Finding Higher Ground: A Life Of Travels

After the Flood

50 After the Flood Water is very much on my mind this late-spring day, after what the meteorologists called a “train” of thick black clouds formed to the southwest and settled over New Orleans and the rest of southeast Louisiana this past Monday, dumping its load and redumping the next day as the overladen clouds burst again, finally emptying twenty-four inches of rain at some locations across Lake Pontchartrain and eighteen inches at my place in the Garden District. For a sunken, marshy city that is mostly below sea level—a city where pumps, some of them relics of the nineteenth century, must replace gravity as draining agents, drawing the wet stuff into canals, thence into already swollen lakes, bayous, and rivers—this is no petty event. Water seeks its level; and here it is a great leveler, and not just of terrain, as it erodes irregularities and spreads alluvial soils. The less prosperous residents of Harvey and Marrero on the West Bank, or of Kenner near the airport, or of the lower portions of St. Bernard, St. Charles, and St. Tammany Parishes, where swamps were solidified just enough to allow developers to get signatures on contracts for modest dwellings—these folk have once again been flooded out, with three or four feet of water in their houses and cars filled to the dashboards. Some of after the flood 51 them had been through the same thing exactly one month ago, a lesser flood but enough to ruin the carpet, installed perhaps after a previous inundation, and to soak things in the garage. But the identical thing happens also to families who have fashionable addresses on Nashville and Jefferson Avenues in Uptown, whose “basements” (ground-level areas for storage, dens, or children’s rooms) easily can take on three feet of water; and there are no fewer flooded cars along the most elegant parts of St. Charles Avenue than in many neighborhoods of lesser cachet. In the deluge of May 3, 1978, when eleven inches fell in a short time, an acquaintance of mine rode his freezer (not rowed, however—no oar) on the choppy water of his basement. Another Uptowner I know has just started cleaning up this morning after his fourteenth inundation . Friends keep telling him to sell his place and move to a high-rise, perhaps the one where I now live, but since he is an honest man, selling is not facilitated by these repeated drenchings. Countless other Uptown residents I know have lost their cars and other possessions . The difference between them and the unfortunate people who bought affordable properties in such too aptly named areas as the River Vista subdivision across Lake Pontchartrain or Lake Estates upriver is that my friends have the resources to dig themselves out of the sludge and to replace what the waters consumed. This year, when the rains started (“Chance of thunderstorms ,” the weatherman had said at 5:20—the same forecast given most evenings in spring and summer), I was in the Crêpe Nanou Restaurant, a very good French place on Robert Street between Prytania and St. Charles Avenue, with two students, one of whose academic success we were celebrating a few days before commencement (her Ph.D. was to be conferred shortly). It had already started raining some time before we were to meet. After we were seated, a populous corps de ballet of water drops began to dance down the front windows, nerve- 52 finding higher ground knocking basso profundo thunder interrupted our conversation , and virtuoso performances by lightning were reflected in the tall mirrors. But, come, this is New Orleans : one is not deterred by rain. We continued our meal at a civilized pace. Dinner was nearly over, and we were just about to order the crêpes marron for dessert when nature decided to turn off the electricity; there went the chance for a dessert cooked to order. No matter . We paid by candlelight and made ready to leave. Robert Street was already flooded. Pascale, who was dressed in slacks, having originally planned to come by bicycle, brought around Melanie’s car and drove right onto the sidewalk, so that the two of us wearing good dresses and high heels could step in nimbly close to the restaurant door. Perhaps, we thought, we can go for dessert to the Qué Será, where a new pastry chef who perfected his...