Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 61)

door on the stench of the mold rising up from the first floor. We crank open all the windows and stand before the billowing curtains for a moment. It’s still in the 80s here every day, and we are slick with sweat from the protective clothing we wore downstairs over our jeans and T-shirts. It is all exactly as we left it the Sunday morning we hurriedly fled New Orleans — except that, with the masks off, we suddenly realize everything upstairs, too, smells like mold. It’s nothing like the overpowering reek in my study and the kitchen. In fact, it takes a moment to recognize the dusty, rotting odor for what it is. Every single thing up here will have to be cleaned, Marsha decides. I open our closet and riffle my pants hanging in a row. Somehow, the scent of mold has insinuated itself into every fold. Marsha slumps down on our bed, its blanket thick with the same smell. She shakes her head. Neither of us expected that the upstairs would be a problem, too. This time, I’m the one to ask, “So where do we begin?” there, we wedged the two cats beside our son in the backseat of our VW Beetle and traveled 1,600 miles to our daughter’s home near New York. Finally, two weeks ago, we returned to New Orleans, completing a circuit of roughly 3,500 miles. Since our house was uninhabitable after sitting flooded for three weeks, Marsha and I moved into the back of a daycare center after our search for a place to rent had turned up nothing. Unfortunately, because of the hurricane, the center still has no hot water, so each evening when we returned from the filthy work of hauling our ruined possessions out to the street, we had to take cold showers. Thanks, though, to a kind real-estate agent with nothing to show us in our price range but who remembered his cousin had half of a shotgun double available, we now have hot water — surrounded by a charming little house. With wooden-bladed fans hanging from fourteen-foot ceilings, low doorknobs, a cozy patio in the back, and a floor-to-ceiling window to the front porch with working shutters, it Oct. 20, 2005 As it would have been described when I was a child, we are living in reduced circumstances. Marsha and I have moved from our three-bedroom home on the lakefront to a three-room house near the river in uptown New Orleans. Actually, in the seven weeks or so since Hurricane Katrina came ashore, what we’ve done most of all is move. The day before the storm hit, without a hotel room available anywhere in Louisiana or Mississippi, we drove 600 miles to my brother’s place in Dallas. Then, after a week Hot Water opposite page: Mud and mold patterns. above: Striated water stains on a New Orleans convenience store. couldn’t be a more traditional New Orleans home. Our side of the double is small, but the furniture we salvaged from our second story doesn’t quite fill the place. We’re using what was my daughter’s high-school desk as the table in our kitchen/dining room. I’m writing this column on the other student desk from our son’s old room. Our bed — after airing — was fine. And, of course, we brought all the upstairs bookcases and what artwork survived. With water still sloshing inside our TV set, we thought about living without television, but Hurricane Wilma, currently churning through the Caribbean, convinced us we Winter 2005-06/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 61

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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