Sitting in the truck last night and listening to WWL radio, they were finally able to get a live interview with the sheriff of Terrebonne Parish (Houma). This is a lovely little city that straddles a bayou about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans. It’s home to bluesman Tab Benoit and a host of other tremendously nice people who are former customers and remain good friends.

Terrebonne Parish was devastated by Hurricane Gustav. The sheriff says there is no power, no sewage, no water supply, no gasoline, no nothing — much like or in many ways worse than New Orleans afte Katrina. Houma is not a spot in the road — it’s home to thousands who are either stuck there or who are on the road and being told they won’t be allowed back in for at least another ten days or so. Anyone attempting to return will be stopped and turned around. The place simply cannot support what few have remained, much less anyone who tries to come back.

Pray for these wonderful people and their parish. More than that, do what you can to help them. Please.

This piece was written Tuesday night at home, where we have no power, Internet or whatever. But power came back on about 1am Wednesday morning, so we’re okay now.

We‘re experiencing what I call The Hurricane Dichotomy. It’s that weird existence following a storm in which one works in a reasonably normal environment with a/c, power, lights and all the conveniences of Modern Living, but then returns each evening to the Dark Ages, in which everything is dark and much more like things were 200 or so years ago. When it got dark outside, it was simply dark — unless someone pulled out a lantern or torch or some other thing that made light. This also meant it was cold in the winter or, in our case now, hot and humid in the summer (until it gets hot and humid in the fall, about three weeks from now).

Much of the city remains without power again tonight, and it’s a rather checkerboarded pattern We’ve set up the generator, which is making its lawnmower noise out back, and run a lot of extension cords throughout the house. This creates a complicated web of things to trip over in the middle of the night, so it’s good practice to empty yourself completely before going to bed. We’ve opted not to hook up power-sucking items like the fridge (which we emptied of potential olfactory hazards before the storm) and air conditioning, It’s basically some lights and a few fans and space left over to charge phones, etc. We’ve also powered the router and all, but there is no signal coming into the modem so we’re kinda SOL for going online at the house. Wireless signals are too far away (at least five blocks or so), so we’re out of communication at night except for any cell phones (half of which aren’t working in New Orleans for now)

The generator sets up a pretty good white noise, once you get used to it. Perhaps there could be a market in hurricane-prone areas for such background sounds, similar to those with the sound of gently breaking waves or the other stuff you can find on relaxation CDs. Down here, the rockabye noises would include generators, popping nail guns on re-roof jobs, Coast Guard helicopters overhead, NOPD sirens, ship horns on the river, streetcar bells and bums asking you for a cigarette. Ah. sweet home New Orleans. Zzzzzzzzzz.

We actually went through this during Tropical Storm Cindy, that thing that hit here about a month before Katrina. TBK and I were able to nest up in a generator-powered room with an a/c unit and we could also run the TV and the PC and some lights and all kinds of things. But back then we were only two. Now we are five in the house, with Milo upstairs and Kristen and Matt downstairs, so things are stretched out a little more.

Last time, all this lasted about a week. This time, it appears Baton Rouge (which caught things worse than us) and New Orleans are apparently off the grid and on our own little Electrical Island. There are some 850,000 of us sitting around in the dark tonight around Louisiana.

I think that’s a good thing from time to time. Sometimes being in the dark makes us see things a lot more clearly.

Kinda weird around town today. We’re functioning, but we’re not. We opened our place at lunch and will go until the food is out. I’ve got a couple briskets working for tonight, but they’re not going to last long. The problem is that ALL re-supply places are closed until at least tomorrow or later in the week because their employees hit the road and aren’t back or won’t be allowed back for a few days yet. It’s frustrating, since so many places have power and inventory, but no one to sell it. I’ve got manpower and electricity, but little inventory. What I could really use right now is beer — not to drink but to sell.

There’s no gasoline, no grocery stores, no convenience stores and only a smattering of other retail-type places open (no power). The juice is also still out at the house, but we’ll get the generator back over there tonight. None of us slept well last night because it was dead still, hot and sticky. It’ll be a big help to get a few fans going this evening.

Authorities are telling evacuees to wait another couple of days before coming back, but I don’t think they’re exactly setting up many roadblocks. It’s not like we’re trying to make the house look nice after a big party. Except for downed limbs and a lack of power, it’s impossible to tell in many areas that we had any kinda of storm — ’cause it was trashed since way before even Katrina.

…so we’ve essentially got another day or so of Labor Day.

I can’t say enough about the NOPD and their officers, as well as the National Guard. They’re been professional but flexible throughout this entire event. And, of course, we’ve managed to have a great time here at the restaurant. Alex and Milo have more than carried their share while being bone-tired, Kristen and Matt have been doing above and beyond to make things work and Stu and Melanie have been juggling more objects than they should. It has truly been a group effort and we’ve managed to have fun doing it. We all wanted to take a day off today, but once we saw how many peole needed feeling, everyone went back to it.

Thanks to all of you.

We packed up our two cars last night and left the city around 6:30pm. We heard about the mandetory evacuation while on the road. With a toddler it just did not make sense for us to stay plus we have over a week of free Hilton points racked up from my husband’s job so we reserved a room at the closest Hilton family hotel with availability and took off. The first two hours on the road were near hell. We moved 12.3 miles in two hours. It did not get a lot better until we reached Interstate 65 in Mobile. A trip that should have taken us 5 hours took 12 and a half. We arrived at the Hampton Inn in Troy, Alabama a little after 6:30 this morning. The baby slept through most of the drive so we have not had an opportunity to get much sleep here yet but we are holding together and hoping for some sleep tonight though with twenty-four hour weather channel coverage I am not sure how much sleep will actually come tonight.

We have run into two other families staying in our hotel sharing our plight, one from New Orleans and one from Houma. The Hampton Inn is being very nice to all of us, they have also bending their no pet policy and are letting us bring our pets into the hotel.

Good luck to everyone who stayed behind.

We closed the restaurant at about 6 this evening to get the place cleaned up and get a few things out of the house befthe curfew descended at sundown. TBK and I will be sleeping downstairs in the dining room, where we’ve set up a blow-up mattress. The power went out when the first feeder band came across, cutting us off about 7:30. It was actually a good test run, to get the generator set up and the lines run in the semi-dark. We got everything organized and tested just in time for the power to come back on about 45 minutes later. That boosted our spirits, since now we’re back in the a/c and making sure everything is charged (and posting and e-mailing) and watching the TV while it lasts. I’d anticipate complete failure early tomorrow morning, once things start getting heavier. I look for landfall (at the current forward speed) about 10 in the morning or so. I can’t remember seeing the full force of a hurricane arriving in daylight, since the ones I’ve been through have nearly always arrived at night or very early in the morning.

The NOPD is serious about enforcing the curfew, at least until other things start getting in their way. We’ve parked all the cars on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, partly to get them onto higher ground and partly to form a shield against flying debris, possible looters and any other undesirable objects. We were sitting on the tailgate of the pickup just after dark when a police cruiser barked at us to get back inside under curfew — so we adjourned to the dark courtyard.

Oh — the NOPD has highly cool new caps. One of our beat cops said he’d get me one when all this is over. Thanks dude.

We’re actually SMOKING in the dining room, which would be a violation of state law if we were open. Ha fucking ha. I bought new cigars yesterday, so I’ll fire one up in a little while and break out the bourbon. We’re already missing ice — though we froze some in advance that we’re saving for later if we really, really need it.

We have loaded the guns, though we haven’t shucked shells in the chambers yet. We have also posted a sign in the front window, saying WE ARE HERE INSIDE AND HEAVILY ARMED.

The only traffic outside is police, usually going the wrong way on our one-way part of Magazine. We’re also seeing the occasional Guardsmen and it’s good to have them back in force. I was joking with one officer earlier today that what they need to do is park at the top of the Crescent City Connection bridge and keep any Westbankers from walking across the bridge into New Orleans. He shot back, “Yeah. We’re afraid they’ll clean the place up. We’ve got our pride.”

I’ll be doing Q-and-As this evening and early tomorrow morning with BBC-Ireland and with an Australian network (thanks Joe). I was also interviewed today by the Miami Herald and by Warren Levinson of the AP. Ari Shapiro of NPR also ate here (twice!) today. Being the only restaurant open on lower Magazine kinda made us The Place To Be. The ONLY Place to be. It was good to share some “do you know?” time with folks in my former profession and to talk a little of what used to be shop. Some white SUV drove by with a big “TV” plastered on it in black electrical tape. Given the deserted streets, I felt like I was in Beirut or someplace.

Some ningnong TV guy was just on the tube, still wearing his cap and damp rain gear, facing the camera and intoning, “Tonight, New Orleans is a city holding it’s breath…” Puh-leeze. Folks like you are part of the reason why I’m not in that business anymore.

We won’t be open tomorrow and, despite the weather, I’m looking forward to getting an actual Day Off. We all are. We might be hot and we might have wet feet or whatever, but we won’t be cooking. It will be a hassle keeping things cool, rotating two freezers and two fridges ointo and off the generator — so there will be enough to keep us busy inside while keeping track of things outside. We’re also a group made of largely of hurricane first-timers, so there is a lot of fear of the unknown. Stu and Kristen have been through several and I’ve been through quite a few, so we’re trying to be Cool Heads.

Not sure what the conditions will be for posting later tonight and into tomorrow while the bulk of the system moves through.

…now that I’ve put that earworm on you…

It IS a pretty day in New Orleans today, as is nearly every pre-hurricane day anywhere. It’s a bit humid and kinda breezy. We’ll keep the restaurant open until sundown, when a curfew goes into effect until dawn. This gives us the afternoon to get organized. getting the generator and other stuff in here and getting set up.

We’ve had a series of customers today, most of which have announced they are also staying. They’re grateful there is SOMEplace open, even if they’re on their way out of town, since EVERYplace is closed. You know things are serious when both the Wal-Mart and the Discount Zone convenience store are closed. But we’re cheered a bit at the latest storm tracking report, which shows landfall of the center a little farther west than anticipated. Every mile west that landfall occurs puts us farther from the strongest winds.

I’ve talked with about everyone I need to talk to, informing them we’re staying. I finally turned my phone off last night to simply stop the calls and the texting and the explaining. We both slept very well, though we were up early to get things cranked up down here.

The city isn’t a ghost town. Traffic is more like early Christmas morning, with only occasional vehicles. We’ll park where we want to block the front doors tonight. But it’s apparently still a mess on the main highways getting out. Glad we’re not fighting that.

I’ve been contacted by some media organizations to do a little radio work, so maybe I can make a few bucks. That’s cool.

There’s a mandatory evacuation ordered for the Westbank tomorrow beginning at 8am, extending to the Eastbank (i.e., the City of New Orleans) at noon. At least for now, projections call for landfall Monday afternoon somewhere around Morgan City, putting our city in the most dangerous northeast quadrant of a Category Four hurricane. We are under a 10pm curfew (a shame, since it’s a lovely evening, all the neighbors are out and it would be a great night for one of our periodic street parties).

This “mandatory” thing means, essentially, you’re on your own if you stay. No one is going to come drag you out of your house at gunpoint and throw you on a bus to Boise. What it means is, in the most serious parental tones, “don’t come crying to us when your walls collapse, your roof flies off to Alexandria and you’re climbing a phone pole to get away from the rapidly rising Gulf of Mexico. We warned you, you freaking idiot.” Some officials also back this up by telling people to leave the names of their next of kin with police so they can be contacted. It’s kinda the ultimate in constabulary cut-direct.

Four of our employees have already left town. A fifth might leave tonight. The worst I can accuse them of is having good sense. We know that tonight might well be our last “normal” night for, oh, God knows when. By “normal,” I mean a night in our own home, with air conditioning and full power, secure in the knowledge that we can sleep until we get up at a reasonable time tomorrow and go in to work and do what we do.

Read the last sentence again. Its operable words are “in our own home.” Everything else is pretty much expendable. We have spent much of today discussing this, in various forms or another, between the staff at work and our own family and close friends and good neighbors. No matter what the particulars for each individual, this is what it comes down to — that despite the uncertainty, the dangers, the hassles, the lack of personal comfort and the very real peril to our own very lives — we are staying because we fear that if we leave we will be prevented from completing our work. We came back after Katrina to rebuild — and we are seriously pissed off that despite all we have done, another storm and all its contingent officials, rules, bullshitters, Naginizers, FEMAtropes, post-storm looters, selfish thugs and other assorted trip-up devices are going to be thrown in our way.

A hell of a lot of us have managed to wrest a living and a life out of what was left at the end of 2005. We’ve managed to do it with the help of family, friends, neighbors and, in a lot of cases, mysterious folks who just seemed to want to help. Note that I didn’t mention “government” in there. We’ve done it despite our government(s). And it’s not done yet. It likely will never be “done.”

Now we have to deal with this latest threat. We have put too much into what we have (personally, professionally, physically) to simply sit in a motel room someplace and watch it all get washed away again. We wouldn’t be “in our own home.” I agree that to stay is a type of madness. But it’s preferable to the madness we felt in our Being Away the last time.

The old Edward R. Murrow signoff has special meaning these days down here.

Last time, when we all said goodbye before Katrina, we all assumed it would be for a few days.

It wasn’t.

This time, we know better. The simple “g’bye!” is always followed by “good luck” and something like, “we’ll see you when we see you.” And there’s a lot of exchanging cell phone numbers. We’re hopeful and optimistic, but a lot more realistic as well. Plenty of folks are already headed out, getting an early start on their holiday weekend and leaving their return very, very open-ended. Hotel rooms are pretty much nailed down for anyplace within about six hours, meaning those leaving late and hoping for hotels will have to take the kids farther into Florida, maybe up to check out the tourist sites (both of them) in Dallas or, in the case of one of my employees, to Nashville to check it out. He’s never been, and figures now is good a time as any. He’s a Tulane student, and says the plan is for classes to resume next Thursday. We’ll see.

A customer pointed out last night that contraflow would likely begin sometime on Saturday EXCEPT for the fact that LSU plays in Baton Rouge Saturday night. It would be poor politics to tell the thousands of fans from New Orleans that, “Hey! You can go to the game but you can’t go back home!” So, assuming the system stays on the same general path, I’d imagine this would all start sometime (very) early Sunday. Or something.

I just got a phone call from some outfit in Texas, asking if a salesman could some by to see me Wednesday morning at nine. I told them sure, go ahead.

The National Guard has set up shop a couple blocks away at the Convention Center. Helicopters are landing and taking off and Humvees are moving around and there’s all these folks in uniform. It brings back a lot of memories and, well, the Groundhog Day Effect of everything happening again.

…and there’s that “goodbye” thing hanging over everything.

It sucks. But now I gotta stay. I have an appointment with a salesman.

George Bush
• Has declared State of Emergency in Louisiana.

National Guard
• Is en route to New Orleans to provide coverage throughout the city.

St. Tammany Parish Officials
• Have already declared a State of Emergency.

Ray Nagin
• Took part in a joint press conference last night, at which he had apparently little to say.
• May be having lunch, because as of 12:55pm today, there’s no sign of him on the news feeds.
• Should really fire his freakin’ webmaster.

Summary:
Jindal: 7
Bush: 1
National guard: 1
St. Tammany: 1
Nagin: -4
CityOfNO webmaster: -6

Willie White is a well known salvager in New Orleans.  After doing hand salvage in New Orleans for more than 20 years, driving through the Treme he points out a disturbing number of empty lots where he has hand salvaged homes which were blighted and would have otherwise ended up in a landfill.  In the Post-Katrina environment he took me around the city and taught me how to gauge/evaluate the age of houses by crawling under them and their outbuildings. I learned so much in a year.

I also made the drive out to visit the site of the Bohemia Plantation in Plaqumemines Parish with Willie. The Bohemia and the Bechnel homes were both nearly destroyed after Katrina. He dismantled them both by hand with his crew. These home survived Betsy but the encroachment of the water through the erosion of marshland over the years led to their final demise during Katrina. Willie and his son saved everything from the architectural details, to roof tiles and right down to the old cypress wood beams and flooring so that they can be reused by people who know the value of old cypress. 

In taking down these houses of old construction by hand, one learns so much by how they were built. It was surprising when we would visit various sites in the city because what I suspected was a newer building on a lot was actually the original building on the parcel.  The older buildings withstood the wear-and-tear better, deceiving my novice eyes.

As part of this forensic work, Willie’s side hobby became unearthing the privies on these old lots. By studying the old Sanborn maps of the original lot parcels he can figure out where the old privies existed on the original lots in the 1800’s and he begins the hit-or-miss search for the privies with his partner. If they are having a good day, they find them. They start digging. If they have a hit, they often unearth old bottles from local pharmacies and other items people would once discard into their out-houses such as ceramic jugs and other personal effects, preserved in the wet earth for centuries. It’s the dirtiest job, but most fascinating. New Orleans is one of the richest cities for such an ecclectic hobby! Today I spotted Willie’s competition digging a privy and alerted him to their location, he stopped by the site to see what they were up to. For a moment, I enjoyed being Willie’s privy digger spy girl.

Like historical hand salvage, there are only a few people who do this work and they are quite competitive. If a house is removed Willie is always aware that one of the other local teams might come and get to the privy before he does. They cannot leave a privy half excavated, lest another team come by in the dark of night and get the goods. Willie always makes sure to get permission from the owners and it’s often his own bonus to dig a privy after he’s done a salvage job.

Wares from these archealogical digs are sold at bottle shows throughout the region from time to time but I know Willie keeps his best items. Some are museum worthy items. A visit to Willie’s warehouse is a privileged journey through New Orlean’s intimate past.

Privydigging.com is a site from a guy in Illinois who has set up an online account of his work digging up history.