Why We're Really Here

We came here for reasons other than Mardi Gras, although it may not seem like it from our blog thus far. So I'm going to tell a few stories. (I'll let Jordo relate his own courthouse tales. He's already got a few --- dozen.)

Part of helping with the rebuilding is helping with the unbuilding. That means gutting houses, tearing down walls, cleaning up debris and brush, etc.

Last week, I joined a group of people - including friends from The Times Picayune - in helping an elderly man remove a shed from his backyard. The shed, which was packed with everything from bicycles to bolts of fabric to appliances, had been knocked down by the the tornado. (Yes, a tornado.) If you haven't heard, a rare urban twister touched down in the city and its suburbs last week. It did a fair bit of physical damage -- knocking down homes that had just been rebuilt, tossing trees on buildings - and it also did a fair bit of psychological damage. Imagine: It's taken you more than a year to get your house together after Hurricane Katrina, you're about to move back in, and a tornado comes by and rips the roof off. I heard that story from more than one person. One elderly woman died; she and her daughter had been living in a trailer in front of their home, which just needed the wiring finished before they could move back in. Both the trailer and the house were shredded. I went to their former site, with bricks tossed everywhere and the wheels of the trailer dozens of yards from the pipes that once anchored it to the ground.

Another day, I joined a group removing nails -- thousands of nails -- from the ceiling and walls of an elderly man's home. The house had already been gutted and only a frame remained. But before anything could be done to that frame, the nails had to go. It was tedious, sometimes frustrating, work as nail heads disintegrated and some nails just refused to be pulled. At times, I wondered, "Is this really that important?" And then I met Mr. L.

I'm going to call him Mr. L to respect his privacy. Mr. L is an 84-year-old African American man, tall and lean, very handsome. He looks more than a decade younger than he is, and he only used a cane because he'd injured his knee recently.

Mr. L had lived in the house where we now stood for more than 52 years. He and his wife, who died in 1997, raised five children there. The structure had started as a small dwelling, but over the years, Mr. L had added rooms and improvements. A chandelier still hung in one room and the two front doors had been specially made to fit the space. (Mrs. L had only had a chance to enjoy the doors for a few months before she died in 1997, Mr. L told us. He was also upset that the storm had warped the wood, meaning he'd have to get new ones when he rebuilt.) The front porch was paved with light bricks. The house, Mr. L said, had been something he had been very proud of.

Then Katrina came. Mr. L lost his house, four of his children lost their homes, and, for a time, he said, "There was not one house in this city where I could lay my head." He left the city to live out-of-state with his fifth child, but had returned to his neighborhood as soon as he could get a FEMA trailer. As it was, he was the only person living on his street. Without street lights or any glows emanating from any surrounding homes, it was dark, dark at night, and it made me fear for his safety. Mr. L said he liked the day, when he could go about the neighborhood and look at what was once his home and thriving neighborhood, but night was hard for him. "It's a long, long time," he said. "Sometimes it looks like morning's not coming."

Mr. L couldn't stop smiling when he saw what we'd done. "Look how much better it looks without all them nails!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to sleep well tonight."

I started talking with Mr. L about his life pre-K. His name was Wilfred and he'd had a twin brother named Wilbert who died in 2001. I said, "Did they call you Fred and Bert?" He said, "No, my aunt called my brother 'Hart' without the e and they called me 'Dumplin'. I was a grown man and they'd call me Dumplin' and it would make me so mad."

We talked a little longer, joined by my friend Dave, a Dart fellow in town to help both the city's journalists and its rebuilding process. Mr. L could not stop thanking us.

And then he said the words that brought tears to my eyes: "What you did, it's not going to be in the history books, but it'll be in my heart," he said, putting a hand to his chest.

Before we drove away, Dave and I said, "Bye, Dumplin' " He just smiled at us.

Tomorrow I'm going to start a stint with Habitat for Humanity to see how I do with the actual building part. Further updates as events warrant.