Hurricane Van De Voorde Takes New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS – It’s been almost two years since this beautifully dirty city was dismantled by the worst natural disaster in our country’s history, so I figured it was high time my seven-month-old daughter and I drive down here and investigate the progress of the recovery effort.
Thanks to my wife Carolina and her connections with the National Office for Victims of Crimes, we are able to stay in a plush hotel in the French Quarter that we would have never been able to afford, pre- or post-Katrina. The only catch is Carolina must attend a daily conference, leaving baby Sofia and I to tour the city on our own.
First off, the ride in from the Gulf Coast was eye-opening. From Interstate 10 we saw old apartment buildings with windows shattered, new apartment homes ready for new tenants who hadn’t yet arrived, an abandoned Toys ’R’ Us next to a thriving Home Depot.
While the worst of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and the accompanying levee breaches was outside of the world-famous French Quarter, Sofia and I felt the best place to start our on-the-ground investigation would be on Bourbon Street, where we would be able to smell things far worse than Sofia’s diaper and I could show her first-hand the types of businesses in which she would never be allowed to work.
It was a relief to see that gigantic beers can still be bought cheaply alongside foul-mouthed T-shirts, and if one wanted, he or she could quench an afternoon – or even morning – thirst with a selection of swirling daiquiris that would make Baskin-Robbins proud. Much to Mayor Ray Nagin’s chagrin, we’ve found New Orleans to be more of a Praline Pecan City than the Chocolate City the embattled mayor once dreamed of. And in a nice nod to the city’s rich tradition of hospitality and its future reliance on tourism as one of the key rebuilding blocks, the cover charge was waived for Sofia at publisher Larry Flynt’s club.
The first time we personally felt the impact of Katrina’s wrath on the city came on the third night of our stay, when, after suffering through some very delicious and very expensive meals centered around that sweet fruit of the bayou, the crawfish, we sought sustenance in the two-piece and a biscuit combo from one of my old haunts, Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits. Imagine the shock and sadness we felt when we arrived after an eight-block walk to a boarded up Popeye’s. Standing there, hungry, with a despondent wife and hungry child in tow, I had to wonder if I had folded up Sofia’s stroller and used it to break through the boarded windows in an attempt to feed my family, would CNN and Fox News label me a looter or a desperate father trying to feed his family?
We eventually were able to eat more crawfish, but there was also more sadness to be seen here. Walking one morning after our morning beignets and café au lait and Café Du Monde, Sofia and I encountered a down-on-his-luck drunk sleeping with his head propped up by the exterior of some 18th- century historic building and legs stretched across the sidewalk directly in the path of Sofia’s stroller. On his lap was a small, but shiny and new transistor radio cranked to “10” as Faith Hill sang, “Caught up in the touch/The slow and steady rush/Baby isn’t that the way that love’s supposed to be?” I wasn’t sure if I should stop and check if I could feel him breathe, so Sofia, the stroller and I crossed on the other side of the street.
The real sad stories, though, came from the people who live in New Orleans. Today, as Sofia and I lounged around the rooftop pool with our liquid peas and peaches, chilling out to the sounds of the Zombies, Otis Redding, and James Brown on the radio we lifted from the drunk guy, we overheard the bartender talking to old friends about the troubles of post-Katrina New Orleans. House prices had dropped, only to make way for the exorbitantly high insurance costs. City services were crippled and unreliable, business was way down, and few of the displaced residents found the desire to return. She blamed the federal, state and local government, along with just plain bad luck.
Somehow, the radio DJ’s promise to rebuild New Orleans “one great oldie at a time,” seemed lacking. It’s going to take a lot more visits from the Van De Voordes and a lot more crawfish dinners to get the city back on its feet. We’re willing to do our part.