The Automatik

Yesterday, I returned to Canada from New Orleans. I had gone to New Orleans for my grandmother’s (aka Maw Maw) funeral. I had not been back to the area since June of 2005, two months before Hurricane Katrina struck. I knew that as difficult as it was going to be to bury my Maw Maw that I had to also visit my old neighbourhood of Lakeview to see what had changed in the eight months since the hurricane.

To use an old cliche, the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same. Stagnation is everywhere, shot through with distinct and upsetting changes which I never thought I would ever see in the area.

But let’s start with Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. Driving down Veterans Memorial Boulevard towards the funeral home, things didn’t look that much different from the last time I was there, although the traffic was horrific. A few puzzling sights – the Don Bohn car dealership and two Taco Bells were closed and vacant – but otherwise everything looked relatively normal. Then I noticed several signs that had been destroyed and not repaired as well as quite a few large banners on stores and other businesses that said “NOW OPEN!” or “NOW HIRING ALL POSITIONS!”

After the funeral, I drove further down Veterans, towards Lakeview. Within seconds of passing the Orleans Parish line, it became obvious that things had changed, or more accurately, things had changed dramatically on August 29th, 2005 and then became stuck in a time warp for eight months. The giant metal tower near the Troop B station on Veterans and Pontchartain lay twisted and crumpled on its side.

Every house that I could see was obviously unoccupied and most were gutted. All had bright orange search and rescue symbols spray painted on the front. All the grass and shrubbery surrounding the houses was dead, in varying shades of brown and grey.

West End Boulevard, a wide street that welcomes one into Lakeview, had a grassy neutral ground in the middle that was formerly filled with joggers and dog walkers. After Katrina, it served as the dump for all the trash that was removed from the area. The trash is now gone, but the grass, joggers, and dog walkers have not returned.

A few blocks from West End is Harney Street, or more specifically, Harney Street as it crosses Colbert Street. This is where I used to live, for six years in fact, before I moved to Canada in April of 2005. Harney is a bit odd. It is an actual street, but there is a huge lot in the middle of it, the site of the former Harney School, which has been abandoned since the 1960s or 70s.

Google maps image of Harney Street.

Google satellite image of Harney Street. My former house is circled in red.

Driving down Ringold Street towards Harney was completely disorienting. I recognized the houses but they weren’t the same. Even if they looked the same from the outside, they had search and rescue spray paint on them, indicating that the houses were searched and whether or not residents had been rescued or if dead bodies had been found inside. Closer inspection revealed red and brown streaks, which represented the water line, or how high the floodwaters got before the water stopped rising and just sat, surrounding the houses in deadly stillness for two weeks.

A house on Ringold Street, which intersects Colbert. Notice the water line.
The water lines varied from house to house; some were halfway through the windows, while others were nearly to the roofs.

Then we turned onto Colbert Street, towards Harney. We parked and exited the car. After the shock of all the sad, empty, damaged homes, and the dead grass and shrubbery, what you notice next is the awful stench. It smells like death: rot and brackish water and horror at which you can only guess.

Approaching my house, I had to step across pieces of debris and nasty weeds that have sprouted to replace the grassy lawns and flowers, which have not yet returned. There was even a dust mask on the ground, which someone had obviously used when cleaning out the interiors of the homes.

The house next to mine, a duplex of the type referred to as “shotgun style.”

Standing on the front porch of my house.

Looking at the school and the neighbour’s yard from my porch. This picture cannot convey the overwhelming sense of destruction that I felt.

The view inside the house. Clearly my landlord has had the place gutted. There is my old claw foot bathtub.

We then drove to my Maw Maw’s house, which I actually have photos of from a few weeks after the water receded.

Photo from October 2005

Photo from May 1, 2006.

Granted, due to the fact that my dad has been living in a FEMA trailer park after the destruction of his own house in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, there has been little time to address the question of clearing out Maw Maw’s house and making a final decision on what to do with it. However, even those houses in Lakeview that have been gutted are still there, eight months later, waiting to be torn down and rebuilt or perhaps just torn down forever.

Driving through Lakeview is like driving through a cemetery, only instead of headstones, you can actually see the bodies. You can look straight through the windows of blocks upon blocks of homes, like empty skulls. There are very few cars, unless you count the abandoned ones, which are mostly covered with anti-Jay Batt graffiti (Batt is a member of New Orleans Council District A, which represents Lakeview). There are no pedestrians, no children playing, no birds, no anything really. Just an endless and undeniable sense of despair.

Here is St. Dominic’s Church on Harrison Avenue underwater in September of 2005 (photographer unknown, from the St. Dominic’s CYO website).

Here is St. Dominic’s Church on Harrison Avenue as it looks now.

We drove down Robert E. Lee and saw the strip mall on the corner eerily quiet and abandoned, despite having been crowded and bustling pre-Katrina. We saw that the Hong Kong restaurant on West End, there since the 1960s, had been partially demolished or perhaps collapsed after the hurricane. A sign in the parking lot said simply, “PRAY.” The road along Lake Pontchartrain (aka “the Lakefront”) was empty and the ground buckled and destroyed. Portolets and signs advertising demolition were on every street corner, along with a plethora of campaign signs for upcoming elections, a rather grotesque study in heartlessness. There were many spray painted messages on homes regarding residents’ pets and most chilling of all, “2 ATTIC” on the front of a house on Milne Street, within walking distance from both mine and Maw Maw’s houses (we were too disturbed to get a photo of that one).

What was most striking, despite the absolute lack of life, was the lack of shade. So many tall oak and pine trees had been destroyed, cut down, or severely pruned so that the area resembled a new housing development that has not yet planted sod in the lawns or had time to develop groves of trees.

The same imagery permeated City Park, which is nestled between Lakeview, Mid-City and Bayou St. John. There were no families playing with dogs or kids, no picnics. Just endless trailers, skeletal oak trees, and brown patches where grass once grew.

We went back through Lakeview towards Bucktown and the infamous 17th Street Canal levee breach. The sense of death and destruction was inescapable. Houses had floated off their foundations and crashed into one another. Most of the trees and grass had died and there was nothing but dried mud everywhere. We didn’t even have the heart to take photos; it felt too intrusive and disrespectful.

Here are two images of Lakeview under water from Heritage Plaza, right past the Orleans Parish line in Metairie – photographer unknown.
Image 1
Image 2

Then we left Orleans Parish and drove through Metairie. The traffic is ridiculous; it takes forever to get anywhere. Rather than be stuck on the I-10 (which we needed to take to get to my Dad’s house in Luling), we drove down West Esplanade through Kenner. Although the grass was green and there were healthy trees and blooming flowers, it was obvious that much had changed since the storm. The houses looked normal; there were no water lines. But nearly every home featured the following: a pile of trash in the front or on the side and a trailer in the yard. Those homes that did not sit under feet of water for two weeks still took enough water, albeit temporarily, to damage the floors, furniture, and sheet rock to the point that they were uninhabitable.

It was a relief to get back to my Dad’s house, away from the sites of so much awfulness, although the images still haunt me and will continue to do so for some time. Everyone has told me that you just can’t imagine what it’s like until you see it firsthand and it’s true; the photos do not do it justice. But what is most upsetting isn’t the feeling you get when you see it all; it’s the fact that it haunts you even after you’ve gone. There is quiet there, but no peace.

Below is a photo of my brother and I taken on my 30th birthday. It was on a dresser at Maw Maw’s house and Marcus’s mom rescued it when she visited the house after the waters receded. The back is crusted over with dried mud.

What’s most unsettling is that the edges of the photo have been water-damaged right up to the faces of my brother and me and we have remained unscathed.