Report from Slidell

I came home this weekend to remove trees and pine needles, clean up the yard generally, and fetch some respectable clothing for work. As respectable as mine gets, anyway; I have a bit of a fetish for loud, colorful ties that few of my peers seem to share. Hell with them.

Oh, as I was saying, I got to the house later than planned. I had a request to drive by the health club and check on its status. It is open, by the way, despite being in a part of town that, like mine, remains under a boil order. I decided to do a little curious sightseeing, so I made my way down to the Oak Harbor/Eden Isles area, which was hit by the storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain. Along Highway 11 is utter devastation, with the already ramshackle buildings completely gone or blown into odd places. The residents of the more pricy, better-built neighborhoods down there are gutting their homes and throwing everything out by the street. I was surprised to see no roadblock on the Highway 11 bridge, which goes across the lake from St. Tammany Parish to Orleans Parish, which is coterminous with the City of New Orleans. I decided to keep driving until someone stopped me. I drove across the bridge and into New Orleans. Interstate 10 was barricaded, but one idiot sped around the barricade, evidently thinking that he could make a fast run for it and not be caught. Alas, I saw a troop transport making a U-turn from the other direction just as said idiot got close. Interstate 10 towards Slidell is also closed, and the bridge across the lake on I-10 is very badly damaged. I use that bridge every day, so seeing it almost in ruins made quite an impression. Down Highway 11 a few hundred yards, I saw a Guardsman checking licenses, so I turned around and drove back across the lake to Slidell. I had not personally observed destruction on such a massive scale, and I got the impression that none of the many other local tourists driving around down there had seen anything like that either. The whole thing is surreal.

I cleaned out the front yard pretty easily last night, then ran the lawnmower. This morning, I acquainted myself with the intricacies of running a chainsaw, I then attacked the trees in the back yard (there were all or part of 5 different trees back there, but two were particularly large). A couple of guys from the nondenominational Northshore Church were helping my next-door neighbor, who attends their church, then they stepped over the remains of my fence and gave me a hand too. We had the big stuff out of the yard within a couple of hours. I was amazed at the pine needles I raked up--I have about 8 enormous piles of needles in the back yard, waiting to be taken to the curb tomorrow. Later on, I drove over to loan my chainsaw to Ann's husband, but when I got there, I saw two or three vanloads of Hispanic Mormons from Houston, with all the tools needed for tree removal. I was glad to see that.

I had a strange craving around noon for a cherry limeade from Sonic. Given the current state of affairs in Slidell, I decided to drive all the way to Covington for my flavorful treat. Covington appears to be almost back to normal, but it wasn't hit nearly as hard as Slidell was. In my town, WalMart, Target, and Home Depot evidently worked pretty hard to get their stores open so people could obtain food and repair supplies. The only restaurants I noticed open were Waffle House, one McDonalds, and two Burger Kings. Many places remain under boil orders, and a good many establishments in town took on water and must make repairs before they can open again.

I cannot believe that New Orleans itself is being partially reopened. None of the water in the city is drinkable; nobody really knows what's in the water to begin with; gasoline is unavailable; and there are no police or fire services that are readily available. Evidently, the powers that be don't want anybody becoming rooted in Atlanta, Houston, or Dallas, and they're willing to take chances with public health and public safety to avoid that rooting. Just my own humble opinion.

Edited to add: A roving band of Texas Mormons showed up early this afternoon, just as I was loading up the car to return into exile. I asked for their opinion about the one tree we couldn't quite figure out how to bring down yesterday. They strategized for several minutes, then brought the sucker down without damaging anything other than my already-broken fence. They had to chop a tall but extremely thin pine tree in the neighbors' yard, but I figure a) the only way anybody could get the big tree down was to take down the other one first; b) they won't mind; c) if they do mind, they don't know my new cell phone number and they'll have time to cool down before I go back to the house. The Texans also assisted another neighbor re-attach the tarp to her roof. The neighbor actually got into her car and started down the street, in hopes of finding a roofer at work somewhere. She saw the Texans at my house and asked if they could help her. Damn decent of them to show up today; it saved me a few hundred dollars, and it may have saved the neighbor quite a bit more.