|
------ Forwarded Message
Good and intense as the 'escape' becomes prolonged. Sorry for any
cross-posting:
Subject: Bill Lavender's Escape Narrative
[apologies if this was already posted & I somehow missed it]
from the Chronicle of Higer Ed, Poet Bill Lavender reports in:
NOTES FROM ACADEME
'We're Getting Out of Here'
Special report: The Gulf Coast's colleges begin to grasp the damage done
As told to JOHN GRAVOIS
Bill Lavender runs the Low Residency Creative Writing Program at the
University
of New Orleans. His companion, Nancy Dixon, teaches in the university's
English
department. Over a cellphone, Mr. Lavender described their journey out
of
the
city.
When we heard about the storm, we decided not to evacuate, because we
really
didn't think our house was in grave danger. We live in Mid-City, which
is a
part of New Orleans that's relatively high but not as high as the French
Quarter. It's an old house. It's been through plenty of hurricanes.
I guess the storm was at full force at midmorning on Monday. It never
was
really
that bad -- I actually put on my motorcycle helmet and walked around
outside
at
the height of it. We lost power, of course. We still had water, we
still had
gas.
By about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the storm was over. There was a
little
bit
of water in the street, but nothing I couldn't have driven through. Our
reaction at that point was, Well, this wasn't really that bad.
If that had been all the storm was, I wouldn't have regretted staying.
At some point in there, the water did start to rise. It was rising in
the
full
sunshine, with no rain, just coming up in the streets.
Our neighbor across the street, who had evacuated, had a boat under her
house --
a 14-foot light aluminum skiff with oarlocks and oars. As kind of a
lark, I
went and pulled it out from under her house and put it in the street.
That night, Monday night, we went out on the front porch. There was
absolutely
no light, and there was no noise, and the stars were fantastically
clear.
We got up the next morning, and the water was higher. We were trying to
listen
to the radio, trying to figure out what was going on. We were hearing
that
the
flooding on the east side of New Orleans was really bad. We were
starting to
hear helicopters flying around.
There was a rumor that the levee was broken somewhere, but that they
were
going
to be fixing it, and that as soon as they got the levee fixed, they were
going
to be able to pump the water out. I was thinking maybe the end of the
week,
at
the most.
One of my neighbors came to my door and said there was a guy around the
corner
with a baby who needed to go to the hospital. The guy was scared to
death of
water.
So we got in the boat, and we were rowing down the street, trying to
pick
the
best route to Mercy Hospital. There was water all the way -- right up
to the
front door.
Some guy in scrubs got down in the water and helped me dock the boat
there
on
the steps. He was a paramedic who worked for the city. He said they had
no
power in the hospital, and he had a generator down at his office. He
wanted
to
know if I could row him down there so he could get this generator.
And I asked him, "Doesn't the hospital have backup power?" He said,
"Yeah,
they
have a generator, but it's in the basement."
It was ludicrous, this notion of going to get a 5,000-watt generator to
power a
hospital. But he said, "There are people dying in here, and it's all we
can
do."
So we went to his paramedic station, a little two-story metal building.
Two
of
his colleagues were there.
This guy I'm with told them, "I've come to get the generator." And they
told
him
no. He said, "Look, there are people dying in Mercy."
"Well things are tough all over, and before this generator comes out of
here,
I've got to get me and my dogs out."
At that point, I kind of exploded. I said, "You're not even using the
generator.
The generator has nothing to do with your dogs." It kind of shamed
them. We
finally did get the generator.
We had our last good meal that night. We were having wine on the front
porch,
all the neighbors were out on their porches, and I got out my guitar and
sang
"A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall."
That night it was really hot and really still. There were helicopters
messing
around all night. I had this idea they were either evacuating Mercy
Hospital
or
bringing them a generator. At one point they were so close that I could
feel
the wind, so I took to praying for them to come over.
It wasn't until Wednesday that we started to get more information.
There was
a
press conference at 12. They said they thought the levee repairs would
be
done
by about Friday. Then they said they should have the water out of the
city
within about 30 days. I said, "We're getting out of here. We can't live
like
this for 30 days."
We packed up very hastily -- all our drinking water and a good bit of
food.
I
left my hard drive with 30 years of miscellaneous writings on it, plus
Nancy's
hard drive with all her scholarship on it. I just tried to hide them in
the
attic. I didn't know what else to do.
We had to put our cat in a carrying cage, and we put our dogs on the
boat.
We
went and got our neighbor, my friend Charlie Franklin. We told him what
we'd
heard and we told him it's time to go. He thought about it for about two
minutes, and then said OK.
We were nervous. We knew there were no police. We'd been warned that
there
were
roving bands of armed looters. We knew that the boat was becoming a
valuable
commodity. The dogs were nervous also. They would not let anyone
approach
closer than about 10 feet from the boat. Charlie had a gun.
When we turned one corner, there was a kiddie pool floating in the
middle of
Canal Street, and I could see a head sticking up over the side of it.
There
was
another guy pushing it and another guy wandering around in the
chest-deep
water
looking kind of dreamy. They were junkies that had looted the Rite Aid.
They
were using this kiddie pool to get out of the water to shoot up.
A little further, there was a dead man in the water. Someone had hung
his
shirt
up on a street sign. I couldn't really see his face, but the shirt was
sticking
up like a tent. We heard later they were tying corpses to street signs
and
poles.
Across the street was a building called the City Hall Annex. It has a
big
front
porch that was just above water level, and it was full of people, maybe
150.
On
one end, there were women and kids holding up signs saying, "Help us
please."
At the other end of the porch there was this mad party going on. They
were
breaking windows and throwing whiskey bottles around and kind of
whooping
and
yelling.
We were starting to get very careful about our route because we were
getting
close to the Superdome, and we didn't want to get caught there. Our
plan was
to
go to the Macy's parking lot, which is just adjacent to the dome, where
we
had
parked our car. We were just praying that we might be able to get to
the car
and drive out.
There were no cops. In this whole ride, we never saw a cop.
When we got to the Macy's parking lot, we saw that the entrance was four
feet
deep. So we couldn't get our car. We followed the water to the corner of
Girod
and Carondolet, and that's where the water ended. We had to abandon the
boat.
So we started walking uptown, to go to my ex-wife's house, which we
knew was
dry, and they had a generator and probably food and water. For all I
knew,
they
were still there, because I hadn't talked to them since Monday morning
when
the
phones went out.
We saw this two-story house with the facade completely removed. It was
just
like
a dollhouse. I could see the furniture and the bookshelves, everything
neat,
nothing in disarray, and these two black labs up on the second floor
looking
down at us.
After a while, a guy caught up with us. He told us he had walked all
the way
from the lower Ninth Ward. I'm guessing that must be at least five
miles. He
told us that down in the Ninth Ward he was literally wading through
bodies
on
the way out. He didn't know where any of his family was. He had a
3-year-old
and a 5-year-old kid, and he suspected that they were both dead. He was
coming
uptown because he had a brother who was a butler in a Garden District
mansion.
He told us that in the end there will be tens of thousands dead.
We got to my ex's house. We were just praying that we were going to see
her
pickup outside the house. But there was nothing, and our hearts just
sank.
We'd
been on the road now for about four to five hours. We were exhausted.
Then I remembered that our friends lived just a few blocks away, and
they
had
left their car. Not only that, but I knew right where the key was. We
got to
Alex and Kat's house, and the car was intact, and the key was in the
mailbox.
But we couldn't make the key work in the door. I tried it and Charlie
tried
it,
and finally I said, "Charlie, move," and I threw a brick through the
window.
We crammed all of us in the car. We drove to Tchoupitoulas Street and
then
straight across the bridge to the West Bank, the only way out.
The next day, we were going to leave Charlie in Baton Rouge to take the
bus
to
Alexandria, but we found out that there were 200,000 people downtown
trying
to
get out. So we took him all the way to Alexandria. We started to have
the
emotional breakdown. It was strange how, going through the whole thing,
I
just
sort of never stopped. None of us did.
But when we dropped Charlie off, all three of us broke down and started
crying
and pretty much didn't stop for about three days.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
----
http://chronicle.com
Section: Notes From Academe
Volume 52, Issue 4, Page A56
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>
"Breaking in bright Orthography . . ."
--Emily Dickinson
Aldon L. Nielsen
Kelly Professor of American Literature
The Pennsylvania State University
116 Burrowes
University Park, PA 16802-6200
(814) 865-0091
------ End of Forwarded Message
___________________________________
Annie Finch, Director
Stonecoast Brief-Residency MFA in Creative Writing
University of Southern Maine
222 Deering St.
Portland, Maine 04104
Phone: 207-780-5973
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.anniefinch.com
http://www.usm.maine.edu/stonecoastmfa/
—THE BODY OF POETRY: ESSAYS ON WOMEN, FORM, AND THE POETIC SELF —just
out in the Poets on Poetry series from University of Michigan Press—
|
