Blog: Love and hate in New Orleans

[JessN]

Love and hate in New Orleans
January 4th, 2009 10:50 PM

I've been to New Orleans about 20 times in my life. My parents started taking me when I was 4, which according to some pastors I've had in my life, constitutes child abuse.

Only once have I ever seen trouble in New Orleans, and it didn't come from locals, but from a collection of kids in town for what appeared to be some kind of punk rock convention a couple of decades ago.

The trip to New Orleans to watch Alabama play Utah in the Sugar Bowl was my first post-Katrina trip to the city, which I consider to be my favorite place to visit in the United States other than my mom's kitchen. It is safe for anyone that has a reasonably functioning brain and can understand a map. It has a vibe not present anywhere else in America and I would dare say nowhere else in the world. It is easily the most culturally significant city in the South and perhaps the country as a whole.

So I was very interested to see what the city would be like since Katrina. What I found truly touched me, deeply.

The locals here have always had their own flair. This time, they also seemed desperate -- desperate to make us feel welcome, desperate to make us happy, desperate to have us come back again sometime. Without fail, every service-industry professional I encountered, be it a waiter, hotel employee, police officer, shopkeeper...at least acted like they were overjoyed to see me again. I was overwhelmed all week by the urge to blurt out, "But I'm not rich! I haven't been here in a decade! You don't really know me -- and I'm not that important!"

If you've ever been prone to forget Hurricane Katrina, a trip to New Orleans will quickly remind you of it. We drove in at night and missed seeing the evidence of what hurricane damage can be viewed from the major roads, but on the way out, we got a very clear reminder. Scores of erstwhile stores, factories and apartments northeast of the city along Interstate 10 lay dormant and half-falling in, but again, there was optimism. On the side of one particular wind-tilted apartment complex, which you could see clear through, was a freshly hung sign: "Now leasing!"

Where you can really see the damage, though, is in people's hearts. My wife and I only engaged one person in conversation about it directly, because once was enough. The owner of a small grocery store told us how she had just barely made it out in time, how she lost contact with her family, and upon returning, slept on a rollaway bunk bag on the floor of a tattoo parlor for a couple of weeks.

She did not hesitate to share her story, but after hearing it, I hesitated to want to hear one from anyone else. For one thing, it brought back bad memories of my own family's near-miss with death during Hurricane Ivan. But mostly, I didn't want to ask any of these people to relive it just for my amusement. Oh, they're happy to talk about it, but they look a little worse for wear after they finish speaking.

While there, my wife picked up a book called "1 Dead in the Attic" by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose. It's a recounting of the times in New Orleans after Katrina. My wife has already read most of it; I've read bits and pieces over her shoulder while lying in bed and watching "important" things like SportsCenter. As soon as she finishes it, I will steal it from her and fill in the blanks before she can pass it along to her mother or best friend. The small vignettes I've read so far have been core-shaking.

The week in its entirety was a duality to me, a love-hate relationship not unlike the two masks of Mardi Gras. The loss to Utah -- hated it. The girl behind the front desk of the Baronne Plaza who moved her own car from her employee parking space so that I could park in her slot, as the parking deck was full, and seemed almost embarrassed when I tried to tip her -- loved it. The way the life drained from the eyes of that old woman in the grocery store when she recounted her Katrina experiences -- hated it. The old man who kept the reservations list at Tujague's who, after being informed we would miss our reservation by 40 minutes, told me, "You don't worry about it -- just come down. We’ll have a place for you," and moved me to the head of the list as soon as I walked in his door -- loved it.

And, that duality restated itself to me the day we left New Orleans. One of my parents' old friends, who for the better part of 50 years lived on Conti Street and elsewhere in the Quarter, who let strangers sleep under his pianos (that's "pianos," plural) during Mardi Gras, who cooked for half the occupants of the Quarter at one time or another, who housed foreign exchange students from countries around the globe, many of them he never had a conversation with due to the language barrier -- could not be found. My wife and I walked to his old home to find a realtor’s sign above the window. We called the last number we had for him, nothing. We left a message.

On the way out Saturday, we finally got a call from a heavily accented man, probably a foreign student. My parents’ friend had been diagnosed with ALS in June and died in October. He had no family other than a niece in Texas. No one knew to call us.

I can close my eyes and see the high ceiling, spiral staircase and roof garden on his Conti Street home, smell the spices of his kitchen and remember how much I wished my own home had a courtyard out back surrounded by 300-year-old brick walls. And it makes me sad to know that 15 years ago, I unknowingly saw it for the last time.

But I have not seen New Orleans for the last time. It just cannot be left to that. Not only can I not go back to the food, the shops and the atmosphere, I cannot disappoint those people who all but begged us to come see them again sometime, without ever coming out and saying it directly.


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