Mile After Mile

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana coast on August 29th, 2005 as a large category 3 storm that devastated the region. I went to Louisiana in January of 2006, and it was still headline news. Not just headlines, either. Seventy percent of the newscasts were Katrina related. I was there on business, north of Baton Rouge. My customers encouraged me to visit New Orleans on my next trip back in February. I did so. These are my thoughts.

I was able to get a room in the French Quarter pretty easily, and not too expensive either considering that it was really very nice accommodations just off Jackson Square. The Quarter was not damaged. When the levees broke, the water did not invade that historic district. There had been little damage and there were no structural indications that anything had happened if you were standing on Bourbon Street. There were SOME indications, however. For example, the streets were far from barren, but they were also far from being crowded as one would expect for the kickoff weekend of Mardi Gras. Also, many stores remained closed. This was due not to damage, but a lack of staff. There simply are not enough residents left to work all of the restaurants and shops. Many of those that ARE opened are on an adjusted schedule still. Keep in mind...this is five and a half months after the catastrophe. One of my favorite bars that I always liked because of the balcony had the entire upstairs closed. When I asked the bartender, he stated, "There just aren't enough customers to warrant opening, except maybe on Saturdays." Virgin Record store in the Jackson Brewery was also closed, and most of the stores inside the River Walk Mall remain closed.

My first night there I ate at Maspero's, on Toulouse. A great seafood plate was served to me in the largely empty restaurant. There was a large family sitting nearby. They did not have the look of a tourist family however. Their dress and accents were such that I figured them as refugees. Sure enough, I overheard them talking about "if I don't have a house tomorrow, maybe I'll come over to your place and get some laundry done." This band of folks appeared so tired and despondent. At first I was annoyed with the mother and how she let the two toddlers run around. But as I looked closer, she just looked too tired to do much of anything else. At one point, she said to one of the hellions, "I wish you wouldn't do that", but it was a reflex. Her heart was not in it, just empty words. She was too tired to care.

I spoke with a man there about the situation, over a beer. He had much to say about the mayor, and the lack of ongoing federal support. At one point, he became physically agitated and angry as he talked about how many of the residents will not be coming back. He really gets blustering, but it is the angry bluster of a hurt person, who is saying angry things out of hurt, and you aren't even sure he believes them. "I'm glad they aren't coming back. You know, this way, we'll be done with them. This way, we can weed out the people who don't really care about this city, who don't love it! Let them leave!!" His sister lost all three of her properties. He is living 'upstairs' at his sick mother's house, which I later gleaned was actually her attic. He has no job. Most of his friends are gone. He is alone. Hurt, abandoned, and angry at the world, like so many others in Louisiana. A bitterness seeps here, just out of the lights of the Quarter, lingering in the fetid pools.

Early on I had decided to keep the rental car just long enough so I could give myself a tour of the area. I was trepidacious for several reasons. My father had warned me against going because of the violence of which he had heard tales. I began to wonder if he was correct in his warning and that I was a young fool to do such a thing. I saw nothing of the sort, tho I did read in the papers that a man was shot on his porch in the 7th Ward during my visit. But beyond the fear of violence, I also wondered if I really wanted to see the devastation. Was it sick to want to see it? Was it simply juvenile morbid curiosity that drew me? By going and seeing it, was I somehow disrespecting the people whose lives were so greatly affected by Katrina, or trivializing the lives that were actually lost? I was very aware of the fact that during my previous January trip at the customer site, one of the topics of conversation was the fact that the city of New Orleans had banned bus tours of the devastated areas, claiming it was unseemly and taking advantage of the victims. My customers thought it was not unseemly and could have benefited the city, both by pulling in tourists dollars as well as some of the profits were to be donated to the relief effort.
These thoughts were rolling around inside of me in an uneasy way as I timidly approached the desk clerk at my hotel to ask for directions. "Yes, I'm about to go to the airport to return my rental car. I need directions." She began pulling out a map with a smile, saying she'd be glad and that it was very easy. "Yes. Thank you, " I respond, "but I was also wondering.....can you tell me where I would go if I wanted to see ...New Orleans...." I know I'm being vague at this point, but I just don't want to say that I want to see devastation. So I add...."you know.....since Katrina...." She didn't miss a beat. I think she even tried to look sympathetic or understanding. She then proceeds to give me directions to Lakeview, one of the areas damaged when the levees failed.

She is giving me directions, but I notice at one of the turns she is gesturing right but saying left. I ask her to clarify, and she realizes she said the wrong thing, that her gestures were correct. She seems upset by this. You could tell she was visualizing the way as she gave the directions, and this indeed proved correct. She said to me, "I'm sorry, but these directions are good. I used to ride on the bus this way all the time when I was in school." And that's what made her own flood gates burst and the tears flowed down her ruddy cheeks.. "All those neighborhoods are gone now. There is just no one there. I grew up there." She blots her eyes, and attempts but does not succeed in adopting a tour guide stance on the whole matter. "Anyway," she explains, "if you just drive down that street you will see. And Lakeview is not the worst. The 9th Ward is far worse. But just imagine mile after mile of that, ...I can't even tell you how many miles." More tears.

I'm awkward and insufficient. I say how sad it all is, and I know 'sad' is an understatement, but I don't know what else to say. I tell her how I wasn't even sure I should go. "No. Go, " she immediately responds. "If you just stay in the Quarter around here then you think everything is fine. You should go. You will see."

As I'm trying to find my equilibrium after this personal encounter with the desk clerk whose name I do not even recall, I find myself waiting on a very slow valet to come around with my rental. I'm watching the passer-bys, and I spot this one gent who has jeans on that are riding a good five inches too short. I am amazed and appalled at myself, for instantaneously the thought jumps into my head, "What...? Expecting a flood?" This is of course followed with the abhorrent realization that he likely was a flood victim. Likely, these jeans he was given in charity after he lost everything. How quickly I reverted and flew from the personal connection, however fleeting, I had with the desk clerk to callous, thoughtless remarks! I found myself wanting to do something, but there was nothing to be done. I felt alone and ineffectual.

And so it is with these feelings I enter my rental, a very nice Ford Explorer. I'm wondering if there was a reason they gave me this at the rental company. Do you need an SUV to get around New Orleans? On the road, most I see are indeed trucks. I head off on the directions she gave me, passing the pristine facade of the Superdome, and travel down Canal Street. With each block I travel, I become miles removed from civilization. Street lights no longer work. Closed fast food chains. Closed office buildings. Closed homes. And I travel on, toward Lakeview, to see what there is to see. To see what 'devastation' means.

And on the journey, I again ask why I am taking it. It actually is not like me to seek out such things. I was never lured by those videos of death that they have in the video stores. I do not look too closely at newscasts involving carnage. I do not want to see what is behind those blankets along roadside accidents. Over a year after 9/11 I had the chance to visit New York. Some of my traveling companions wanted to see Ground Zero. Not I. So, why do I want to see New Orleans? What is the difference? Or am I different now than I was then? Why do I feel compelled to go to Lakeview when I was repelled by the Twin Towers?

Is it because Ground Zero stood testament to the maliciousness of man, something I never want to willingly face? Something I hide from, something I wish I could deny was real? Was Ground Zero too concentrated for the magnitude of the lives lost, where bodies were never even found, pounded into powder? Those days, as we walked around New York, I had this dread that I would accidentally round a corner and suddenly be faced with it, unprepared. I did not want to see it. I did not want to know it. Yet here, in New Orleans, I'm following carefully given directions, looking for what I've seen on the news. I want to know this disaster. I am compelled by something I can't quite put my finger on.

Perhaps it is tied to the awe I've always had toward Mother Nature. Some of this awe can be traced, perhaps, to when I was a child and I thought that Mother Nature was married to God. But I consider the Tsunami disaster of December 2004: yes I was horrified at the lives lost and destroyed, but accompanying that was sheer wonder at the power of the sea, as well as its fickleness. We live on a planet that can DO that! How scarey! How terrible! How amazing! That one tsunami destroyed miles and miles of coastland, and took thousands and thousands of lives. It affected the rotation of the Earth! I remember in the days after Katrina some newscasters compared the devastation in Louisiana to the tsunami. I also recall my friend, David, being outraged at such a comparison. He tells me, "By far, numerous more lives were lost in the Tsunami. You can't even compare them!" After seeing devastated Lakeview, well over five months AFTER the devastation, I understand now how the newscasters can do it. Forget numbers. When you see what is left, your mind goes numb. Were they comparing the facts of Katrina with the tsunami? Likely not. You look at something unfathomable, and you grope, and you remember the last unfathomable thing you've experienced, and for neither can you summon words with meaning, and at a loss for words, you try to give context.

For those who have read this far, waiting for some eloquent description of what I saw in Lakeview, I'm sorry. You will not get anywhere close to knowing what it was like. The best words I have are these: Imagine a single house being extensively renovated. We probably all have had one on our block at one time or another. It is mostly just frames up, maybe most outer walls have been constructed. No drywalls have been hung inside, tho. Some shingles are off the roof, and maybe there are some holes in the roof, perhaps for a new skylight. The paint has not been put on yet. There is construction debris everywhere, but some attempt had been made to confine it to a trash pile out front. We've all seen this scene before. There is nothing new in this respect in Lakeview, nothing spectacular. Except the debris piles are huge, and have been scraped from the roadway, and contains things other than lumber: refrigerators, beds, tables, tvs, papers, dolls, tricycles, silt covered cars, masses of rags that were once clothes, mud, mud, mud. The paint is not waiting to be put on, but has been scoured off. Dry walls were blown out by storm surge, not waiting to be hung. The shingles are ratty from winds. There is a tree down there in front, roots not quite deep enough to keep it upright. And the ever present waterline, bearing testimony to just how high the water was here. It was higher than my SUV. Walk up seven steps to a porch and the waterline is at the top of the front screen door, barely hanging on it's hinges. Then there is the spray paint left by the rescuers. You probably saw it in the news. It is a cross, and there are numbers in each section, marking date searched, bodies found, alive or dead. It is easy to see this picture in your mind's eye, this one house. But the spray paint is a reminder that this is not just an empty, shattered building, but lives and a family resided in this less than a shack, that used to be a home.

But it is not just one house. It is not just all the houses and families on that street. It is not just this block and the next. It is not one neighborhood here and one neighborhood there. I traveled for miles until I got to the lake. It was all of it. It was mile after mile off to my right. It was mile after mile off to my left. Mile after mile of the sameness. The same destruction. The same emptiness. The same piles. The same mud. The same debris. The same ruined roads. The same hand painted signs offering mold removal, construction, loans, haulers. Block after block. Street after street. Mile after mile. Your mind goes numb, and you think, "I'll never be able to describe this." And you can't. And the tears you find yourself crying for these people you did not know, alone in your rented SUV as you weave around debris and stare at the ruin, these tears betray you and you want to make others see it, but how? They did not see this on the news, not the scope. And I only saw ONE of the 'lesser affected areas'. And now I know why I had to go. I had to bear witness. I enjoyed the French Quarter and I encourage others to return there to visit, but....for me to not see this...to not know this....that would be an offense to the former residents of this great city. It would not be truthful. This is where the bartender is from. This is where the desk clerk grew up. This is the city that the angry citizens love. This is now New Orleans. It can NEVER be the same. What was, is gone.

That night, rental car returned, and me cabbing it in the rain back to my plush hotel room, the droplets making pretty shiny crystals of light on the windows as I stare out at the balconies of the French Quarter, I ask the taxi driver how he fared. Immediate and forthright came his answer, requiring no prompts or further questions from me. "Not well. My house got 17 feet of water. I have two grown sons now, both moved out. Everything is gone. All the pictures. I used to come home and sit with my scrapbooks and coffee, and look at the pictures of my two boys when they were little and growing up, their weddings. All the pictures of me and my late wife when we first started dating. I can't see those anymore. I'm 63 years old. I don't know how I'm going to start over. How do I do that? I just don't know."