Katrina post

June 25, 2010

I booted up an old Fujitsu tablet computer today that hadn’t been used for over three years and on the desktop was the text of an email that I sent to family and friends in September of 2005 following my first trip back to New Orleans after we evacuated for Katrina. The photos referred to in the text are posted to my Flickr account in a set called First post-Katrina visit.

I did make a trip to New Orleans this week, leaving Providence Wednesday morning and returning Thursday evening. When I turned the corner to pull into our driveway, our Fireman’s Fund insurance adjuster was leaning on the back of his rental car waiting for me. The pictures I referred you to come from the visit and provide a kind of random documentary of stuff.
The west end of the metropolitan area – the airport is in the west – is living a pretty normal life. Some wind damage to what you could conceive of as misbegotten structures (e.g., a six-story, windowless tower clad in aluminum used by the Coca-Cola bottling plant lost its entire western wall; an oversized roof-like canopy used to shield VIP parking in one of the commercial parking lots across from the airport simply collapsed onto the parking lot) but otherwise, the area is functioning. Gas stations open, accepting credit card payment at the pump, etc. People living fairly ordinary lives. A resident of that area remarked to me, “I guess I don’t have to worry about finding work any time soon,” referring to the fact that from the minute you get off the plane you see “help wanted” and “now accepting applications” signs everywhere.
As you move towards the east – we live about 10 miles east of the airport – conditions deteriorate. The major reason for this is that the 17th street canal flooding was contained at the parish line. Jefferson Parish, on the west, remained dry as Orleans Parish filled up with water. {Although I got no further east than our neighborhood, the story would continue…the lower Ninth Ward, with the Industrial Canal flooding, is another 6 or 7 miles to the east of us and is now a waste land. Another 30 miles and you reach Waveland, Pass Christian, Biloxi, etc, where the storm surge obliterated the coast line.}
So our neighborhood was without power, the water is questionable, and no businesses are open. In the pictures, the Calhoun Superette is our neighborhood grocery store, and you can see the five-foot high waterline. On Wednesday, only about 25 percent of the homes in our immediate neighborhood showed any signs of having been visited…ruined stuff moved out into the street and – in one case – a generator with dehumidifiers and air circulation equipment already at work…but people were on the way back in. One of my immediate neighbors had returned the day before, the other pulled up a couple of hours after I did.
Tree limbs were everywhere. Part from the storm, part from the overly zealous tree-trimming companies hired by our electric utility to clear the wires for re-stringing. Normally, they are fairly surgical about creating space around the wires, say about three feet. Post-Katrina the instructions were to cut anything within 20 feet of the wires…so you see some trees that look like they’ve been beheaded (I think there was a photo of one such tree at the back of our house). A 50-foot tall cypress standing next to our house had been snapped off at the 20-foot level; surprising in that I thought cypress were the monarchs of the swamps, not surprising given that of the 10 cypress surrounding the entry to Audubon Park, seven are now gone. So much for being a monarch of the swamp.
The pictures accidentally document the cleanup of the limbs and trash that’s going on. There are two pictures of the Audubon Boulevard sign taken four hours apart, with the difference being that the trash pickup vehicles moved through the area: Two 20-foot shipping containers with a small crane mounted between them pulled by a semi-tractor. The driver parks, jumps down, operates the crane from between the containers picking up trash and trees and then moves on.
The house was hot. The attic was hotter. Probably in the 110 degree range. The adjuster and I tramped through the house. His two primary tools are the laser measuring device and a humidity gauge. As you have seen the contents of the house appear to be in good shape. The water never made it above the door sills, so there was no standing water in the house. There is, however, the stench that pervades New Orleans, and I brought out some clothes to see if the smell can be gotten out by washing. (The answer to that question was no, the smell didn’t come out. There are still things in boxes – and even in one of the closets – that make our eyes water from the residual smell.)
On the other hand, if you looked at the pictures of the floors inside the house, you could see what appears to be dusty lines along the seams of the floorboards. Mildew. The water had reached the bottom of the floors and the water got drawn up. The floorboards are slightly cupped from warping where there is no covering; there is more evidence of warping where the water got trapped underneath vinyl flooring. As you could see, a carpet on the floor looks okay at a distance, but close up you can see the mold that formed when the seepage came up through the floor and dampened the carpet.
On the outside, the heating/air conditioning unit was clearly drowned, and the supply and return ductwork for the downstairs was completely submerged. So that has to be replaced.
Still sounds pretty okay. However, the humidity gauge indicates that the water got pulled up into the sheetrock. In the one place where we pulled baseboard away from the wall, there was a line of mold growing. Upstairs, there was some water infiltration into the walls from a broken window in Jed’s room, and also – according to the adjuster – from the open vents under the eaves in the attic. So the humidity gauge goes off for the upstairs sheetrock as well. The adjuster says that the sheetrock should be stripped to the studs, the studs and weatherboards allowed to dry completely, and then new sheetrock applied. Upstairs and down. (The carriage house behind the house is on a slab at ground level, and as you saw had over three feet of water in it. The adjuster says that that needs to be gutted and the studs encapsulated before starting over.)
The bottom line, according to the adjuster, is that in normal times it would take six months to get the job done. His estimate for the job now that there will be so much demand for contracting services is a year. So the good news is that a lot of our treasures are safe. The bad news is that the house will be unserviceable for quite a while.
Exactly where we come out on this won’t be determinable until we find out what the Fireman’s Fund adjuster settles on as their idea of a settlement and, even more uncertain, what the flood insurance adjuster will pick up. As you probably have heard, the two sources of insurance meet at the waterline, flood below and household above; but the meeting point is really just the beginning of debate. I return to the house on October 12th to meet the flood insurance adjuster. That will begin to answer the question of what their concept of fairness is.
Meantime, we are here in Bristol by the bay. Laurie has completed her first two back-to-back 12-hour shifts at the Miriam Hospital in Providence and actually navigated back to our house without getting lost at the end of the second shift. I am teaching my class at Roger Williams University and trying to keep up with the developments at Tulane, where announcements of a January opening seem optimistic although the University was filled with the sound of giant generators and a corps of contract workers is struggling to get the physical plant ready. We will visit Jed at Northwestern this coming weekend, staying with Bob and Gael Strong, and then return to Bristol where Addie will have part of Sunday and Columbus Day with us.
Thanks for all of your thoughts and good wishes. We have been truly fortunate. Our sympathy goes out to the great many people who have been less fortunate in the wake of Katrina and Rita than we were.
The most memorable thing about this visit was the night that I spent in Uptown New Orleans. As the afternoon faded, an exodus took place. The small army of workers on the Tulane campus were bussed back to Jefferson Parish for the night, and independent contractors/workers drove out of the city. The National Guard patrolled in their HumVees, loosely enforcing a curfew. I had no idea how strict or lax they might be, so before sunset I made my way to our friends’ house on the east side of Audubon Park. They had offered it because the flood waters hadn’t reached it but their refrigerator had had to be removed. They wanted to replace it but they didn’t know its model number and my visit was timed perfectly to read the required information from the refrigerator – still on the curb outside the house – and phone it to them so they could order the proper equipment.
The silence of the park was eerie. Many people who spent evenings in the city during this period reported the silence as a startling feature of the post-Katrina landscape. The silence was complete, animal and insect noises were gone. I stood on the jogging track and walked a bit on the familiar surface that was made entirely strange by the absence of people. It was the beginning of an evening and night when the hairs on the back of my neck were always raised. It wasn’t hard to imagine oneself as the last person in the city. (Of course, that was an illusion. There were a lot of people including the National Guard. But relatively speaking, and particularly as night fell and the absence of electricity became evident with the encroaching dark, the city felt empty.
I hadn’t been too good in my planning. I had a camera and a video camera to record the damage to our house, and I’d picked up water and snacks on the way in from the airport. But I hadn’t thought too much about night or a meal. My hosts for the evening, in addition to telling me where the key to the house was hidden, had told me which drawers to rifle through for flashlights and batteries, so I had a bit of light in the unfamiliar house. I was told I was welcome to use one of the children’s bedrooms upstairs but after looking over the layout  I opted for the couch in the den.
Supper was a cello bag of cashews and a packet of cookies. The house was hot. Cooler on the ground floor, but too warm for comfort.
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Skeeball Wizard

June 30, 2009

Laurie took three tokens worth of practice Sunday night at the carnival on the town common. The crowd swirling around included the usual town suspects, clouds of teenage girls, swaggers of teenage boys, mothers struggling with strollers in the grass criss-crossed with electrical cables overlain with rubber doormats.

Last night we went back to the common and I got Laurie five tokens for Skeeball. In the 24-hour hiatus, she had apparently been thinking about her lack of success on Sunday when her high game had been 110 points. The minute the token fell and the balls were released, she went into her old-school stance and concentration, right arm holding the ball high in front of her while she visualized the coming launch of the ball.

Five balls snapped off in rapid succession, she waved to the attendant, pointed to herself and mouthed, “I won!” For which she received a rather tired nod, and in a brief consultation Laurie was told that she could only win twice – but if she did win again before she ran out of tokens, they would be repurchased.

Five more balls, 160 points, another win.

Two stuffed bears and three dollars were exchanged for the remaining three tokens and a most pleased smile broke out on Laurie’s face. She strolled the rest of the evening cuddling a bear in each arm.

Most satisfactory.

Skeeball Wizard

Skeeball Wizard

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Contemplation of the simpler life

October 13, 2008

On Walden Pond
On Walden Pond

Addie took this and we all enjoyed it. A Columbus Day weekend trip to search out fall foliage ended up with us picnicing alongside the location of Henry David Thoreau’s hootch on Walden Pond. Literally, I could spit and hit the hearthstone from where we are seated. So…bread, cheese (no wine…not allowed in the park)…and Oprah’s magazine, which Laurie took about two minutes to take up and begin searching the article on the season’s hottest boots.

Bears go to the bathroom in the woods, Thoreau contemplated life in the woods, and Laurie shopped in the woods. Seems fair.
 
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Eccentricity

July 19, 2008

Maurice Webster was my father’s mother’s brother. An achitect who played chess at the open-air chess boards in Chicago. He rolled his own cigarettes from a pouch of Bull Durham, a process that fascinated small children. Once, when he was visiting Beloit to look after a building project on the college campus, I saw him drive by in his Henry-J sedan. I hopped on my bike and pedaled madly after him, arriving out-of-breath at the garage where he was going to have it looked at. “Hello, Uncle Morris,” I said. He said nothing to me and walked past me to talk with the mechanic.

Later in the day he made a special trip to the house to tell my parents that he was sorry that he had not recognized me.

At the family Christmas party, we knew it was time for the party to break up when Uncle Morris laid down on the floor, took up a lighted candle and held it with crossed hands on his chest and closed his eyes.

If ever there was an example that allowed each of us to be exactly what he wanted to be, Uncle Morris was it. This video clip shows his contribution to his sister’s 75th birthday celebration.

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Hey, Mr. Balloon man…

March 9, 2008

Balloon man

Having posted the photo of my mother taken in 1917 or so, it’s not totally out of place to insert this one here. I’ve Photoshopped it for the sepia look, because the color of the original makes it obvious that it’s not a true period photo. It’s actually me at 17 (June, 1958) with the balloons. The occasion is my grandmother Josephine Strong’s 75th birthday celebration, in honor of which her siblings, children and grandchildren (and friends) dressed up in period clothing. My brother Walt and I found “bathing costumes,” lacking somewhat in originality but we ended up being the most comfortable people there.

The most notable thing, I think, was the excess involved in the balloon thing. For the afternoon event, we inflated balloons starting in the morning and continuing on through noon; my fingers were raw from tying the ends of the balloons. We were staging the balloons in the bunk house, and the strings hung down from the balloons forming a room-sized fringe. I think the point was that we had been given a whole great tank of helium and ‘way too many balloons and we just didn’t know when to quit.

We all have in our mind’s eye that picture of a balloon man with a fistful of strings attached to his wares, and in our mind’s eye that cloud of balloons above him is full, robust, and shaped not unlike a fat bush. Trust me, that fullness is not easily achieved. It was almost impossible to hold this group of balloons down for any lengthy period of time, and the tangling of the strings suggested that there was some secret real balloon men have not shared involved in being able to give to each child just the balloon they desire.

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Adeline Carpenter Salmon

February 9, 2008

Yesterday morning my sister Anne called, something she never does. Mother had died during the night. She had lived in a nursing home for two years, crippled by a broken hip and arthritic joints, unable to get about except by wheelchair and specially-equipped vans.

But she had been travelling for some weeks, visiting friends and family, far away in place and time. She received a visit from her parents. Her imagination had slipped its bonds and made its way where she wanted to go. Towards the end it had been less important to get up in the morning.

Or at least these are the things that I imagine from the things that I have been told. From my perspective here on the rocky coast of New England this seems to have been a peaceful leave-taking. But I was not there, and only Anne can really say.

Adeline Carpenter Salmon

This photo carries the comment, “for Uncle Marion.” A search for him turns up a Marion S. Bonneville who enlisted in the Marines on May 28, 1917. Of the many muster rolls that mention him, the one below reflects his promotion to Corporal during April of 1919. So this must have been mom at a homecoming celebration (it can’t be the Fourth of July because of the heavy clothing she’s wearing).

musterrollapril1919.jpg

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