything north of the city, between I-10 and the lake is severly damaged or totally destroyed. When you drive down I-10 east at night, the city and the French Quarter is mostly lit up, but to your left, it is totally dark; between I-10 and the lake, nothing. Uptown and the Garden District is another area that is considered "relatively undamaged". Still, there is little commercial activity since most of the stores were damaged and looted. And as you travel along the streets, some things look normal and then you see an old four story commercial building collapsed or a huge old mansion burned. You know, I didn't even go to the parts of the city that were "severely damaged"; I saw a little of that in Metarie. I didn't wan't to see more.
It's hard to say at any given moment, but maybe 35 or 40% of the city has electricity and gas everywhere. When you take a shower, the water burns your eyes because it is so heavily chlorinated. There always seems to be a smell of some sort where ever you go; sometimes is just there in the background, other times it's strong and offensive.
People are tired and stressed. Those that have a place to live and work are dealing with an enormous load. Nerves are frayed and you can feel it in the air, part of that background.
At a time when the politicians of the city should be rising to the ocassion, they seem to be sinking into the muck; fighting over the scraps and pandering to what they hope is left of their constituancies. The city is broke, the state is broke and there is almost no tax revenue coming in. Charity Hospital, the only hospital in the state right now that could possibly set up a "trauma one" center will be out of money by mid-December and if there is no influx of cash, they will cease operations. The next convention scheduled for New Orleans is for April 2006; the revenue lost from this last September until next April is probably about six billion dollars. Businesses have left the city; the tax burden is less in other places and the cost of energy is going to climb in order to pay for the rebuilding of the energy services. There aren't enough workers in the city to get everything done and there aren't enough places for them to live or the services to support them.
The list goes on and on. The problems for the city are incredibly complex and they won't be solved anytime soon. This disaster totally eclipses anything that any area of this country has ever had to deal with before and so far, the resources to do so are very thin on the ground.
I think that the city has to survive somehow and I think it will, it's just going to be a mess for so many years. It's very sad; this city that I loved for so long is so damaged right now... so why don't I want to be there to help rebuild it?
I lived in New Orleans for thirty years and many, well most of them were wonderful, but the last ten years or so haven't been the same. A large part of what I was in love with about the city has been gone for some time now; maybe in ten years or so, New Orleans will be a lot like the city I found when I first came to live there, but there's the rub. All those years have gone by, I don't have a decade left extra to wait for things to come around.
It's something that I've been feeling for a while now; you know it if you have been reading this journal over the years. It's time to push off and see what else there is.
durlx
posted by durlx at 11/02/2005 11:10:00 PM
2 Comments:
Alex told me this was a must-read entry - and it was. So so sad. The city seems like a long lost friend who has been hooked up to life support and is just languishing with no hope of every regaining their full abilities again. Of all the accounts I have poured over on the various blogs and websites, this one was the most vivid in conveying what has really happened to what was one of the greatest cities - especially one that always was a friend to our community.
I can't get the final scene of The Shining out of my mind - where Jack Nicholson returns to the ghostly ballroom and sees himself in the photo. Now the city is empty just like the old Overlook hotel - but I can't help but think if I stood in the street outside the Pub, Good Friends, and Lafittes - I could still hear the merriment of like-minded voices and laughter that filled the city for so many years. It's a haunting loss.
I know that in your heart, mind, and soul you have made the decision not to go back to NOLA. However, if you were wavering in the least, I would encourage you to do just that. After reading your journal for several years, I have come to see that you are just the kind of person NOLA needs to rebuild herself. Even if you could not contribute anything physical to the rebirth, your spirit would strengthen her.
Good luck in your new life's adventures.
The Regal Beagle
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