The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir

Coda: Katrina’s Aftermath

270 C O D A KATRINA’S AFTERMATH Didn’t he ramble . . . he rambled Rambled all around . . . in and out of town Didn’t he ramble . . . didn’t he ramble He rambled till the butcher cut him down. T R A D I T I O N A L I AM GRATEFUL THAT BOTH MY PARENTS, WHO EVEN IN DEATH REMAIN iconic figures locally, missed the destruction of the city that they loved. Most of all I am glad that Mom missed the departure of the Ruth’s Chris corporate offices from New Orleans. Craig Miller, CEO, announced within a week of Hurricane Katrina that he was moving the corporate offices to Orlando. He explained that only weeks before they had taken the company public—the NASDAQ symbol was RUTH—and they needed to show their shareholders and customers that Ruth’s Chris was viable. It’s what Ruth would have done, Miller claimed. He wasn’t sure if they would ever reopen the flagship. Sitting at an intersection that flooded and left customers stranded even in a hard rain, the Broad Street restaurant took on five feet of Katrina’s floodwaters. “No, that’s certainly not what Ruth would have done.And if she had, she would have added,‘We’ll be back soon.’” That’s what I told an audience less than two months later at the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium in CODA: KATRINA’S AFTERMATH 271 Oxford, Mississippi, where I sponsor the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award, which honors an unsung hero or heroine, a foodways tradition bearer of note. Most of all, I argued, they had no right to appropriate her voice in defending their corporate decision. R.W.Apple Jr. of the New York Times was in the audience and published my remarks. Miller called me, urging me to back off.“You’re hurting the value of your stock.” “Between my stock and my mother’s legacy,” I replied, “it’s an easy choice.”We never spoke again. He was eventually replaced. Many in New Orleans announced they would never dine at Ruth’s Chris again. But Mom had created the Ruth U. Fertel Foundation in her will and it was devoted to education in the New Orleans area. She had made me president, her parting gift. This was a legacy I could help steward. There was much work to do. I was teaching the Literature of Exile at the New School for Social Research in New York, never imagining my own narrative would suddenly become part of the syllabus. On my first trip back, I found New Orleans unspeakably lonely. The devastation wrought by the levee breaks went on and on, block after block at the lakefront (where I grew up), Mid-City (where Mom had lived), the Lower Ninth Ward, and St. Bernard Parish—areas once shimmering with funky life, now lifeless and forlorn. Everywhere dump trucks trolled—FEMA paid by the load. Men with masks directed traffic, sometimes in Hazmat gear. I passed huge dumping areas piling ever higher, flooded cars, blocks and blocks boarded up. I negotiated one surprise detour after another. Refrigerators taped shut against their stench littered the sidewalks. All the grass and many trees were dead—drowned. Everywhere I looked for the high water line still visible on homes—dubbed the bathtub ring—sometimes feet from the ground, sometimes over my head. Grey dust covered everything. It was like being in an old sepia photograph , but with blue sky. In Audubon Park and on St. Charles Avenue there was too much sky: huge holes where live oaks once stood. Seville Drive saw nine feet. Our one-time home’s foundation had cracked and its brick façade was tumbling down. The pine trees Paw-Paw had planted were cut and piled amidst the last owner’s detritus. The house has since been demolished. CODA: KATRINA’S AFTERMATH 272 Birds, too, were gone. In “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans” Louis Armstrong laments “the tall sugar pines / Where mockin’ birds used to sing.”Who knew it could mean this? For many years, I had proudly given my “Fertel Funky Tour” to friends visiting New Orleans, emphasizing sites that the tour busses missed. We would lunch at Uglesich’s or Willie Mae’s Scotch House. I would take them by the flagship Ruth’s Chris. Broad and Orleans is...