Here is an excerpt.
Return to New OrleansA Sacramento photographer journeyed to his boyhood home and found mile after mile of abandoned streets and deserted homes and a widespread uneasiness about the upcoming hurricane season By Noel Neuburger
After the flooding of New Orleans, I was afraid that the city and culture I had grown up in would be largely washed away in the receding waters. I imagined that what little was left would be bulldozed and plowed under, leaving only memories and whatever artifacts survived the floods and the exodus. Worse yet, I feared that after the D-8s and dump trucks had had their terrible way with the devastated neighborhoods that what would be constructed in their place would be the Disney Corp. or Las Vegas version of New Orleans. New Orleans World! I feared that the complex culture of New Orleans--the way time and circumstance had interwoven the sacred and the profane, misery and joy, existence and communion into a way of life that could be enjoyed, on some level, by everyone--would be lost forever.
I didn’t want to see it, yet I wanted to see it.
When I finally had the time and the opportunity to go to New Orleans, I took it. The first thing I packed was the container that held my father’s ashes; it had been sitting on a closet shelf in my Sacramento home since his death in 1994. I would put them in the Mississippi River. Dad--a musician whose career earned him a spot in the New Orleans Jazz Archives--had been a New Orleanian through and through. He needed to go home, and I did too. I packed my cameras.
I approached New Orleans by air, and the first thing I noticed were the bright blue tarps covering many of the roofs. It was like noticing a child covered with Band-Aids. Louis Armstrong Airport was not terribly busy. Quiet even! Normally, the tourist trade is fairly brisk in the spring; the weather can be good, and there aren’t the huge crowds that come for Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest.
I was joined shortly by my sister, Linda, who arrived from Texas. This would be a first trip back to New Orleans since the floods for both of us. We arranged to meet up at the airport and spend a few days discovering what had become of the places where we had grown up, the city that we loved.
Driving to my cousin Gail’s house in suburban Metairie, a large, rambling suburb west of New Orleans, where we would be staying, we passed many large debris piles and damaged houses with white, 180-square-foot FEMA trailers in the front yard. My cousin’s house, a brick ranch on a slab, had had 18 inches of water in it but looked fine now, with new landscaping and brick floors. I asked her why there were still so many FEMA trailers in the area, and she told me how long it takes to get anyone to do repair work, especially roofs. She pointed to the blue roofs in the neighborhood.
