Dispatches from the Quarter: “Little Pink Houses” or “Can’t Drown the Spirit”
“Little Pink Houses” or “Can’t Drown the Spirit”
New Orleans is soul food. I get here and I feel like I’ve been on a starvation diet for a year; but here, finally, a feast is waiting. I’m not just talking about the food, though that certainly plays a part in it.
I travel without my husband a lot: to conventions, to see relatives, to do writing retreats. I like traveling (To be more accurate, I like being in new places. I’m eagerly waiting for the teleporter to be invented.) and my schedule is flexible. He doesn’t, and his isn’t.
While I travel, getting from one place to another, by myself, I’m never alone, never a stranger at my destination. Never. Pretty much never. Twice in my life that I can remember. Twice in the last 22 years.
I have rediscovered a lesson hard learned first semester of my freshman year of college. I hate eating alone. That sounds funny coming from a woman who works at home while her husband is gone ten hours each day. When I’m home, I’m not really eating alone. I’m sending email, or playing on Facebook , watching TV, reading, or quite often actually eating face to face with a friend in real time. I never feel alone.
At conventions and book festivals you only have to ask once to wind up with a dozen or more dinner partners.
First semester my freshman year I dropped something like twenty or twenty-five pounds, ‘cause I’d rather not eat than eat alone, and none of my friends from the dorm or my classes and the same meal schedule and cafeteria assignment as me. So, I just ignored the hunger until it stopped bothering to poke at me.
Even N’awlins food is having difficult tempting me this time to sit, eat a real meal, and enjoy. Maybe I’m feeling it even more strongly tonight, after a Hurricane Katrina & Her Aftermath day. Took a small, very personal tour that ran a couple hours, then immediately watched “Hurricane on the Bayou” as an IMAX movie. Nothing like a 3-story screen to really put you in the moment.
Hurricane Katrina hit the coast August 29th, 2005.
Before Katrina the lower ninth ward was a busy, bustling neighborhood with houses packed shoulder to jowl far as the eye could see. When the levy broke, it sent a ten foot surge of water over those houses that sit well below the levy - meaning the waves crashed *down* on the rooftops. The first encounter wasn’t flood waters slowly climbing to the eaves. (That would come later.)
Touring that neighborhood three years later is still a gut-wrenching experience. As far as I could see, there wasn’t more than a small handful of homes that survived well enough to be saved. Understand, this was an old, solid neighborhood. More than seventy percent of these folks owned their houses outright, didn’t own money to the bank or no man. There were still houses standing abandoned; the owners dead or not yet returned to N’awlins, maybe never would. Couldn’t help wondering which it was when you saw the ax hole in the roof. Couldn’t stop the flood of images from news reports at the time: people standing on these very roofs, holding signs - or maybe the message was written in big letters on the roof itself -
HELP ME
WE’RE STILL ALIVE!
For now.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with these shells that looked like they collapse if a heavy truck drove by, or sometimes next to plots overgrown with weeks and potted with sinkholes were a double handful of flashy new homes. By flashy I mean gaudy paint colors that cried out with a spirit and optimism almost impossible to imagine. Houses built by Habitat for Humanity, Brad Pitt’s project, and the governmental program that Clinton and Bush Sr. Raised so much money for. Many were already decked out for Christmas.
“It’s a little early,” our guide, Debbie, said, “but you can’t blame them for being excited about their first Christmas in their new home... Over there was the FEMA trailer park where they all lived.” One was still standing, part of a memorial, a testimonial, a statement and reminder of what it was like, so we wouldn’t forget that families of four and five and six were living in a asbestos-ridden trailer smaller than most people’s garage. Some of the FEMA trailers still sit on the building lots - put on the plot of land that the family owned. Habitat or Brad Pitt - the organization has a name, but down here, they all say “Brad Pitt” did this. Brad Pitt did that.” Invoking his name as if he was a saint or a savior. Habitat for Humanity or Brad Pitt have to move them, ‘cause FEMA won’t pay to haul them away. That’s up to the land-owner.
So you had purple houses standing proudly beside a lot ful of dead weeds and sink holes. Downed trees next to an orange house, or a pink one, or a lime-green one. Some of the houses had wild space-age structural designs. Those were Brad Pitt’s houses, with cutting edge designs that are energy and environmentally friendly.
Only in the musicians village did you have a stretch of new houses proudly standing side by side. Not a one of them white, beige or gray. The neighborhood was about three blocks long and two blocks wide. Course, the street signs were hand-painted and nailed to the side of trees or the corner of someone’s house.
There were a bunch of folks gathering in someone’s driveway and yard. Drinking ice tea and beer and firing up the grill. They waved us over to join them, but Debbie said we didn’t have time to stop, wished we did. She sounded as wistful as I felt. Forget the rest of the tour, I wanted to stay. To sit and talk and share a beer...
Next: Part 2 of “Little Pink Houses” or “Can’t Drown the Spirit”
© Tina Jens, 2008. All rights reserved.
New Orleans is soul food. I get here and I feel like I’ve been on a starvation diet for a year; but here, finally, a feast is waiting. I’m not just talking about the food, though that certainly plays a part in it.
I travel without my husband a lot: to conventions, to see relatives, to do writing retreats. I like traveling (To be more accurate, I like being in new places. I’m eagerly waiting for the teleporter to be invented.) and my schedule is flexible. He doesn’t, and his isn’t.
While I travel, getting from one place to another, by myself, I’m never alone, never a stranger at my destination. Never. Pretty much never. Twice in my life that I can remember. Twice in the last 22 years.
I have rediscovered a lesson hard learned first semester of my freshman year of college. I hate eating alone. That sounds funny coming from a woman who works at home while her husband is gone ten hours each day. When I’m home, I’m not really eating alone. I’m sending email, or playing on Facebook , watching TV, reading, or quite often actually eating face to face with a friend in real time. I never feel alone.
At conventions and book festivals you only have to ask once to wind up with a dozen or more dinner partners.
First semester my freshman year I dropped something like twenty or twenty-five pounds, ‘cause I’d rather not eat than eat alone, and none of my friends from the dorm or my classes and the same meal schedule and cafeteria assignment as me. So, I just ignored the hunger until it stopped bothering to poke at me.
Even N’awlins food is having difficult tempting me this time to sit, eat a real meal, and enjoy. Maybe I’m feeling it even more strongly tonight, after a Hurricane Katrina & Her Aftermath day. Took a small, very personal tour that ran a couple hours, then immediately watched “Hurricane on the Bayou” as an IMAX movie. Nothing like a 3-story screen to really put you in the moment.
Hurricane Katrina hit the coast August 29th, 2005.
Before Katrina the lower ninth ward was a busy, bustling neighborhood with houses packed shoulder to jowl far as the eye could see. When the levy broke, it sent a ten foot surge of water over those houses that sit well below the levy - meaning the waves crashed *down* on the rooftops. The first encounter wasn’t flood waters slowly climbing to the eaves. (That would come later.)
Touring that neighborhood three years later is still a gut-wrenching experience. As far as I could see, there wasn’t more than a small handful of homes that survived well enough to be saved. Understand, this was an old, solid neighborhood. More than seventy percent of these folks owned their houses outright, didn’t own money to the bank or no man. There were still houses standing abandoned; the owners dead or not yet returned to N’awlins, maybe never would. Couldn’t help wondering which it was when you saw the ax hole in the roof. Couldn’t stop the flood of images from news reports at the time: people standing on these very roofs, holding signs - or maybe the message was written in big letters on the roof itself -
HELP ME
WE’RE STILL ALIVE!
For now.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with these shells that looked like they collapse if a heavy truck drove by, or sometimes next to plots overgrown with weeks and potted with sinkholes were a double handful of flashy new homes. By flashy I mean gaudy paint colors that cried out with a spirit and optimism almost impossible to imagine. Houses built by Habitat for Humanity, Brad Pitt’s project, and the governmental program that Clinton and Bush Sr. Raised so much money for. Many were already decked out for Christmas.
“It’s a little early,” our guide, Debbie, said, “but you can’t blame them for being excited about their first Christmas in their new home... Over there was the FEMA trailer park where they all lived.” One was still standing, part of a memorial, a testimonial, a statement and reminder of what it was like, so we wouldn’t forget that families of four and five and six were living in a asbestos-ridden trailer smaller than most people’s garage. Some of the FEMA trailers still sit on the building lots - put on the plot of land that the family owned. Habitat or Brad Pitt - the organization has a name, but down here, they all say “Brad Pitt” did this. Brad Pitt did that.” Invoking his name as if he was a saint or a savior. Habitat for Humanity or Brad Pitt have to move them, ‘cause FEMA won’t pay to haul them away. That’s up to the land-owner.
So you had purple houses standing proudly beside a lot ful of dead weeds and sink holes. Downed trees next to an orange house, or a pink one, or a lime-green one. Some of the houses had wild space-age structural designs. Those were Brad Pitt’s houses, with cutting edge designs that are energy and environmentally friendly.
Only in the musicians village did you have a stretch of new houses proudly standing side by side. Not a one of them white, beige or gray. The neighborhood was about three blocks long and two blocks wide. Course, the street signs were hand-painted and nailed to the side of trees or the corner of someone’s house.
There were a bunch of folks gathering in someone’s driveway and yard. Drinking ice tea and beer and firing up the grill. They waved us over to join them, but Debbie said we didn’t have time to stop, wished we did. She sounded as wistful as I felt. Forget the rest of the tour, I wanted to stay. To sit and talk and share a beer...
Next: Part 2 of “Little Pink Houses” or “Can’t Drown the Spirit”
© Tina Jens, 2008. All rights reserved.