Allegorical demolition
My oldest son (23) is doing house demolition work at various places around town, earning a little cash while the earning’s good before he goes back to school in the spring. It’s hot and sometimes dangerous work, but he’s getting to see some neat houses and he’s learning quite a bit about just how solid some of the older homes in the city really are.
He calls today and asks if we want some bricks from an old chimney they’re bringing down at a house Way Uptown. I go take a look and find him swinging a sledge at some interior walls while another crew works on the chimney itself. It’s a two-story house near Tulane.
Now think about this….
The crew is taking down a CHIMNEY, okay? Last I heard, New Orleans Gravity is the same as any other gravity — I mean, the city isn’t THAT far removed from the Real World — or at least not yet. Anyway — don’t it make sense to start at the top? But nooooooooooo. This crew started with the hearth, which was a pile of rubble by the time I arrived. My son and I are standing there looking at the pile of bricks, when there’s a rumble up above and most of the rest of the chimney crashes through the ceiling and down into the room in front of us. Had we not been standing in the doorway and reasonably away, we would have been hit by some or possibly all the hundreds of bricks that collapsed like an Italian coaltion government.
I’ll get my bricks a later day, thank you, once this work is done. But I got to thinking the experience was like so much that has happened in New Orleans lately — done backward or in a ready-fire-aim fashion, one crew not informing the other of what it’s doing and with a great potential for someone to get seriously hurt. Then, when it’s over, everyone stands around in the dust and analyzes how things could have been done better.
It’s frustrating — almost comically so. We can do better.
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My son is doing the same thing but the company he works for is renovating all of the schools. $20/hr and all the OT he can handle isn’t bad and at 22 he’s running a crew of anywhere from 12 to 30. Hopefully he’ll want to go back to school next fall.
BTW-One school was the site of the picketers the other day. They would have had the school open but the picketers wouldn’t get out of the way.
yep, matt was telling me about that and about how he almost lost an eye. so not only do they NOT use common sense by starting at the top, they don’t seem to have concern about safety prevention either (goggles)
My wife’s dad is an Architect here in New Orleans. He thought the city planners would be in full mode of the “fix the windows first” plan after the storm. Most civil engineers and city planners have heard of this. After a dissaster, youy fix one thing first. when you get done with that, you fix another thing.
You don’t try to fix a little of everything at the same time because chaos will ensue as we have all seen first hand in this city.
Sponsored by the committee to secede from
King George.
Mr Furious….So how is this George Bush’s fault?
The comment had nothing to do with George Bush, I just hate his guts.
The comment had nothing to do with George Bush, I just hate his guts.
Those over 50 years old made out of cypress
with L shapes, arcs, or full circles
did the best to deviate Mommy Nature.
Laurie