A HAPPY ENDING - 1773 SERE STREET

Some of you may remember that a couple of years ago, a group of us headed to New Orleans to gut a ruined house. When portions of the levee along the London Avenue Canal collapsed in the aftermath of Katrina, many homes in the Gentilly area of New Orleans flooded. We called ourselves the First Draft Krewe, because ScoutPrime and Athenae at First Draft organized the group who went to work at 1773 Sere Street under the direction of ACORN, which has overseen the reconstruction of 3,500 houses in New Orleans.

Our job was to strip the house down to the bare bones, removing all the inside materials which were rotted, mildewed, and ruined. The house had been completely submerged by the floodwaters. Trust me: it's a shit job, but we wanted to do our small part to help the folks in New Orleans come back.

When we (they really, because I could not do the heavy lifting) got to the kitchen, it was in terrible shape. Cockroaches and termites abounded in huge numbers. Many of us believed the house would be demolished in the end, because of the sorry condition of the kitchen. So why were we doing the difficult and dirty task?

The folks next door, who were well on their way to restoring their house, were quite grateful to have the mess next to them cleaned up. That was reason enough, and you never know. You do the assigned task without too much thinking and questioning because the folks at ACORN, who know what they're about, send you there.

The picture above shows the First Draft Krewe along with our partners, a fine group of students from Elon University, at the end of our work day. As you see, the pile of trash removed from the house is taller and wider than our rather large group.

Now the hero of this post is blogger Sinfonian, who recently returned to 1773 Sere Street to check it out. Pictured below is the termite- and roach-infested kitchen as it looks today.


I could hardly believe what I saw in the picture. Check out the house today at Blast Off!, Sinfonian's blog, at the link above. His story of the return visit and the other pictures of the house are simply amazing. (Links no longer active, alas.)

Thank you, Sinfonian, for taking the trouble and telling us the story.  Hugs and kisses to you. What a beautiful, happy ending - for a change. It seems as if I've been hearing way too much bad news.

Here's my post on our work day.

H/T to ScoutPrime for alerting me to the story.

From Ray In The Comments

In the comments to my Sere Street post:

Ray said...

First, Grandmere, you were not inept, you did great that day. I was watching. Sometimes I had to get out of your way you were going so fast.

Second, as Karen pointed out in my blog comments, sometimes even though we don't get a family back into their house, our gutting it does help the rest of the neighborhood. A gutted house is less of a health hazard, less likely to harbor rodents, less of a blight on the neighborhood, and it makes it easier for those people who did move back in next door to live next to it and to feel better about their neighborhood.

Remember the neighbors who bought us all that fried chicken? They knew the chances of that house being reoccupied were slim, but they still could not stop heaping praise on us for what a wonderful thing we were doing.

We did good work there that day, and though it may not have the exact miraculous happy ending that we imagined in our heads, life seldom does. Good works are little micro things that nudge the world in the right direction a few inches at a time, and as a group we gave it a good shove back onto the path.

I want to share with you what has been my favorite quote since I moved back here. I first read it on a big banner at Ye Olde College Inn, an Uptown eatery that was destroyed by the flood and rebuilt and which still has the best oyster po-boy on earth. It's Teddy Roosevelt, but it could be anybody who has worked in New Orleans:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "

You did good. You should be proud. This city will come back.

Ray, cher, thank you for your kind words. We knew that day that the house we worked on probably was not salvageable. It was riddled with termites, for one thing. It's true. The next-door neighbors were grateful for our work, very grateful, and that, in itself, is reason enough to have done the work.

I want to cry, not so much for that house, but for the whole city, my home town, still the home of my heart. I know New Orleans will recover and be more beautiful than ever, despite the abuse and neglect she has suffered since the great tragedy. You can't kill the spirit of the people of the city.

SERE STREET

Sere Street
Originally uploaded by Ray in New Orleans

The First Draft Gutting Krewe, of which I was a rather inept member, and a group of college students from North Carolina gutted this house in the Gentilly area of New Orleans. The picture shows the house as it looks today. I could cry.

From Scout at First Draft:

The facts of Katrina have been recounted many times over--90,000 square miles of damage and destruction, 300,000 homes damaged or destroyed, 80% of New Orleans flooded, over 1700 dead--a breadth and depth of sorrow and suffering that when viewed first hand leaves most to recall the scenes of bombed out WWII Germany and think only a Marshal Plan could begin to bring healing and rebirth.

The people of the Gulf Coast have not had a Marshall Plan to help their recovery. The money dribbles in very slowly to the homeowners - if at all. A great deal of the progress that has been made is due to the determination and work of local people and to volunteers, who come from everywhere to help out. In the richest country in the world, is this the best we can do?

Perhaps it is harsh but when members of the UK show Top Gear traveled through the Gulf Coast and saw the shocking devastation they asked: "How can the rest of America sleep at night knowing that this is here?"

A word from Scout, who does not live there, to the rest of us who do not live there:

For not only should we know but we should care and we should act. It's quite a responsibility to say the least. One which we each try to strive to meet in our own way. Mine has become to write of New Orleans and I harbor no illusions on that front. Most days I don't know that it does a bit of good but I could no more stop than I could stop being an American. For it is in New Orleans that I have truly realized the meaning of America.

You can continue to read Scout's "A Tale of Two Blocks--Part 2" at the link above.

Scout is from Wisconsin, but she has made it her mission to tell the story of enormity of the destruction wreaked by Katrina and the federal flood and the meager and shameful response by government officials to the plight of the people in the area that was destroyed.

Thanks to Ray in New Orleans for the use of the picture. You can find tales and pictures of the many houses Ray has gutted here.