Of
all my many adventures in New Orleans, the one people ask me most about
was my escape from New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina came bearing down
upon the city that care forgot… and everyone else seemed to, at least
temporarily.
Here’s the story.
In
August 2005, I had pretty much consigned myself to the fact that my
days of being a “musical artist” were officially over. I was playing at
Pat O’Brien’s Dueling Piano Bar on St. Peter Street…a prestigious gig
to some, but playing “Piano Man” and piano reductions of “The Devil
Went Down To Georgia” with a hateful partner who had held the gig for
the past twenty years while drunken Tulane College kids abused
themselves with cheap alcohol and made requests at 3am whilst vomiting
on your shoes was more of a factory job than an endeavor bordering on
art.
But
it was an extremely well paying factory/southern plantation vibe/
musical prostitution job, despite it’s drawbacks: I had real health
insurance for the first time in my life, I was pushing 46, and I was
making enough to maybe even save up for some kind of retirement… a last
lap of life compromise, but I’ve learned in my old age that
compromising is a necessary evil when you don’t have a pot to piss in
nor a window to throw it out of. “Brown Eyed Girl” for a five dollar
tip? “Sweet Caroline” for a ten-spot? Sure, baby, no problem…them’s my
FAVORITES!
So my days were structured as a
factory laborer on the night shift…five nights a week until 4am, days
spent sleeping and learning new material, and a free day to grocery
shop and go to the bank…. I had my puppies, Huckleberry and Doodle, a
wonderful new girlfriend (Miss Amy), and a form of job and financial
security: Maybe a baby in the not too distant future. Life was finally
becoming good for me. The human existence barn had finally stopped
burning, and I had a solid, if not conservative, game plan for the last
quarter on life’s playing field.
So when
Hurricane Katrina started to rear her ugly little head off the coast of
Florida in the beginning of the week, it wasn’t any big deal; Just a
minor inconvenience that comes with living in a hurricane path… The
talking television weather heads scream in chicken-little fashion “This
is the big one”, you board up the windows, pack up the car, head west,
and you take an unscheduled vacation; or you just ignored all the
doomsayers and hung out. Either option was an acceptable course of
action. Usually, the big one turns out to be a no-show.
But
as the week progressed, as you watched that sucker expand to its
eventual ginormous proportion over the Gulf of Mexico, Katrina kind of
demanded that you pay a bit more attention to her than normal. Category
Five. Aimed right at you. By Friday night, Mayor Nagin was on the tube
advising people that if they chose to stay, “Y’all better buy a hatchet
to chop your way out of the attic”.
So on
Saturday morning, I called work and asked if they intended to open that
evening, or close up shop and give us a little lead-time to get out of
dodge like everyone else in the city was apparently doing. The answer?
“Y’all better come in if you want a job.”
Like
I said; Plantation vibe; Massa Charlie, Pat O’Brien’s overseer, don’t
shut down for nuthin’, not even impending doom. Just Christmas.
So
Saturday was spent gassing up the car, checking the tires, packing
three days worth of clothes and three days worth of puppy supplies.
Take a nap, make your thermos of tea, honey, and lemon…. and go to work.
By
4am Sunday, Bourbon Street was pretty much deserted. The only folks in
Pat O’s were the wait staff, mangers, my ever so charmingly emotionally
toxic playing partner for the evening Miss Victoria (a 28 year
veteran), and Mr. Eddie.
Mr. Eddie was a
65-year veteran of the piano wars. At the age of 95, he would go to
work till 4am, four days a week. He’d climb up on the stage at a
quarter to every hour, and with thimbles on his fingers, he would tap
out an extremely inopportune plowing rhythm on the bottom of a pewter
tray for tips, with the triple threat of a smile, dark shades, and an
absolutely ridiculous processed toupee plastered on his head area with
what seemed to be equal amounts of glue.
“ How ya doin tonight, Eddie?” I asked during our fourth set.
“These
muthafuckas making us woik, no muthafuckas here, and the ones that is
ain’t tippin’ shit. How the fuck ya think I’m doin, muthafucka?”,
hissed Mister Eddie through the the last fake smile he ever would flash
at Pat O’s, for the three drunks left in the audience. He only had a
day left… he decided not to evacuate and drowned in his attic.
“You getting outta town this morning? Y’all better be planning on it, Mr. Eddie.”
“Oh yeah, muthafucka. I got that shit covered…don’t worry about me. Just go about your bidness”
So it was me and Victoria…the last piannaplunkers standing on the strip until the boom got lowered courtesy of Miss Katrina.
I
got home and Amy and I threw everything in her car, packed up the pups,
and locked up the apartment. At the last minute, Amy went back in and
got a plastic legal file full of her pictures, just in case. Smart
girl. Sleep deprived, we hit the I-10 going west to LaFayette Louisiana
by 5:30 am.
It took us seven hours to crawl
five miles west to Metairie. Time for a new evacuation route. We got
turned around, and headed east to Mississippi towards route 59, and
north to Alabama. After another seven hours, we finally crossed Lake
Ponchatrain, and hit the contra-flow lanes on 59. By the time we hit
Hattiesburg, we finally were on open road, and not a minute too soon.
As
the sun started it’s slow decline in the western sky, as I looked in my
rearview mirror to the south I could see Katrina’s wrath as she
lumbered toward Biloxi’s casino lined shores…. and it was the strangest
meteorological sight I’ve ever seen in my life.
The
sky was the color of a day old bruise; Purple, with tinges of yellow
and green. Ironic Mardi Gras colors. You could see tiny flecks of
debris flying through the air from fifty miles, and the clouds looked
like Picasso painted them at the height of his cubist period.
The
wind was swirling counter-clock wise, and slamming the tall pines that
lined US Route 59. The car was getting pelted with pine cones the size
of Nerf footballs, pine needles were twirling and actually drifting
like snow; It became increasingly difficult to navigate the wheel to
keep the car on the road.
So I put the pedal to the metal and drove 90 MPH until we out-ran that bitch…
We
ended up at a Hampton Inn in Birmingham at around 1 am, the only dog
friendly place we could find, with nothing to do but finally sleep and
watch for what awaited New Orleans the following morning. The puppies,
in their infinite cool wisdom, basically slept through the whole trip,
while Amy and I were freaking out.
As we
started the eventual television deathwatch after a few hours of
shut-eye, it didn’t look too bad… some high winds, a little damage.
Nothing major, really. We’d be home by Wednesday. Katrina looked to be
another “Much Ado About Nothing” hurricane moment tailor made for fear
mongering weathermen.
But then the levees broke.
Everything
gone. Total chaos. Looting. Death, destruction, and human frailty and
human suffering mixed with second and third hand news via the internet,
because all communication was down. An All American cluster-fuck of
epic proportions.
It didn’t matter that Mayor
Nagin shut the city down for a month, or that there was martial law.
There was nothing left to go back to. All gone. Job. House.
Possessions. A Future. A Life.
All gone in the fetid, sewage filled water.
We
moseyed up through Ohio, and back to the place of my birth, Skaneateles
NY, because there was no other place for us to go within driving
distance.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been
wiped out, and it probably won’t be the last. Wipeouts are kind of an
occupational hazard for me due to the life choices that I’ve made. But
it’s getting harder to bounce back with each successive implosion, and
Amy, in her resilient youthful years, was ill prepared for my oncoming
mid-life crisis of confidence, and wasn’t destined to stick around to
see how it turned out…. for me, anyway. So add the groovy girlfriend to
the loss column as well. If I was her, I wouldn’t have stuck around
with my soon to be sorry ass either.
I still
had my furry kids, however…and as it turned out, they stood by me
through the dark depression that I have just now been emerging from.
I
saved their life once… and they loved me enough to never waiver from
their undying devotion for me to return the favor, and never judge as I
started the on the long road of healing myself.
Dog Only Nose, with Dog by my side.
So
if you’re wondering why I have been so vociferously championing my dogs
through media and Internet platforms in an absolutely ridiculous doggie
beauty contest…now you know.
These
doggie elections aren’t about a contest, or money, or going to Hawaii.
It’s about dreaming about a better imagined future, taking careful aim,
and throwing a surgically stroked pebble in the pond, with my true life
companions leading the way…. and sharing the love and knowledge that
I’ve acquired in the past four years with anybody that cares to hear
the message.
I’m celebrating the purest form of love I’ve ever known. Dog Love. Get on the grid and catch the wave.
http://www.cutestdogcompetition.com/vote.cfm?h=B5CA49F341EF97AB433BAA69CA1AAA0A