Day Five: Bees, Bush, and the Slack Family

Today we got out of camp with everyone in a car. You have no idea what an accomplishment that is. So we got to the Acorn office where we parked. The place looked like a corner in LA swarming with Hispanic day laborers, except these were mostly white college kids with iPods, laptops and cell phones. I jumped out out and Tony informed me our crew organizers had just left. Fast forward through ten minutes of trying to find them.

After a comedy of errors we found ourselves following the Asian woman I call "bossy girl" way east into St. Bernard Parish. She finally made a U turn, turned onto a side street stops, got out, apologized, and points at the house. But as we walked up to it though, she pointed out bees swarming above the door of this sixties rancher. We've cleaned out stanky nasty, bacteria-laced and rat-infested dwellings without blinking an eye, but today we can't work because of bees. She called Tony, who came to take us to a new house.

While we waited, I crank up the stereo and we had an impromptu swing dance lesson. It was the most surreal moment of the trip, dancing between flood-damaged houses in the Ninth Ward. One-and-two-and rock step.

Eventually we find the house. It's at 1526 St. Maurice,--the former home of Samantha Slack, her husband and three children. They of course are not there, but all their stuff is, so we jumped right in hauling things out. By the end of the day we had made a rubble pile six feet high and a hundred feet long. There were appliances, clothes, toys, furniture, dishes--everything that made up this family's material life. We are dragging out much of what the Slacks had worked and saved for.

We found an undamaged family photo album and made a collage of small personal items on the mailbox. They have beautiful children. They had a Christmas tree and gifts. On Valentine's Day, the husband drew a bubblebath and sprinkled it with rose petals for his wife. Then one day the TV told them to pack what they could fit in their car and run for their lives. When the levee broke and their home was flooded, they probably became exiles.

Wherever they are, I hope the Slacks are coming back and rebuilding. I hope they can get the life back that is in that photo album.

In the middle of all the hauling and gutting today, we discovered that President Bush was supposed to be in the Ninth Ward. For awhile we even thought that our drivers hauling water couldn't get across the canal because the bridges had been closed by the Secret Service. Jerry decided to make a sign for the President. It said "Where've U Been George?" Then Ann wrote "Make Levees, Not War" on the backs of several of our Hazmat paper suits. We got lots of horn honks and thumbs up signs from drivers passing through on Claiborne. We also got a lot of appreciation from a flatbed driver who drove through on St Maurice. Making connections with people and doing useful work are what this trip is all about.

Update I found out later the president had helicoptered in from the airport to the river and limousined to 5509 N. Rampart where he looked at a damaged home. That way he came in contact with as few New Orleanians as possible. He also looked over the levee construction on the Industrial Canal, and stopped at Stewart's Diner at 3403 N. Claiborne for red beans and rice to go. In a speech at the levee, he urged the House Appropriations Committee to allow him to earmark over $4 billion for housing recovery in Louisiana. Of course if we were out of Iraq we wouldn't have to be so stingy about helping rebuild an American city after a natural disaster. Read the story here.