After all these many months of people helping me out with this or that thing that needed to be done that I was either incapable of doing, or they could simply do better or faster; I was able to help someone else for a change. Well, sort of. A friend of mine needed to tear down a building in his backyard. He’d bought a house in my neighborhood that needed very little work, but being British, he wanted a garden in his backyard (don’t ask me, people). Problem was, about 20% of his sizable backyard was consumed with this, uh, we’ll call it a shed. A big shed. A big shed made of cinder blocks and barge board.

He was originally going to have someone tear it down and haul it off, or get a dumpster - both expensive propositions. So I suggested; suggested in a rather pushy manner, that we tear it down and put it on the curb for the city to haul off before the November 1st deadline when they’ll stop picking up debris (not sure how enforceable that is The idea that the city can enforce anything is laughable at this point.). So that’s what I spent most of the last few days doing and let me tell you, cinder blocks are heavy! It was nice hanging out with friends and actually doing something. I’m so sick of meetings. There was actually a planning meeting for my neighborhood going on when I was heading over to his house that first morning. I walked past that big plate glass window, with all the people sitting inside. I was pushing a wheel borrow with some tools in it and thinking that someone in that room is probably saying the phrase “We should…” to start a sentence.

I hate that phrase, and now when I hear it, my mind translates it into “Someone other than me should…” or “We should find someone to…” Think about it the next time you’re in a meeting and see if one of those two isn’t really what’s being said. I remember the minute I’d reached some sort of threshold and started hating that phrase. I was sitting in one of the Freret Neighborhood Association meetings, talking about how to spend our little part of the recovery money we’d likely be getting, and someone, somewhere in the room said something like, “We should have the street car line run up Napoleon”. And something in my head just snapped and I found myself thinking, ‘We? You said we? Who the fuck is we? Are you going to get out there with a shovel and lay some fucking streetcar tracks?

Very unreasonable of me. But it did make me have to go outside and smoke, which gave me a moment to think outside of the mental vacuum. And that’s when I realized that if the street car line on Napoleon had been damaged during the storm then that would be a fine use of recovery money. Problem is, there isn’t a streetcar line on Napoleon and it wasn’t damaged. So I started thinking, a street car line on Napoleon isn’t a wholly bad idea and I am not opposed to it. Hell, I’m not even opposed to spending recovery money on a nice improvement like that.Providing, that every other repair (i.e. non-improvement) project is done first. Then if there’s a bunch of money left over then an improvement project is fine. Ethically, a little questionable I suppose, but I’m fine with it.

And it isn’t just a street car line that’s being put into the neighborhood recovery plan as an improvement project, that will eventually be part of the City-wide plan (someday), go through the state, and eventually Congress. I guess I just don’t understand the mentality that’s being used or where it’s coming from. All this money that’s coming in, shouldn’t it be used for repairs only, or at least primarily? I mean, I know it isn’t just my neighborhood that’s adding in shit to ensure they get a nice piece of the pie. I’ve looked through some of the other neighborhood plans and there’s some truly inappropriate shit in there.

Is it really that difficult to believe that someone in Congress is going to say, “Street Car Line on Napoleon eh. Well, uh, let me ask you this: Was a Street Car Line on Napoleon damaged as a result of Hurricane Katrina?”? What kind of response is there for that? “Well, uh, no sir/ma’am. We just thought since the government was going to give us a bunch of money to fix things, we’d take advantage of that as much as possible and try to milk the American Tax Dollar for all we could get by including Capital Improvement Projects since we were sort of short-changed in the whole reconstruction thing after the Civil War”. That’s going to be a sad day. And you may be thinking to yourself, ‘no, congress is going to give us what we need’. Three words people “Oil/Gas Revenue”. Clearly, Congress is more than ready to give the fine people of this state…..er, nothing at all.

So I was thinking that tearing down that building in my buddy’s backyard for the city to come pick up might be a little out of line. But the truth of the matter is the thing was pretty messed up from the storm, and honestly, shouldn’t have ever been built to begin with. I guess it could have been repaired, but to what purpose? If it could be turned into an apartment, then sure, let’s fix it up - but that was really not an option so tearing it down and trying to salvage anything reusable seemed the best bet. Then, somehow, when he called 311 to have the city come pick it up, the city told him they don’t pick up cement because it’s too heavy. I really felt bad, having encouraged him to do it based on bad information. So I had to call around and find some way for this crap to be picked up. Luckily, Laureen knew what to do and is making the appropriate phone calls today. It seems that even my best intentions in trying to help someone are a little shady, and I can’t really help anyone without help from others myself. But that’s alright. It’s nice that, at least on some level, people are getting together and getting things done - sometimes in spite of the structure set up to supposedly help us.

BTW: I have no idea why I thought the city would pick up concrete with everything else - I thought maybe you’d have to call because of the weight thing - but I was sure they’d pick it up. Did I just make it up? Did someone tell me they would? There’s clearly been a misunderstanding - or I’ve just lost my mind.

Related posts:

1. Weekend workout
2. “Between the hammer and the nails there lies unspoken compromise”*
3. What a Weekend (random notes)
4. Having a Wild Weekend
5. Time Well Spent