All bad things must come to an end.
\n<\/p>\n
Most of us drive back the way we came, caught up with thick but moving traffic on the interstates.\u00a0 But at the junctions of I-10 and I-12 we choke up and lose momentum, feeling farther from arrival the closer we get.\u00a0 Those of us who have sought out alternate routes on local highways drive through the small towns and communities of the south, searching for reassuring signposts, hesitating at confusing forks, admiring red-brick churches and the fields where they bury people below the ground.\u00a0 We are moving slow but sure that, in the long run, we\u2019ll have outrun those fools on the interstate.\u00a0 Highway 90, a rural ribbon that wraps the Gulf coast, is almost deserted.\u00a0 The storm ran roughshod up the beach and onto the road, passed through the resorts and casinos, giving everything a good saltwater scrubbing.\u00a0 Finger puddles spread across the highway from the shoulder to the oversaturated median.\u00a0 We hydroplane and navigate around yachts and fishing boats parked on the dotted white line, then leave Mississippi behind and make the last lonesome leg through the pine marsh, snapping branches under our tires, marveling that all this impenetrable nature lies just miles from the city.<\/p>\n
We arrive at all hours, and leftover wind runs through town like a child, slapping at everything that dangles: store signs, stoplights, peeled back shutters and the plates bearing street names strung up on wires.\u00a0 In the daytime the wreckage is fully visible down every side street.\u00a0 We drive slow and turn our heads from side to side\u2014what didn\u2019t make it, what did?\u00a0 The damage is not horrible, and that\u2019s a relief, but there are a few old buildings that survived the last dozen storms that have finally given up and caved in, their interior walls visible from the street, torn like wet paper.\u00a0 For those of us arriving at night, in the dark of a city with patchy power grids, the damage has to be inferred from the debris lying face-down in our headlights.\u00a0 We get the feeling of what a ghost city this could be, with vegetation creeping into our homes in the wet, hot nights, an entire metropolis no longer lit by electricity or the spirit of its inhabitants.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if our absence of only a week has accelerated the weathering of the wood and the sinking of the asphalt.\u00a0 The city needs us to take care of it, to watch over it.\u00a0 To occupy the houses, fight back against the flora, and beat music against the walls.\u00a0 Without our custody even the wrought iron would flake away into small, airborne trash.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we return, even after this strong reminder of the potential disaster, this quick threat of a repeat offense.\u00a0 New Orleans is older than the state that surrounds it, older than the nation that pities it.\u00a0 It will always exist in some form as long as the boastful few who inherit it can\u2019t comprehend living anywhere else and feel its importance mingled with their marrow.<\/p>\n
We pull off the avenues into our neighborhoods.\u00a0 The stray cats watch our cars approach and dart off through gates and underneath hedges.\u00a0 They found some place to hide from the scourging winds and dominant rain, reminding us that this city will always be an easy home for the unclaimed and the scavengers.<\/p>\n
Our neighbors are already back and are out on the porch, watching to see who comes next.\u00a0 We lean across the railing and share stories, compare notes.\u00a0 Throughout the city the competition is on: who suffered the most.<\/p>\n
Took us 15 hours to get to Atlanta.\u00a0 Took us six damn hours just to Baton Rouge, and the storm hit there harder.\u00a0 There were eight of us in the one room, man.\u00a0 I thought auntie was going to faint from overstimulation.\u00a0 Two flat tires in two different states.\u00a0 I had a four day migraine.\u00a0 The dog ran off, just straight into the woods.\u00a0 My brother-in-law is a right son of a bitch and if I ever have to see him again, it\u2019ll be too soon.<\/p>\n
No one wants to give up even a little token of their trauma or let it go undocumented.\u00a0 As if there will be some kind of recompense for our spent emotion along with the gas and unearned wages.<\/p>\n
Well, come on over and have some dinner then.\u00a0 We already been to the store.<\/p>\n
Our homes are hot and smelly.\u00a0 They have soaked up the outer atmosphere like chambered sponges.\u00a0 In our absence we have forgotten about the mess we made searching through the rooms for the precious items we would take.\u00a0 Everything needs to be put back now, restacked at right angles.\u00a0 We need to restock the fridge.\u00a0 A few of us are lucky and have electricity.\u00a0 The rest of us hurry to get everything done before sundown, then head out onto the porch.\u00a0 The streets are filled with people like the old days, back before air conditioning, squatting on the stoop or rocking in swings, enjoying the ten degree difference that night can bring.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a curfew on, but every place that can be open is.\u00a0 If the beer has spoiled, we drink liquor.\u00a0 Restaurants run on limited menus but are packed with eager adherents, all the foodies who feared their favorite places would be washed away.\u00a0 People crowd the doorways and lean against the exteriors, joking and complaining, making predictions, wondering where the others are.\u00a0 The National Guardsmen roar down the streets in humvees, arms and guns poking out.\u00a0 Their big tires hit the potholes hard, and the soldiers go bouncing around the cabin and readjust their helmets.\u00a0 They point out the windows and whistle at our girlfriends or cousins.\u00a0 They\u2019re dazzled by their first time in the big city, even if it is half dark, thrilled by this unique domestic occupation.<\/p>\n
Within the next few days almost everyone will be back, and it will all seem like an overblown fad, a temporary panic that robbed us of a week.\u00a0 We\u2019re a little embarrassed, really.\u00a0 The near miss has realigned some of us with the old mindset that we\u2019re all better off just staying put and hunkering down.\u00a0 Screw this exodus shit.\u00a0 Katrina was the exception, not the New Rule.\u00a0 Back to work, back to school, back to overanalyzing the Saints.\u00a0 The last to arrive are the short-term wards of the state, the poor and the elderly bussed back in from up north.\u00a0 We return to the projects, back to Central City, back to The East, back to our own self-contained way of life.\u00a0 We feel as riled as anyone else, packed up and shipped for no good reason, then hassled twice as hard on the way back in.\u00a0 We return to our corners, to our tiny kitchens, to our knowledgeable silence.\u00a0 Some of us resume our interrupted revenge, and before the storm has even dissipated over the Midwest we tally a few more gangland dead.<\/p>\n
New Orleans reconvenes.\u00a0 The old arguments relight.\u00a0 The graft machine whirs back to life.\u00a0 We pick up the dry cleaning.\u00a0 The horse carriages resume their rattle through the Quarter.\u00a0 The newspaper starts to get thicker, not with news but with ads for renovation specials, clean up crews, mold busters, and insurance lawyers.\u00a0 We rejoin the rest of the nation in recession worries and presidential election mania.\u00a0 The river opens back up to traffic.\u00a0 The ships start floating by, carrying goods up the channels or racing back to sea empty.\u00a0 Flights resume.\u00a0 A few tourists follow through on their itineraries, feeling lucky to see us and our city right after a hurricane has passed by, as if they are catching us in our natural state.\u00a0 Maybe they are.<\/p>\n
The work crews disentangle all the branches from the power lines and clear away the scattered splinters.\u00a0 They reattach signs and sweep up glass.\u00a0 They return our city to just the way it was before Gustav: half-vacant and weather-beaten.\u00a0 They refurbish our semi-accomplished recovery then box up the tools and pack it in for the day.\u00a0 It\u2019s all up to the bosses, now.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow we\u2019ll resume the years-long wait for all our power to be restored.\u00a0 Tomorrow we\u2019ll tread a little more water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All bad things must come to an end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,65],"tags":[68,63,61],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-nola","tag-cassander","tag-evacuation","tag-hurricane-gustav"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}