The Long Road Back
Spirituality has seen the Dunbar family through. After they evacuated, they ended up in the Acadian Baptist Center, a Bible camp, in Eunice, La. "Those people treated us real large, yes, Lord," recalls Dunbar, who was especially touched by a woman at the camp who brought her new towels, new socks, and "Mary Kay perfume in a little box--I mean, it had never been opened."
With the restaurant still closed, Peggy has started a ministry, delivering her Katrina sermon in the living room of her new apartment, over in Metairie, La., a half-hour drive from Freret Street. Peggy keeps the room free of furniture, to host Sunday services. "You know that saying, 'You can take everything, but leave me Jesus'?" she asks. "Well, we got it."
Today, like the rest of the city, much of Freret is more or less at a crossroads. Developer Greg Ensslen worries about what will happen to the residents if they don't get the help they need from the insurance companies and the government. "I'm a Type A ... personality, doing everything I know how to do," says Ensslen, who has lived in the area for 17 years. "And I'm just getting by." He is heartened, though, having just leased out all the storefronts in his new Blue Block project on Freret, including a coffeeshop, an ice-cream parlor, and a Mardis Gras costumer.
Lauren Anderson, director of the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, was set to declare victory on Freret Street a few months back; now she's not so sure. She has other worries as well. "We have a culture here that's more intact than anything else in this country," Anderson explains. "As an African-American, I feel closer to my culture here than anywhere else in the country. And if we cannot reverse the diaspora, we'll lose traditions that are almost as old as this country itself."
"Stingers." At Freret Hardware, Skip Henderson tracks purchases with the seasoned eye of a sociologist. What people are buying, he observes, says a lot about how the rebuilding effort's going. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, it was just the basics: shovels, hammers, gas masks, nails. Black rubber boots, yellow rubber gloves. As residents began squatting in their homes, sales of lamp wicks surged. Then there were the "stingers"--heating elements dropped in 5-gallon buckets of water, enough for something resembling a hot bath--and a good deal at just 3 bucks. More recently, there have been requests for chains and padlocks for FEMA trailer fuel tanks; the other day, the shop sold out of another item: rat poison.
Freret Hardware's customers run the gamut. In a city suddenly thrust into a crash course on do-it-yourself contracting--particularly as demand for roofers and electricians, like their rates, has gone sky high--there's often no alternative. But there is plenty of work to go around, and laborers from Mexico have poured into New Orleans to help meet the need. Some earn as much as $2,000 a week, says Raoul Suarez, who is helping to rebuild Lee Page's home on Freret Street. When he's done hammering and sawing for the day, he makes his bed on the second floor of Page's house, an old pillow stuffed in a broken window to keep out the winter drafts.
advertisement
