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| Thursday, October 27, 2005 |
Second Line on Sunset. Tonight is the big fundraiser concert at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, billed as "a concert for the musicians of Louisiana and their families." I don't think it's sold out, so if you're in the area and have the time and the dough, show up at 7 and catch this lineup:
The Neville Brothers
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
Jon Cleary & the Absolute Monster Gentlemen
Walter "Wolfman" Washington
Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews
Kermit Ruffins
Sammie "Big Sam" Williams
... and anyone else who might show up. I think they're touring with this lineup, so keep your eyes open.
Eddie Bo in L.A. It was a great show last Saturday, albeit a too-short one.
The opening act was brilliant, Lake Charles-born blues singer Mickey Champion, who just tore it up from the stage to the bar and just about everywhere in between. I've gotta go see her gigs at Babe's and Ricky's.
The second act was a local funk-jazz band called Orgone, who were pretty good and who ended up backing Eddie later on, but they played too long. Eddie didn't go on until midnight, after we expected him to go on at 10:30, and consequently he only played for about 70 minutes. (Hey, he's old and tires out.)
To look at Eddie Bo you'd never think that he'd just experienced a major loss for the third time. The first was Hurricane Betsy, the second was a fire in 1998 (losing just about everything both timse), and now Katrina, in which he lost his business (the Check Your Bucket Café, which had only been open barely more than two years. His spirits were high, and he played a terrific set of his own material (including his cafés namesake song) and a host of New Orleans classics, from "Big Chief" to songs by the Meters and Fats Domino. I was having too much fun to keep a set list, but I did manage a few pictures:
(Damn, I hope I look that good when I'm 75.)
Usually I'm too shy to ask for a picture like the one above, but a girl handed me her camera and asked me to take a picture of her with Mr. Eddie, so I asked her to reciprocate.
He's playing his heart out, and that makes me feel good for him and for New Orleans. We might not see the Check Your Bucket Café again anytime soon (if ever), but we most certainly haven't lost the great Eddie Bo.
Quote of the day. From Paul Begala, about the Harriet Miers nomination withdrawal and everything else it represents (via dKos):
Mr. Bush would do well to augment his current staff, a C-Team if ever there was one, with some stronger characters. But to read the Bush-Miers correspondence is to gain a disturbing insight into Mr. Bush's personality: he likes having his ass kissed. Ms. Miers' cards and letters to the then-Governor of Texas belong in the Brown-Nosers Hall of Fame. You can be sure the younger and less experienced Bush White House aides are even more obsequious. The last thing this President wants is the first thing he needs: someone to slap his spoiled, pampered, trust-funded, plutocratic, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life cheek and make him face the reality of his foul-ups.
That will, of course, never happen, unless that slap is an impeachment. Even then, he'd undoubtedly continue claiming he's never made a mistake, even as he's run out of town on a rail.
Quote of the day, part deux. From Mary, who ran into a friend of hers today and shares this anecdote:
"How are you?" I asked.
"Fine," she said. "Just set up a splendid Halloween display on my front porch with one of those giant inflatable spiders with a Bush head affixed to its front. He is spinning a web of lies over my front door. Now I'm too scared to go home."
Boooooooo! It is indeed scary, kids.
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| Tuesday, October 25, 2005 |
Cocktail of the day. Wes found this one via the Random Recipe Generator on CocktailDB, and we loved it. Hate the name, love the drink.
The Sir Ridgeway Knight Cocktail
3/4 ounce brandy.
3/4 ounce Cointreau.
3/4 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
2 dashes Angostura Bitters.Shake with ice and strain; no garnish.
I think we'll just call this one the Ridgeway for short.
Photo of the day. Yeah, I know sunsets are easy, but the timing was right for this one. This was taken right after my arrival in New Orleans post-Katrina; I drove up to my uncle's house on the North Shore to meet my folks. He lives about 50 feet from the lake, and I caught this as his young neighbor walked by along the seawall with her dog.
I drove back down the Causeway the next morning, and the views got considerably less pretty.
Mandina's news. From the Baton Rouge Business Report (Thanks, Brian!):
Mandina's, the popular and moderately priced New Orleans Creole restaurant on Canal near Carrollton, has signed a lease to occupy the one-time Chalet Brandt building at Jefferson and Old Hammond highways. Most recently, the building was home to San Marco restaurant, but that operation was closed several weeks ago. Property-owner Donnie Jarreau says Mandina's New Orleans location suffered significant damage during Katrina, and the family plans to make Baton Rouge its home base for a year or more. The Baton Rouge space seats over 100, and Mandina's is working on some renovations to make it more casual. It should be open by Thanksgiving. Mandina's is the first big-name New Orleans restaurant to sign in Baton Rouge since Katrina. French Quarter institution Galatoire's is still exploring its options here.
Well, it's better than nothing, for the Mandina family and for us as well. From what that insurance adjuster was telling me, the Mandina's space was a horrible mess. This way the family gets an income and we get their food, which I would gladly drive to Baton Rouge to eat. So far that'd be the only reason for me to be there, as the last of my family who took refuge in Baton Rouge moved back home to New Orleans this week (yay!).
That exact address is 7655 Old Hammond Hwy., Baton Rouge, LA 70812, about a mile north of the I-10/I-12 split and a little under 2 miles west of Airline Hwy. I'll be there on my Christmas visit.
The heartbreak continues. I guess I didn't post this as the lead because I felt we needed a drink first. As bad as our own experiences were, and as bad as they are for tens of thousands of people, you hear stories like this and it makes your head want to explode. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to truly get over the loss to the city of New Orleans, particularly when reading about people like Dr. Michael White, one of my favorite jazz musiciansa.
Jazz clarinetist Michael White returned to his Gentilly home on Friday for first time since Hurricane Katrina and confronted a desolate tableau: beige bricks stained and striped by 6 feet of water; a front door branded with the bright orange and red marks of search teams; dead grass and demolished trees.
"It reminds me of one of those 'Twilight Zone' episodes," White said as he approached the door, "where I'll go in and find my own body."
Instead, he found his body of work, his valuable jazz artifacts and his personal treasures -- now decimated by water and mold.
For White, jazz is life; his instruments, family. He leads the traditional Original Liberty Jazz Band and is a respected scholar of New Orleans music and culture. He occupied an endowed chair at Xavier University, published meticulously researched articles and biographies, and lectured on topics ranging from Congo Square to the early history of New Orleans brass bands.
He lived alone in the 5200 block of Pratt Street, surrounded by jazz music, books and artifacts. The night before Katrina struck, he fled to Houston with several vintage instruments, among them the model for the giant clarinet mural outside the downtown Holiday Inn.
But he left behind 40 others, including a clarinet owned by King Oliver sideman Paul Barnes.
[...] Picking through debris in the ruins of his house, he found little to salvage. Outfitted with a mask and green rubber gloves, he stepped gingerly over a pile of jazz magazines just inside the door, now reduced to pulp. He spotted the remains of a new two-volume encyclopedia documenting the Harlem jazz renaissance, to which he contributed five biographies.
To the right hung a framed smudge, what was once a rare 1960s Bob Coke photograph of jazz bassist "Papa" John Joseph, a distant relative of White's. Joseph died of a heart attack onstage at Preservation Hall in 1965, reportedly after performing "When the Saints Go Marching In."
"No matter what had happened during the day, I'd look at that picture, and it gave me strength," White said. "It was the most beautiful picture I'd seen of Papa John. Wherever you went in the room, those eyes followed you. There was wisdom, but also truth."
Inside a waterlogged closet lay White's collection of vintage wooden instruments. He couldn't open the warped door.
"I don't know if I want to," he said. "That would be like (finding) relatives."
His casualties included more than 4,000 CDs and LPs. And there were as many books and a vast trove of research material, including primary source documents, voluminous notes and taped interviews with musicians. He had original sheet music from Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong.
Also gone are a set of banjo strings played by legendary jazz raconteur Danny Barker; a medal appointing White to the Chevalier rank in the French Order of Arts and Letters; snapshots with the late jazz legend Kid Thomas Valentine and President Clinton; and a 1993 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival poster autographed by artist John Scott.
Accompanying him Friday were a cameraman and writer Jason Berry, who is directing a documentary about jazz funerals that features White. Berry marveled at the scale of the loss, both to White personally and to jazz scholarship in general.
"Not that many people carry the history and culture like Michael does," Berry said. "It's the way Louis Armstrong did, the way Danny Barker did, the way Wynton Marsalis does. They are those rare players who rise to another plateau and become more than musicians. That's why it's so heartbreaking to see his loss."
Berry carted soggy artifacts to the porch: a painting of legendary clarinetist George Lewis, one of White's heroes. A sketch from Africa. Framed album artwork from Bunk Johnson's "Brass and Dance Band" and the Young Tuxedo Brass Band's "Jazz Begins."
"Michael, I think some of this can be salvaged."
"At this point," White said, "I'm trying to figure out if I can be salvaged."
I can't stand it. I can't bear to think about it. And it wasn't direct damage from the passing of the fucking hurricane itself, it was the failure of the levees -- their bad design and poor maintenance.
Musical loss. This was only an tiny fraction of the musical loss experienced by Dr. Michael, but it was still sad to see, as I walked into my folks' living room for the first time:
That's what five feet of water does to an upright piano. Unsurprisingly, we couldn't get a single key to move.
Fats lost a white grand piano, along with everything else.
Sister Rosa. Rosa Parks, 1913-2005.
December 1, 1955,
Our freedom movement came alive.
And because of Sister Rosa you know,
We don't ride on the back of the bus no more.Sister Rosa Parks was tired one day
After a hard day on her job.
When all she wanted was a well deserved rest,
Not a scene from an angry mob.A bus driver said, "Lady, you got to get up
'Cause a white person wants that seat."
But Miss Rosa said, "No, not no more.
I'm gonna sit here and rest my feet."Chorus
Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark,
That started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.
Thank you Miss Rosa you are the spark,
That started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.Now, the police came without fail
And took Sister Rosa off to jail.
And 14 dollars was her fine,
Brother Martin Luther King
Knew it was our time.The people of Montgomery sit down to talk
It was decided all God's children should walk
Until segregation was brought to its knees
And we obtain freedom and equality, yeahChorus
So we dedicate this song to thee
for being the symbol of our dignity.
Thank you, Sister Rosa.("Sister Rosa", by the Neville Brothers, from the album Yellow Moon)
Death to Mr. Go. It's the headline in the Times-Picayune today ... there's already talk of filling in, blocking or at least floodgating "Mr. GO", a.k.a. the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, which was the direct cause of the flooding of my parents' house, their neighborhood, their entire ZIP Code, in fact, as well as the rest of New Orleans East and St. Bernard Parish. All so that one ship a week can have a shorter journey from the river to the gulf. As for those ships, I say screw 'em. Fill the damned thing in so that we don't have to rebuild huge swaths of our city and greater metro area again.
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| Saturday, October 22, 2005 |
The Saturn Bar. 3067 St. Claude Avenue at Clouet Street, in the Bywater. If you've been there, you don't need to have me talk about it, other than to say that you know how completely funky and unique it is. If you haven't been there ... well, if you're in New Orleans just go there and have a drink. (But nothing too fancy.)
A friend of mine emailed me and asked me if I knew how the bar had fared. In fact, I snapped a picture of it on October 11:
It appears to be untouched. Amazingly, it didn't even lose its sign, as what seems like 99% of businesses in New Orleans did. I have no idea what Neil's plans are for reopening, but this article said something about Neil just waiting for his customers and neighbors to return. That's a cause for celebration.
There's fantastic interview (.pdf file) with the bar's owner O'Neil Broyard that was done earlier this year by the Southern Foodways Alliance's Oral History Project (which has an entire section on bartenders of New Orleans); here's an excerpt:
Q: Do you get many tourists over this way?
Broyard: Oh, yeah, yeah. I get a lot of tourists from all over.
Q: Yeah? How do they hear about you?
Broyard: Well, it's on the Internet. You know, travel guides and stuff like that. Word of mouth. [Sniffs] New York--had some people in from New York the other day. Atlanta, Chicago, Frisco, uh, [short pause] no. I think it was Wisconsin. Colorado. All over the continent. Well, you know, you ask everybody, you can tell a tourist when they come inthat they--they're not regulars. [Laughs]
Q: [Laughs] Yeah. You have a lot of regulars?
Broyard: No, not as many as I used to. They--it--well, you've got to look at it this way. I don't open up until four o'clock in the evening. Now years ago, I used to open at nine--nine o'clock in the morning. We still got--the old-timers still living in the neighborhood before used to come wait for you to open up in the morning. They come over there, they'd sit down and play a little Knock Rummy [card game] or something all day long, you know, to pass the time away. They all died or moved off, when everybody moved out of the neighborhood. So you don't have too many regulars.
Q: What did those regulars like to drink?
Broyard: Mostly beer. Ah, you get to the college kids and all that come in and want--they get a beer with a straight shot or something. "I want Jagermeister," or something like that, which I don't handle anymore. Because they get too stupid on that stuff. You know, they want to throw their glasses up against the wall and all that stuff, you know. [Clears throat] And I just don't put up with it. I just don't. If they say, "Jägermeister," I say, "I don't have any." [They'll say,] "Well, what you got? Can you make a B-51?" I say I don't make none of that stuff. They want the layers, you know?
Q: Yeah, for shots?
Broyard: Oh, what the hell. Like the--I can't even think of half the stuff I have over there to make it but, uh, I quit handling it. Irish--Irish cream--what the--Bailey's Irish Cream, you know? They used to order three layers, you know, in this shot.
Q: Do you mix many cocktails?
Broyard: Oh, yeah, a few. Yeah. The regular ones. You know, I make like a Bloody Mary or a Whiskey Sour, uh, Tequila Sunrise or vodka orange juice, you know. Uh, [if they] want cranberry juice, grapefruit juice, you know. Little Martinis once in a while. Manhattans, you know. Something plain and simple like that. All them shake drinks and all that stuff like that. Phew. I used to make the--like a, uh, Black Russian, you know, with the milk, the vodka, and the Kahlua. I tell them you got to go Uptown if you want a fancy drink.
Q: Yeah? [Laughs]
Broyard: [Laughs]
Q: How do you think times have changed? Maybe you did some more of that a couple decades ago? Did some more cocktails or, no?
Broyard: Ah, well you get different people, baby. You know, people come in and ask youwant a, uh, uh, what the hell are those--about four drinks--what--what do you call--a sting--not a Stinger. A Long Island Iced Tea. You know, you got to put your white rum, white gin, and vodka and all that stuff in it, you know. I make that once in a while. Got to have a tall glass and all that shit, you know. But, uh, I--I like everything plain and simple. You know, come in--like I mean, like--"What kind of beers do you have here?" Just like asking me, "What kind of cigarettes do you have?" I said, "What kind do you smoke?" And see, he was going to tell me that--that one brand. And me naming all fifteen, twenty brands, you know?
Q: Right.
Broyard: Same thing with the beer. I got thirty-five, forty beers. You want to know what kind of beers we have? I say, "What kind do you normally drink? You just starting to drink or what?"
Q: [Laughing]
Broyard: [Laughing] You know? You had to drink something somewhere.
Q: What do you think about those fancy drinks that they serve down in the Quarter?
Broyard: It's a gimmick to get-- that's a -- that's a drawing card, that's all. You like the, the Hand Grenade, you know? Now they got four different places -- it's all one clique, you know? [Sniffs]
Q: Well, people come to New Orleans to drink.
Broyard: Oh, I hear they're partiers. They stay open all night, but I'll close it down. But I don't like to stay open all night.
Q: Do you know about the history of cocktails in New Orleans and like Southern Comfort being a ... liquor that came from here and that kind of history?
Broyard: Southern Comfort? I don't know that it came from here. I wouldn't know, to be honest with you. The only-- the only thing I know of that came [from] here, like a, uh-- [short pause] oh, that new rum they got out, New Orleans rum. I forget the name of it. The guys who make it here. God, they used to have-- Absinthe, I believe, was from here, but they quit making that because it had opium in it. Uh, like the Sazerac come from the, uh, [coughs] I can't even think of the bar's name right now. Uh, uptown there. I don't know, shit.
Q: [Laughs]
Broyard: They make them fancy drinks with the--like you go to Pat O'Brien's, you get the Hurricane. Come to Saturn Bar, you get what you like. [Laughs]
Yeah you rite.
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| Friday, October 21, 2005 |
Eddie Bo tonight in L.A.! New Orleans funk and R&B legend Eddie Bo appears tonight with an eight-piece band at Little Pedro's in downtown Los Angeles, tonight and tomorrow at 9pm.
It would be an understatement to say that this is not to be missed.
Check your bucket!
WWOZ back up! As was mentioned in the comments the other day, New Orleans' own WWOZ, the greatest radio station in the world, is now broadcasting in New Orleans at 90.7 FM once again, from temporary facilities in Baton Rouge.
Mandina's. Sixty-two inches of water.
While I was taking pictures I talked to the flood insurance adjuster, who was waiting for Mr. Mandina to come by. I asked if he knew whether Mr. Mandina wanted to clean up and reopen soon, and he said, "He don't want to." My heart sank.
Then he said, "Well, by that I mean that he wants to tear the building down and build another structure, but I don't think that's necessary." He said he was going to try to talk him into cleaning up and renovating the existing structure, which is historic (although perhaps not officially so). I really hope he does, and I really hope we see this local institution reopen.
Second line in the Quarter. When I was home last week my friends Michael and Louise told me that on Sunday there'd be a second line parade (well, minus the actual funeral) in the Quarter to celebrate people's return and the beginning of the city's recovery. There was a story on NPR about it, with video that includes my aforementioned friends, self-described as "the extraordinarily happy girl in the white tutu and the grinning idiot in the red hat." Unfortunately, that day I was spending 12 hours travelling back to Los Angeles, so I had to miss the parade. Had I been there, I'd have been the extraordinarily happy idiot in the Panama hat.
Michael said,
This was a very, very cool parade. It wasn't meant to be a funeral for Katrina, it just took that turn because a few of us decided to bring out floats from the Krewe du Vieux parade, one of which was a funeral hearse. I'd estimate that one in four people you see in the video lost their house, and this was a major blow-off of steam for them and for all of us. There were misty eyes all around. There was no route for the parade; we left that to the police car who was escorting us through the Quarter. The organizer had been feeding the 1st District NOPD for weeks, so we had carte blanche.
From the video I recognized a few other people in the crowd, including Michael and Louise's friend John, whom I had met at Molly's on the Market a few days earlier, plus trombonist Craig Klein from Bonerama and the New Orleans Nightcrawlers. I didn't see him in the video, but according to the story local food writer Ian McNulty was there too. I'm really sorry I missed it.
The refrigerator graveyard. It's at the corner of Read and Almonaster, and I think that working there would have to be close to the top of the list of jobs I don't want.
The Camellia Grill. Undamaged but still boarded up as of October 10.
I can't imagine them not reopening, but I'd bet that they lost most of their staff. I fear that their waiters and cooks tended to live in neighborhoods that flooded.
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| Wednesday, October 19, 2005 |
New Orleans is alive. It's badly, badly wounded, and there are vast swaths of the city that are still dark and deserted.
But slowly, day by day, the city grows by a handful of people at a time. When I arrived home on the 8th, there were far fewer people than when I left on the 16th.
My first trip into the living parts of the city was on Monday the 10th. Some of it encouraged me. Lots of it depressed me. That said, we shouldn't lose hope, because that's all we have. That, plus a living, vibrant city that at the moment has retreated to roughly its 1878 borders.
I thought I'd write a long piece about my impressions once I got back, but I'm feeling oddly tapped out. Maybe later. In the meantime, I'll post some pictures from around the city, the good and the bad.
The bad: a wrecked house on St. Claude Ave. in the Bywater
The good: the Maple Leaf Bar reopened even before they had power;
the neon, A/C and beer coolers were running off a generator
Café du Monde reopened today! This morning, at 6am, after more than six weeks. It was the longest hiatus in 143 years, but it was a blessing in disguise. We might have needed them, but they took the six-week closure as an opportunity to make many renovations and improvements to their facilities.
Not a moment too soon, either. It was profoundly weird to see CdM looking like this:
If you're anywhere near the city, go there and have some coffee 'n doughnuts. Make sure to get plenty of powdered sugar on your pants. (Wear dark pants, too.)
Angelo Brocato's. Five feet of water. Someone on NOLA.com said today that "the contractors start this week, but they anticipate it taking a year before they reopen. I get weepy when I think of lemon ice..."
The encouraging thing is that they're at work, and they're reopening, no matter how long it takes. We've been warned that our short-term rebuilding will take 1-5 years, and long-term up to 30. I want to see the city progress, repopulate and rebuild as soon as possible, but I also want to have the patience to make sure it's done right.
News about Galatoire's. From New Orleans City Business:
New Orleans restaurant Galatoire's is opening in Baton Rouge, according to the Baton Rouge Business Report.
It will open on Perkins Road near Highland Road and Interstate 10 in mid-November at the location of the Caspian Grill, said building owner Cyrus Bonakchi. Galatoire's officials signed a lease this week for 4,500 square feet and will expand to 7,000 square feet with the construction of more space.
Melvin Rodrigue of Galatoire's did not immediately return phone calls. The BRBP reports the restaurant will be named Galatoire's Bistro Baton Rouge.
This is the first time I've heard anything solid about this since it was first mentioned. The idea was that the management would keep the staff together, which is a good idea. I hope they can provide some housing too, because I know some of the staff will need it. John Fontenot, who was always our waiter at Galatiore's, lived in Chalmette, and there ain't no Chalmette anymore (not yet, at least).
Commander's Palace. I know what it means, too. We'll be waiting, y'all. (In fact, I think I'll drive to Vegas in a couple of weekends to practice by dining at the Commander's there.)
I held my camera up above the curtains and took that last shot of the interior, which appeared to be so bizarrely perfect that I almost expected diners to stream in and waiters to rush by bearing huge trays of 25¢ Martinis, Sazeracs, crab cakes, Tasso Shrimp Henican and Bread Pudding Soufflé.
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| Monday, October 17, 2005 |
Home from home. I'm back as of late last night, tired and now busy at work. Posting will resume soon. (My access to the internetssss was very limited while I was in N.O.)
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| Monday, October 10, 2005 |
Home to New Orleans, Day 1. Sorry, I had meant to write this up yesterday (Sunday). It was a busy day -- I was pretty exhausted and got into the bathtub around 11:30pm, and promptly fell asleep in the tub. I woke up in a tubful of cold water at 2:15am, and crawled into bed after a perfunctory drying-off and decided that weblog posting would have to wait.
No pictures yet either, because I'm stuck on a dialup connection in a broadbandless house while I'm here ... stone knives and bearskins!
The flight over was perfect, as perfect as a flight can be when it involves a connection in Denver instead of a nice now-nonexistent nonstop. The people at United seemed to be the polar opposite of how Mary described Continental -- efficient, timely, friendly, and the crew on the second leg of the flight from DEN to MSY seemed really fired up to be going to New Orleans, and even thanked everyone who was going there to help out. Fully 1/3 of the sardine-full flight consisted of people from the Portland Water Works, who were all going down to help fix the sewers and pipes; one guy told me he'd be there until Thanksgiving.
First impressions when I landed -- eerily quiet, still. A knot of people at the security area exit at the end of the concourse, waiting to greet people, and a few uniformed National Guardsmen walking around (weird). Went down to baggage claim, where the people from my flight were crowded around the carousel ... and other than that, the entire baggage claim area was deserted.
While we were waiting for luggage I walked over to the car rental counters, on the off chance that I might be able to make my arrangements while my bags were being unloaded. Deserted ... except for one lonely looking woman at the Enterprise counter. Fortunately, they're the ones that had my reservation, and she got me squared away. She asked me if I had made my reservation before Katrina, and I said, no, around the 8th of September or so. She was astonished, as she said they had been pretty much completely sold out since operations had resumed, and that I was "incredibly lucky" to have a car. She lives in River Ridge, and her apartment was unscathed.
The van service was down to one instead of two, and just my luck, the driver happened to be there waiting for me, surprised not only that I had a car but that there was someone working in the terminal. He was a hefty Yat who lived in Metairie and who had minor damage, but whose daughter's family lived in St. Bernard. They're okay, but ... well, 'nuff said.
Once we got to the Enterprise office on Airline Highway the boy who rented me the car to me handed me the keys to a crappy little Kia that looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in a month ... well, because it hadn't. Short-staffed, they said. "Oh, one more thing," he said. "It's only got a quarter of a tank of gas. We don't have the staff to go gas 'em up, so don't bother filling the tank when you bring it back."
"Um ... okay. Where can I get some gas around here?"
"Oh, no problem. Just go down Williams a couple of lights, and there are plenty of gas stations."
Yep, there sure were. There were plenty of closed gas stations, and plenty of gas stations that were out of gas. It took me 45 minutes to get my tank filled, which I was willing to do because I was unwilling to run out of gas on the Causeway.
Next impressions ... there is no signage, pretty much anywhere. It's all blown down, and stores are resorting to sheets of plywood with their business name spray-painted on it. Tree limbs down everywhere, and piles of debris in front of building after building. Hardly anything open, even in East Jefferson.
Mom and Dad are in a really nice little rental house in Mandeville that was impossible to find, according to the absurd directions that Mapquest gave me. I swear, if I had followed that I would have ended up in Peoria, Illinois. We met at my uncle's house on the lake first, got some nice pictures and followed them in. It's a nice little place, in a nice subdivision that has a Mandeville address but is actually outside the city limits, and gets its police and fire from St. Tammany Parish rather than the city. It seems rather Stepfordly organized, with lots of "activities" and "organizations" for the residents to join, but that's ignorable for the time they'll be here, which will be until Christmas at the longest. Mom made a lovely dinner of perfectly roasted tenderloin of PIG!, marinated in tawny port, and with Creole-seasoned green beans and baked sweet potatoes, finished off by a plate of brownies that Granny had bought at the church bake sale earlier in the day. We love church bake sales.
Next day we suited up in throwaway clothes, in my case some of my old Fat Clothes that I had missed when I was rounding up stuff for the clothing drive, and off across the Causeway we went, through Jefferson and into Orleans. Dad took a swing down the Pontchartrain Expressway instead of going I-610, so that I could get a first look at the city. Superdome depressingly just as I expected, a lot of life on Canal Street, historic cemeteries looking more or less okay ... and the further east we got, the more everything began to deteriorate.
As I passed the Chef Menteur exit, heading toward Morrison and Crowder, it just got worse and worse. Massive destruction of apartment buildings along the interstate, waterlines on the sides of houses looking higher and higher. My iPod at that moment cued up Leigh "Little Queenie" Harris singing, "I'm Going to Paint This Town Blue", and ... boy, that girl knows how to get the waterworks flowing.
By the time I got to Read, passing the now-deserted Lake Forest Plaza (except for what looked like a Red Cross service tent in the northern part of the parking lot), it was actually scary. Not a soul around, no traffic on Read except for a couple of National Guard humvees. No power, no traffic lights. Some traffic lights hanging from a wire, dangling from their stanchions. Plaza parking lot empty except for two cars that had been left there and from the water marks on the windows were completely submerged. I took a left onto Lake Forest and I could see the water level marks on the trees, the destroyed medical clinic on the left side, and the ruined houses. Left again onto Wright Road, their street, and the entrance to Lake Forest Estates. Debris everywhere, advertising signs pounded into the earth bearing ads for disaster recovery services, mold remediation, debris hauling, etc.
Some of the houses on their street got hit really badly by the wind -- destroyed roofs, smashed windows, uprooted trees everywhere. Many houses had spray-painted symbols on them, but not all -- apparently the Guard were initially only checking houses that still had cars in the driveway.
Then, ours. One old oak tree snapped in half and completely blocked the driveway, so we had to park in the neighbors' driveway. Fences completely down, greenhouse blown halfway over, a giant crybaby tree in the back uprooted and on its side. Other than that the house itself didn't *look* too bad from the outside ... until you saw the water line.
Y'all all saw the pictures from Wednesday and if you can believe it, the mold has gotten about fifty times worse since then. Dad had opened the windows to air the place out, so some of the wet and slime had dried up somewhat, but the mold seems to have thrived on some more fresh air and were beginning to establish cities, organize nations and make art. There was also almost a visible cloud of spores in the air. In fact, "mold spores" are now my two least favorite words in the English language.
The smell had gotten somewhat better since Wednesday, though, which is hard to believe, because it was AWFUL. You couldn't last thirty seconds in there without a breathing mask (and yes, the old Vicks-Vapo-Rub-under-the-nose trick works really well, recommended by my sister the nurse, who uses it all the time when dealing with "body smells" at work). It's not just the smell, it's the toxicity. If you breathe the air inside the house for more than half a minute, your nose, mouth, chest and all breathing passages start to itch and burn.
One of the things I was hoping to rescue was the BOSE Wave Music System that my dad won in a contest a few months ago. I figured it would have survived, because it was way up high on top of the old stereo speaker and that speaker was on top of Dad's stereo cabinet, which is solid plywood and 2x4s and 3/4" solid walnut front paneling, and is 4 feet high and 9 feet wide and weighs about a thousand pounds, so big and heavy and solid that I just knew that sucker wouldn't have moved an inch.
It had moved five feet, upended and was laying on its back, front facing up. The BOSE radio was buried in the muck, and when I picked it up and shook it, it sloshed. Also buried in the muck next to the stereo cabinet was, among other things, "Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens: The Big Ol' Box of New Orleans." Fortunately I had anticipated this, got them another one and brought it along. (I must confess that I snuck the book out of the new box set and swapped it for the book in our old box set, so that now Wesly and I have a copy of the book that actually has Mary's credit in it. Yay!)
We managed to save a lot more pictures this time, shoeboxes of stuff that was slightly damp and musty-smelling but not wet and ruined, including a treasure trove of pictures (one of which looked like a tintype) from my paternal grandmother's family, the Caseys (and the Murrays and the Ryans and the O'Neills), some of which were dated as far back as 1887. We dug through slimy muck under Granny's bed and in the locker looking for a list of things she had given us, including an old WWII-era metal box that had lots of her important papers inside (the box was rusty, but the papers inside were DRY), some of her jewelry (some of which we found, some of which we didn't), lots more pictures, family tree documents from both sides of the family, lots of china and crystal, and, amazingly enough, the gift card from Dakota restaurant (sister restaurant of Cuvée) that I had given Mom and Dad last Christmas. We crowbarred the front off their upended chest of drawers in their bedroom, and rummaged through rotten, moldy papers and stuff and bang, there it was, covered in muck and slime. It was one of those plastic credit card-style gift cards, so after a bath in bleach water, a dose of spray cleaner and a good wipe and it looks as good as new. We'll be redeeming it at Dakota on Saturday when we all go there to celebrate Mom's birthday, and we'll make sure to tell them where it came from.
Dad and I also went up into the attic to see what we could find, and just as before there were tons and tons and tons and tons of stuff. Most of it will be left behind, but we retrieved the family silver and the gold orchid jewelry that Dad had made for Mom, and is unique in the entire world. (Briefly, he made it the same way that cast gold teeth and fillings used to be made -- he set an orchid flower in base, placed a ring mold around it and slowly flowed plaster of Paris in the mold around the flower. Once it set, it was heated in a kiln until the flower disintegrated, and then in a hot centrifuge molten gold was injected into the space left by the flower. When you break the plaster cast open, what remains inside is a perfect gold flower, beautiful and amazing.)
Speaking of Mom, she really didn't want us to go up into the attic. It's pitch black, we didn't know if there would be vermin and we weren't sure about its structural integrity. Dad had plywood flooring on most of the paths up there, but if you weren't careful you could easily fall through the ceiling, particularly a ceiling that's wet and moldy and basically falling apart anyway. In fact, Mom was particularly worried that we'd fall through the ceiling, to the point of shrieking, "DON'T GO UP IN THE ATTIC, YOU'LL FALL THROUGH THE CEILING!" We resolved to be careful.
We wanted to retrieve Christmas ornaments (Mom had a huge collection amassed over 45 years), some nice tile tabletops Dad had made, and a few other things), plus I was looking for what Melissa wanted. She called last week and asked if I'd be going to the office. I said yes, and she said, "Okay, when you go up there, go straight back and look for a box that's up on top of the old ugly orange sofa."
"Okay, what's in it?"
"... My Barbies. And my Mork from Ork doll. And my Fonzie doll. And my Charlie's Angels dolls."
She's 33, by the way.
I went looking for my old spaceship models, but was a little disappointed when I found them. The starship Enterprise was missing a warp nacelle, the Klingon battle cruiser was missing its engineering section (I had forgotten about the Great Model Shelf Collapse of 1977), the Spindrift from "Land of the Giants" and the Flying Sub from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", as well as an Enterprise bridge set, just weren't built very well. I suck at building models, I now recall. I did find some old elementary school yearbooks that I'll bring back, and a couple of books, and lots of other neat stuff but I have to be realistic -- most of that will be left behind and end up in the pile of rubble when the house is bulldozed.
Oh ... and of course, I fell through the ceiling.
Goddammit. I was sure there was flooring there. There was flooring all behind me and all in front of me, and that was a skinny part right by the ventilation fan that would logically have to have had flooring as well, why wouldn't it after all? So I put my foot there without looking, and before I knew it I was up to my crotch in attic floor, and my sister Marie, who was waiting for me at the bottom of the attic stairs, was horrifed to see a booted leg come crashing down through the ceiling in an explosion of moldy drywall and pink insulation.
I issued a series of profane oaths and obscene exclamations and managed not to fall completely through down to the ground floor; the studs in the floor at the section where I fell through weren't more than 2 feet square, so my body couldn't have fit through that bit anyway. At first I thought that the only thing bruised was my ego, but this morning my knee smarts like hell and I have a gorgeous, multicolored bruise on my kneecap. No skin breakage, no toxic mold injected into my system, although I think the mold colonies had sent spores into my head whose job it was to fool me into thinking I had solid footing, so I coudl fall through and die and they could grow on me and consume me. Devious, invading bastards. I showed them.
We worked from about 10am to about 5pm, and we got a lot of stuff out, and we were exhausted. Mom and Dad drove back up to the North Shore, and I stayed behind for a bit; I wanted to head about a mile south toward the Chef, to see the neighborhood where I grew up.
It was complete desolation.
Every house took 5-6 feet of water. For blocks and blocks in each direction. And I was the only soul in the area.
There was nobody.
No one surveying their houses, no one bringing out trash or soaked furniture or refrigerators. No one tearing out sheet rock or doing mold remediation or trying to gut and rebuild. Nothing. No one.
The lawns were all dead. The streets and sidewalks were covered with chips of dried toxic mud that crunched under your feet, sending up clouds of toxic mud dust that made my nose itch and burn. And I was utterly alone.
It was the creepiest, most unsettling feeling I've ever had in my life. I felt like a character in a Stephen King novel. As I walked around the neighborhood where I was the only living person for twenty blocks, I began to wonder ... when I fall asleep tonight, who will I dream about -- the old black woman or the Man With No Face?
I drove back to the North Shore, and we spent a fair amount of the rest of the evening removing damp photos from albums to dry, stacking boxes of things we had removed from the house, and having a lovely meal of leftover pork roast and beef pot roast, baked potatoes an