The Long Road Back
New Orleans--If, as it has been said, jazz is a performer's art, not a composer's, so, too, is the rebuilding of New Orleans. True, failure, or at least the distinct possibility of it, is very much a presence in this city's fetid streets and flood-damaged homes. For all the billions of dollars being pumped into the city, in fact, given the many stumbles in the government efforts to help New Orleans get back on its feet, the prospect is ever present. But spend some time talking with those to whom the real challenge of rebuilding will fall--talk to the men and women who lived, worked, and raised families on Freret Street, for instance--and defeat seems a chimera, far from a given.
At Dennis Sigur's barbershop, the regulars flow in and out, some looking for advice, some just in for a shave and a haircut. Others drop by to shoot the breeze, see who's back in town. One customer strolls in, spots a familiar face. "I heard you was backstroking, man," he says to the friend, who didn't evacuate and whose home, like Sigur's, was destroyed. Knowing nods, across the room. Around here, "How's your house?" and "How's your Daddy?" tend to be the greetings of choice. "Not too good, baby," tends to be the answer.
A few doors down from Sigur's barbershop is Bloomin' Deals Junior League thrift store, nirvana for New Orleans ladies who can't pass up a bargain. Linda Cantero, a regular, has found a hobbyhorse for a cousin, whose home, she says, was "flattened" by Katrina. So was the wooden rocker she was going to give her year-old grandbaby. The toy, like a grown child's boxed-up baby blanket, was one of a thousand accumulations of a life suddenly washed away--small losses in the bigger scheme of things but losses that, when they're added up, can leave a great emptiness. That emptiness has swallowed up some here, but many, like Cantero, refuse to let that happen. She digs a cellphone out of her purse and dials. "Hey, you little heifer," she says. "You'll never frickin' guess what I just bought." Like the revelers who follow in the wake of Creole funeral processions, laughter here often follows close on the heels of grief. This is a city that knows how to mourn.
End to end, Freret Street runs just 3.8 miles, from the Pontchartrain Expressway to the east, up to the Mississippi River bend in the west. In that short stretch, however, it embraces virtually the full panoply of the strange, the ennobling, and the desperate that made New Orleans America's most unique and outlandish city. "Everything here," says Sigur, attending to a customer, "is stories." Over the coming year, U.S. News will recount the stories of the men, women, and children who called Freret Street home, the stories of some who no longer wish to do so, and those of still others, possessed of that uncommon grit that is second nature to so many in this city, who are determined to do so once again.
Some perspective: Today, more than two thirds of the residents of New Orleans proper are gone. No one can say for sure how many will come back. A quarter of the metro area's businesses remain shuttered, and nearly 1 of every 5 adults has no work. Six months after Katrina, the FEMA hotel money having just run out, the strains are showing. The social fabric is stretched thin in some places, shredded altogether in others.
That's certainly the case on Freret (pronounced fur-ET) Street. Sigur saw his barbershop looted, though there wasn't much of value to plunder. Once the looters were gone and the water subsided, however, he got right to work, dragging his waterlogged barber chairs out to the curb for trash pickup, pausing occasionally, he recalls, "to use my little asthma spray and pull some more." Within weeks, he had the shop he has owned since 1972 up and running. Business has been steady since. Of course, it meant draining his savings and pooling that money with what his insurance company gave him for his ruined car. No word yet, though, on the settlement for his shop, or his home, which was also destroyed.
Beginnings. Freret Street, like most of New Orleans, was brought to life by the transformative power of a series of massive pumps, installed in the early 1900s, huge contraptions, says Sally Reeves, a lifelong city resident and president of the Louisiana Historical Society, that "we talk about like they're our uncles." The pumps drained New Orleans mostly dry. Freret Street, at the back-swamp edge of town where the urban grid gave way to muddy lanes and marshland, was hardly prime real estate. Prone to flooding, it was a breeding ground for blood-fattened mosquitoes. The land was cheap, though, and it soon gave rise to modest homes of descendants of many of the newly freed slaves who turned up in New Orleans after the Civil War. "You can think of Freret as being the quintessential back-of-town street," says Richard Campanella, professor of geography at Tulane University and author of the forthcoming Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics Before the Storm. Freret was dry enough, Campanella explains, to support several semirural shantytowns but nothing much more than that. Today, you can trace the flood line of the levee breaks after Katrina as it weaves in and out of Freret. In some spots, Campanella says, the street was a "literal flood line."
In a city that once boasted streets with names like Great Men, Love, and Good Children, the origins of Freret are prosaic. The street was named after an 1840s mayor and architect, William Freret, whom history records as one of New Orleans's more "useful"mayors. Like its namesake, Freret Street, too, is useful, a workhorse kind of thoroughfare. "It's not glamorous," concedes the Louisiana Historical Society's Reeves. What it is, says Sigur, is a "lifeline."
It is a dividing line, too, reflecting with uncanny, if unplanned, accuracy the mottled socioeconomic spectrum of the city, bearing mute witness to the extremes of poverty and the policies of racial segregation. Today, Freret cuts through enclaves of shotgun shacks built to replace the old shantytowns that once bore names like Bed Bug Row, the Buzzards, and Yellow Dog. It also runs right past C.J. Peete, the public housing project built in the 1930s to replace some of the "worst slum districts in the city"--roughly 800 "substandard dwelling units ... for Negro tenants," according to a 1938 New Orleans Times-Picayune article. It was a place where tuberculosis was a workaday killer and violent crime a fact of life, outpacing the rate for the rest of the city by 40 percent. More recently, street corners like Freret and Washington, just down the street from C.J. Peete and around the corner from the Getaway Sweet Shop and Game Room, had a well-earned reputation for a thriving trade in illegal drugs. In some places, not much changes.
At its eastern, or downtown end, in Central City, Freret Street's population is almost entirely black. Head west, or uptown as they say here, and Freret cuts through Tulane University and runs past the back entrance to one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, Audubon Place. After the flooding, some residents of the gated community hired former Israeli soldiers to guard their homes. Others chartered private helicopters to buzz in and check on their property. Continue on toward the river bend, and the houses grow more modest once again, with shotguns and the occasional Creole cottage, home to blacks and whites alike.
The residents of Freret were spared the worst of the flooding, but even so, many will never rebuild, and, like the rest of New Orleans, the consequences are greater than that of a neighborhood's physical integrity. "What makes this a catastrophe isn't just the loss of physical structures," says Louisiana State University sociologist Jeanne Hurlbert. "It's the phenomenal destruction of networks, the enormous loss of emotional and social support." In New Orleans, family ties are "what helped people hold down jobs and keep their kids safe," says Hurlbert. For many now, that support is gone.
Making do. For Peter Parker, the first step in the unraveling of his extended family's life happened in the blink of an eye, as he watched the floodwater "start to walk up the sewers"in front of his shotgun at Second Street and Freret. As the waters continued to rise, Parker's family found refuge first on the second floor of a school building close by, then in the hull of an inflatable raft they found--"I ain't gonna lie to you, we took it,"says Peter's wife, Sarah Parker. Sarah and her husband spent much of the day in the water, pushing their children to the convention center. Once they got there, says Sarah, "I never slept."
Not coming back. Eventually, the family was evacuated to San Antonio, but Sarah Parker was anxious to get home. Sitting on her front stoop surveying the empty shotgun houses that line her block, some days she wonders why. "People are gone," she says. "And most of them aren't coming back." Parker's sister used to live next door, but she decided to stay in San Antonio. Her house on Freret is being gutted, and the landlord is raising the rent once it's fixed up--too high to allow her to return. Parker's niece, who lived in the house next to that, is in Alabama "with her husband's people." No word on whether they're planning to return. Parker's husband, Peter, works about an hour and a half away, bunking on a couch with her relatives, returning to Freret Street every other weekend.
Lonely and depressed, Parker got counseling while she was in San Antonio, but she hasn't seen anyone since she came home. She sleeps most of the day, all four gas burners running on the stove to help keep the house warm. She used to work at Babykeepers Day Care Center, but the center is closed, and that job is gone. Plus, she says, now she has no one to look after her kids once they get home from school. To make matters worse, she also can't find her Rottweiler, Rosco. According to the marks spray-painted on the side of her house, Rosco was rescued, but no one seems to know where he is. "I really need him back home," Parker says. "I really do." With the price for nearly everything skyrocketing and few signs that things are apt to get better on her block of Freret anytime soon, Parker understands the decisions of her neighbors. "If no one wants to come back," she says, "I'm not mad at 'em."
Theresa Harness would like to return, but she can't. She lost her home, too. She fled before Katrina hit, with her 14-year-old son, Malik, because, she says, "I knew better." Harness had a duplex at C.J. Peete, where she lived for 26 years. The first floor was destroyed in the flooding, and she has no idea when or if she'll be able to move back in. In November, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development pledged more than $1.8 billion to revamp public housing across the Gulf Coast, starting with C.J. Peete. City officials plan to turn the place into mixed-income housing, but so far nothing has been done. Frustrated, Harness has brought along a bucket full of sponges, some Lysol, and a spray bottle of bleach. She wants to clean. She also has her cable television box in the trunk. "Cox cables wants their boxes back," she says. Right now, she can't afford the fee they'll charge for keeping it.
Surveying her old home, Harness drapes an arm over Malik's shoulder. Since they evacuated to Texas, this is her son's first time back, and he is shocked. "All of this is throwing you off," Harness says consolingly. Malik nods. "Everything's dying," he says. "The plants, the grass." Harness shakes her head. "Poor city," she says, "looking so rough and ragged."
Uptown, at the corner of Freret and Napoleon, Lee Page is thinking hard about whether he'll return to the city he loves. He's living in Houston for the time being, thinking it over. The things he used to take for granted--china cabinets, lamps, you name it--are now under his house. Concrete pilings hold the place up now, and Page has been raising them week by week, foot by foot. He got tired of waiting for the city to tell him how high to rebuild, he says, so he just up and picked a number himself: 8 feet. Workers now climb in and out of his destroyed first floor using a ladder.
Still, after all the work is done, Page doesn't know if he'll stay. Like businesses and homeowners up and down Freret, he's tired of the waiting game and fears it could be the death of New Orleans. "Even if the city made a wrong decision, we'd back them to hell," he says, "but just make a decision." A passing car honks, and Page waves. "Old neighbors," he says, shaking his head. "They've got Alabama tags now."
"Hitting a wall." For business owners, the challenges have been nearly insurmountable. At the Original Brown Derby grocery, at the intersection of Freret and Louisiana, Sam Ottallah rode out Katrina, then watched the floodwaters work their way down Freret and do the damage that the looters had not. Wading through chest-high waters, he finally made his way home--only to find that destroyed, too. Insurance paid him $113,000 for the house, but he had no flood coverage for the Derby. He sought a loan from the Small Business Administration, but like 70 percent of the applicants today, he was turned down. That meant some tough choices. "There are certain things in my house that I had before the storm that I couldn't replace," Ottallah says. "I had to keep in mind that with this money, I'm supposed to fix up my house in a way that me and my family could live in it, and to save some money for my business, too, so that my family could have a source of income."
Shades for the windows at home became an issue, for instance. Ottallah's mother raised it promptly. "She said, 'Do you see this window? It needs some shades, because anybody on the street can look right into the living room,'" Sam recalls. "But when I went and changed the sheetrock, electricity, and flooring, I knew the windows needed shades, but I also knew that the business needed to be stocked."
Today, there are still no shades on the windows at home, but the Brown Derby is open for business again, an outpost of comfort, a bridge to the past. A man named Abby swept the floors and did odd jobs around the Derby before Katrina. When he heard the place was back in business, he took the Greyhound from Chattanooga, Tenn., and came straight to the store from the bus station, bags in hand. They looked out for him here. Behind the register, cashier Vivian Richards greets him warmly. "You my darlin' darlin' baby," she tells Abby. "You're my sweet and tender love," he replies. Call-and-response, a reminder of better times.
Richards keeps a watchful eye on the Derby's regulars. If they're a bit short on cash, she puts them at ease. "It's OK, baby," she says. "We ain't gonna trip over a few cents." A bulwark for others, Richards struggles herself. She is, she says, "hitting a wall." Her gospel-music tapes help ease the stress, but still, it's a lot. Her 10 siblings all lived close by before. Now they're scattered far and wide.
For Richards, like many here, money is a constant worry. She's still covering the mortgage on her home, even though she can't live in it. She doesn't know if she's going to be able to rebuild, since she had no flood insurance, and the settlement for her household goods came to just $7,000. Now she's using some of that to pay the $1,100-a-month rent on the three-bedroom apartment where she cares for her 10-year-old daughter and her husband's ailing father. Her son, Dennis, moved upstate to live with a cousin so he could finish his senior year. His high school is one of the 99 of 117 public schools in Orleans parish that remain closed. For Dennis, being away is hard. "I miss her smile," he says of his mom, on a recent visit. "I miss her face." For Christmas, Dennis gave his mother a foot massager. After a tough day at the Derby, he used to rub her feet, but now he's not there to do that anymore. One more comfort lost.
One good thing is that business at the Derby has come back pretty strong. The trouble is, the money goes out almost as fast as it comes in. "Everything I sell," Ottallah says, "that's money I give to someone else." At least the customers keep coming, though, lining up for the Big Sam soul-food lunch specials, with smothered neck bones and greens. Pickles in a pouch are also popular (also available, Richards notes, in a low-carb version). The jarred pigs' lips and Keep Movin' Claro cigars are steady sellers, too. It is the liquor sales, however, that are brisk these days, customers filling the countertop with cold cans of Coors, bottles of cream sherry, and Midnight Express cherry wine. Self-medication is going to be "extraordinarily high" here for years to come, says LSU sociologist Hurlbert, along with rising rates of alcoholism.
Good old days. Freret Street today is a far cry from its heyday. So says Nash Barreca, anyway, but he should know, since he has lived here since he was born, back in 1928. He grew up above his father's restaurant, Frank's Steakhouse, just across the street from his grandparents. In the heart of Freret's business district, Barreca and all his seven kids attended primary school--"the short grade," he calls it--at Our Lady of Lourdes, the Roman Catholic church on the corner. Today, the archdiocese is trying to decide whether to reopen the school or close its doors once and for all.
For 42 years, Barreca was the Mardi Gras krewe chief of the Freret Business Association. The parade used to come right down Freret in the old days, and Barreca would stop his float out front of his parents' place and hoist a glass in their honor. Today, Barreca's son, Nash Jr., is the chef at the highly regarded Nash's restaurant up in Broussard, but he recalls as if it were yesterday learning to cook at the knees of the Creole ladies who worked at Frank's and buying frosty-cold snowballs from the old men who ran the stands that used to line Freret. Then there was the Freret Jet, the rattletrap bus that ran the length of the street, carrying screaming kids and sweating adults to sporting events over at Tulane, rumbling past the sidewalk shops stacked with cages of live chickens and turkeys. Order a bird for dinner, and the proprietor would wring its neck right then and there, then pluck the carcass clean.
That was then, though. More recently, after the neighborhood struggled with white flight and the murder of a beloved business owner, an infusion of government cash helped revitalize homes and businesses up and down Freret, to the point where some residents even began worrying about fast-buck investors flipping properties, driving prices beyond the means of longtime residents, says Glenis Scott, president of Neighbors United, the neighborhood association. "We grappled with that," he says. "We didn't want to discourage investors, but we didn't want to see our own folks price-gouged out of the neighborhood." Today, such worries seem a distant memory.
From the outside, Dunbar's Creole Cooking was never much to look at. Inside, though, it was a neighborhood institution, the kind of place where the campaigns of promising black politicians got launched, where deals that sealed careers got hatched. When Dunbar's celebrated its 20th birthday last year, the Rebirth Brass Band played. Mardis Gras Indians and longtime customers danced outside the doors.
The shop had come a long way from its modest beginnings, when Celestine Dunbar carried steaming plates of food from her home across the street to the little sandwich shop she took over. When customers started lining up out the door, Dunbar's daughter, Peggy, came to help out. Now, after the floodwaters virtually destroyed the place, Dunbar is back to cooking meals in her home. Unable to get a small-business loan, she's doing catering to raise money to get the restaurant fixed up. It's hard work. "You cry sometimes, when you're having a bad day,"Dunbar says. But the trick, she adds, is "to make it look like you're crying for someone else."
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.
Rick Torres owns Freret Hardware. The business has been in the family since 1938, and he was damned if he was going to let floods or looters shut it down. Looters hit the place right after Katrina; then the flooding stopped the looting--and filthy water covered the place with what has come to be known around the shop as the "Katrina patina." Torres had no flood insurance and was told that the looting wasn't covered by theft insurance because looting, according to his insurer, is "social unrest." Torres appealed and won, but he's disgusted. "You've got to be a lawyer and a scientist," he says, to deal with the insurers.
Skip Henderson and his wife are both Crescent City natives, but they've come to the conclusion they just can't stay. With a 6-year-old and 3-year-old twins, it's just not safe, they say, living in a place where the government won't erect levees to handle nature's most violent storms. They have begun looking at schools over in Alabama, and though it breaks their hearts to leave, Henderson says he has no choice. Katrina and Rita, he notes, boiled up out of the superwarm summer waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That water, he notes, "isn't getting any colder." And, he adds ominously, it's only three more months until they start naming hurricanes again.
More photos of New Orleans at www.usnews.com/neworleans
ROAD TO RECOVERY
The Freret Jet makes its daily runs, but many of the homes and businesses that it passes are abandoned. Still, each month new signs of life emerge.
1. KEIFFER HOME
Sarah and David Keiffer returned from Baton Rouge last month to their un-flooded home so their daughters could attend their recently reopened school.
2. FRIAR TUCK'S
Jason Blitch maxed out his credit cards to fix up his flooded business, a local bar popular with students from Loyola and Tulane universities.
3. FRERET HARDWARE
Rick Torres reopened his family's flooded hardware store (circa 1938), in October-with an assist from church members to clean and ring up sales.
4. KEHOE AUTOMOTIVE CO.
Thomas Alexander's shop was robbed of all of its tools, but he reopened in October. Lack of manpower has forced him to turn away some business.
5. DUNBAR'S CREOLE COOKING
A neighborhood gem since 1985, Dunbar's was flooded and is closed. Celestine Dunbar hopes to one day offer her famous fried chicken again.
6. BLUE BLOCK PROJECT
Developer Greg Ensslen has cleaned up and rented out all of his storefront space. Coming soon: a coffeehouse, an ice-cream shop, and a tattoo parlor.
7. NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING SERVICES (NHS)
The community development organization was pleased with progress before the flood. It has relocated for now.
8. BLOOMIN' DEALS
In December, the Junior League thrift store-which was flooded- opened its doors again. It remains a beloved spot for bargain hunters.
9. DENNIS BARBER SHOP
Dennis Sigur's shop was looted and flooded. He refurbished with new barber chairs and hung out his shingle again in December.
10. OLD FRANK'S STEAKHOUSE
Nash Barecca's family restaurant, which he uses as an office, closed decades ago. He talks of selling it in the future.
11. FRERET STREET GYM
Mike Tata hitched a boat ride down Freret just days after Katrina hit to start cleaning out his gym, the first business on the block to open after the storm.
12. OUR LADY OF LOURDES
The Spanish Colonial revival church and school was to celebrate its 100th birthday when the flood hit. The archdiocese has closed the church for now.
13. PAGE HOME
What the flood didn't destroy in Lee Page's home, looters carted away. Page, who now lives in Houston, is uncertain whether he will return.
14. ORIGINAL BROWN DERBY
Without flood insurance, Sam Ottallah borrowed money to reopen his corner grocery and began serving his popular soul food again in January.
15. C.J. PEETE
Once known as the Magnolia Projects, the 60-plus-year old public housing complex remains battered and shuttered, its former residents scattered.
16. PARKER HOME
After a stay at the convention center, Sarah and Peter Parker evacuated to Texas. Sarah and her children returned in December to make the home livable.
[map labels]
Lake Pontchartrain
Area of Detail French Quarter Garden District Superdome Tulane University Mississippi River NEW ORLEANS
FLOOD LEVEL (in feet): 0-22-44-66-8
MILES: 0 1/8
Louisiana Ave.; Peniston; Amelia; Milan; Marengo; Gen. Taylor; Cadiz ; St.Jena ; St.Napoleon Ave.; Robert; Upperline; Valence; Jefferson Ave.; Valmont; Soniat; Dufossat; LaSalle; Simon Bolivar Ave.; Toledano; 7th; 6th; Washington Ave.; Harmony ; St. Charles Ave.; 4th; 3rd; 2nd; 1st; S. Liberty St.; S. Robertson St.; Magnolia; Exposition Blvd.; Walnut St.; St. Charles Ave.; Philip Street; Jackson Ave.; S. Claiborne Ave.; Willow; Clara; Magnolia; Octavia; Nashville Ave.; S. Claiborne Ave.; State; Calhoun; Fern; Adams; Burdette; Freret Street; Loyola Ave.; S. Saratoga St.; Broadway St.; S. Liberty St.; Newcomb Blvd.; Audubon St.; Superdome; French Quarter; Tulane University; Audubon Park; Audubon Place; Audubon Golf Club; Loyola University; C.J. Peete; Evans playground; St. Vincent's Cemeteries; Lafayette Cemetery; St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum Cemetery; Samuel Square; Fortier Alcee Senior High School; Taylor Playground; Samuel J. Green Middle School; Ursuline Academy; Thomy Lafon School; Flint-Goodridge Hospital; C.J. Peete
MAP BY STEPHEN ROUNTREE-USN&WR
This story appears in the February 27, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.