Second Line Rescue: Improvised Responses to Katrina and Rita

JOSEF BROWN

153 The following survivor interviews are arranged roughly by order of the narrator’s age. The Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston project was restricted from interviewing children under the age of fifteen. Thus, Josef Brown, fifteen years old when survivor interviewer Phylicia Bradley recorded his story on April 1, 2007, was one of the project’s youngest storytellers . At the time of the hurricane, he had been fourteen. Josef was thrown immediately into a role of adult responsibility for the lives and well-being of others. He embraced this role, for it was already part of his upbringing, as his accounts of family life attest at every turn. Barely a teenager at the time he was recorded, Josef views his family as an entirely interdependent organism in which every individual is responsible for the acts of all others. He helps his brother break into an unoccupied house to save his family from drowning. He expresses concern that his aunt, in her seventies, had to lie on the cold concrete of an overpass for even a short time. In Houston, after the storm, as his mother becomes depressed over being unemployed, he acts as her caretaker. JOSEF BROWN “We’re a real tight family, and can’t nothing break us apart” 154 Josef Brown Well, I grew up in New Orleans, and as a child I always had fun, because I could hang with my friends. They were close around, and I always had something to do when I was in New Orleans. I grew up downtown, Mid City. Went to McDonogh 35. So. I have two brothers and one sister, and it’s a real close family. We like to keep in touch with each other. We talk to each other almost every day. We’re a real tight family, and can’t nothing break us apart, especially a storm. I miss the surroundings and the homey feeling that I always had, like I always wanted to go to school. I never had a day where I didn’t want to go to school. I always woke up, got ready to go to school, went to school, did my thing, caught the bus home, might have went down the street, talked with my friends, and played basketball, just laugh, just have fun. Things wasn’t so tight; it was more free, and I could just be free, so that’s how I felt. That’s pretty much a basic day. I come home after playing basketball , talk to my mama, call my big brother, see what he did that day, and watch television. I feel that New Orleans just, it’s a wonderful place if you, if you ever been there, ever visited, went to Jazz Fest, Mardi Gras, anything. It’s a wonderful place and even with the stuff that went on there it’s a very wonderful place. It’s so homey. Everybody’s like family there. You can hang out with people you don’t know, for hours, and they ain’t going to even tell Josef Brown (center), age fifteen, in Houston, with his older brother Cedric and his mother, Debra. Photo by Dallas McNamara. Josef Brown 155 you nothing. It’s really close-knit in New Orleans. Everybody: you ain’t got to be nervous around them, and you ain’t got to put on airs. You could just be yourself and that’s what I like about New Orleans, you know. You always want to do something, you could always be with your friends, you go to Canal Street, they always have something to do. It wasn’t too big. It wasn’t too small. It just, it was perfect for a person like myself. Always had somebody to be with, always. Always knew where to go, and I knew my surroundings, and that’s what I like about it. And I feel that everybody should know that. The schools were good. You learned what you had to know. It was real friendly schools. The schools were good. The teachers didn’t really pound unnecessary stuff into your head. They taught you what you needed to know, and they taught you anything you needed help with, like family. They could be your counselor: if you ever needed to talk, teachers wasn’t just going to run away from you. If you had a problem, they were there for you. Like they...