Notes on a New Orleans from a Gustav Evacuee
Posted August 29th, 2008 in Activism, All, Books, Inside New Orleans, News You Cannot Use, Politics, Sports and Take a look...
Nothing says NEW ORLEANS like the crossroads of adversity and humor;
A house in the Uptown District of New Orleans posts a “No Wake” sign on the second story to prepare for hurricane flooding.
For Gustav, we have The Cone. The 5-day cone, the 3-day cone, the cone of anxiety!
I know the storm is imminent when the house up the street posts the sign. So here we go.
I’d say here we go again, but I wasn’t actually around for Hurricane Katrina. We moved to New Orleans almost exactly a year after that fateful storm passed through. A lot of people asked us: “Why would you want to go there?” It is a reasonable question. After all, the entire country watched as this city struggled and drowned. As the government later opined, “mistakes were made.” But New Orleans is in our family’s history, which means it is also in our blood. We wanted to come here for the simple reason of solidarity; we couldn’t bear to watch from afar, we had to come back. You see, the national news covered the storm, and it covered the devastation that followed. What it didn’t cover was the Rebirth. Unless you’re a New Orleanian or a serious Saints fan, you probably weren’t a part of the overwhelming spirit of a community that simply could not call any place else “home.”
We flatter ourselves that we have been a part of the Rebirth efforts here, which is what makes this new storm Gustav sting so badly. We want to stay. If you’ve never seen an entire city in the throws of post-traumatic stress disorder, maybe you don’t understand. Maybe all you see is an industrial center or a port. Maybe all you see is a city which has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Maybe all you see is boarded up windows and low-lying streets, just waiting to be flooded. But if so, New Orleans is more than what you see. Today I saw families boarding up windows. Today I saw people buying canned fish and batteries. But today, I also saw a young man pasting the only bumper sticker on his new car - a sticker that simply said “New Orleans.”
More than any place I have ever experienced, New Orleans is a community. It is a city where the words “friend” and “neighbor” mean something more than their dictionary definitions. It is a city where the word “porch” is a verb. It is the kind of city that could birth an entire musical genre (we’re talkin’ ’bout Jazz) out of sheer tenacity and strength of spirit, and probably no small amount of red wine. It is a city that gets into your soul, makes a nest, and settles down for the long haul. To us, it is home in every sense of the word.
Tomorrow, I will have to leave my home (Chris Rose leaves when Nash leaves*, I leave when the Saints leave). I will pack my family and my pets in a car, and drive to Kentucky where our nearest family members wait to literally shelter us from the storm (the nearest vacant hotels are in northern Arkansas anyway). We will drive all night, and we will arrive alive and safe. We will leave our home behind, and if Gustav does its worst, our home will flood, and struggle, and maybe drown once again. But there will be no dead in our attic, no need for the National Guard to paint an ugly number on our wall. We’ll head out, so that we can come back all the sooner.
Being a New Orleanian is kind of like being a pet person - either you get it or you don’t. If you do, I - we - want to say “Thank You.” Thank you to all the people in all the states who are preparing to help out our worst case scenario. Thank you to everyone who isn’t leaving it up to President Bush or FEMA to pull us through. Thank you for your care, your consideration, your generosity, and your help. But most of all, Thank You for understanding. We love our home, and no matter what Gustav or any other storm brings, we’re prepared to return. So tonight, as we’re clearing out our freezers and filling up our gas tank, we will eat our perishable foods, and we will drink our non-perishable wines, because this is New Orleans. We live it. We love it. And no matter what happens, we can’t wait to come home.
*Chris Rose never leaves.
