September 22, 2005, 8:25 a.m.
Home Sweet Home
Or what’s left of it, anyway.

By Matthew C. Guy

New Orleans, La. — Expecting heavy traffic, my fiancé, the hero with whom we are staying, and I left Baton Rouge early on Saturday morning to make our return to New Orleans. We were armed with appropriate permits (difficult to get unless you know someone — like a lot of things in Louisiana), a shotgun, face masks, an abundance of cleaning supplies, and water ready to reenter Orleans parish and inspect our house on Palmer Avenue in the uptown area, near Tulane University. The area has received next to no news coverage and we did not know what to expect but hoped that we had the necessaries to encounter whatever we found.

Most of what we had turned out to be superfluous. There was barely any traffic except relief vehicles and our permits received only the most cursory inspection. Given the number of troops and police on the streets and the absence of anyone else coupled with the eerie silence, guns seemed unnecessary. While you would have to be crazy to stay, even to think about looting the area would make you certifiably bonkers.

In uptown New Orleans itself, trees and branches lay everywhere, but it was clear that extensive efforts had already been taken to clear the streets. Audubon Park looked like the credits scene from M*A*S*H. Troops had set up camp there and were milling around. They ignored us, presumably assuming that if we had cleared the roadblocks, we were allowed to be there. Besides, there were hardly any other civilians around the place.

We entered our street, just off St. Charles Avenue, and that too had been cleared with remarkable efficiency. Halfway up it, we encountered a local police officer, parked where the flooding in the street began. He seemed to be just hanging out and we exchanged pleasantries. We drove onto the parallel street, which was also flooded. So there was no way we were taking the truck in.

By good luck, we found a small, abandoned flat-bottomed boat and asked the police officer if he thought anyone would mind if we borrowed it to get to our house. "Go for it. Good luck," was his simple response. So, loaded with the supplies and rowing with a couple of police-barricade planks that were in the boat we made our way up the street.

We had heard much about the smell in advance. A friend who works for Entergy had told us that you could even smell the city flying over it in a chopper. Well, it was certainly pungent — a mixture of sewage, gasoline, and rotting food — but while strong, it was not overpowering and one got used to it quite quickly. Thinking about it now, though, makes me nauseous. After about 200 yards of rowing through the putrid water, we docked at the top of the porch steps to our house.

Given that the house is slightly raised and that I have previously waded waist-deep through the street when the water did not come close to reaching the house, we had a slim hope that we may have been spared flooding. Not this time. One could see from the marks outside that the house had had three to four feet of water in it. The swollen door needed to be kicked open.

Inside was another miniature disaster zone. Furniture and books lay everywhere, all covered in mold, a consequence of the water's receding. It resembled a scene from a movie where the bad guys have ransacked a house and thrown everything around needlessly.

We salvaged what we would need: a few clothes, photographs, jewelry, some papers that were dry, some (notably the insurance policies) that were sopping wet and needed to be peeled apart and dried out. Added to this were some slightly surreal items: the ties for the groomsmen of my rapidly approaching wedding and a funny hat I bought last Christmas in Kentucky. All of this was thrown in the plastic bags we had brought, dumped in the now leaking boat and loaded into the back of a truck after we rowed back. The booty barely filled half the back of the pick-up truck.

We then drove briefly around the uptown neighborhood area: more trees down and more troops. The picture was the same in Old Metairie, with branches everywhere and black rim stains on the houses where the waters had once reached. Bushes, too, were black up to where the water had risen highest and then still green above that.

The drive back to Baton Rouge was largely silent as we reflected on the devastation we had just witnessed. The whole trip had taken less than five hours. Depressing as it was to see that more-or-less everything we owned had been destroyed, we were thankful that we had evacuated, are insured, and have a place to stay in Baton Rouge with the kindest people on the planet. In any event, it was a relief to know what the score was with the house. The missus had been trying to convince me that we needed to get a new place after our wedding. I think she may be right. Indeed, I can't even complain that she has too many shoes anymore.

— Matthew C. Guy moved to New Orleans from London over a year go.

*   *   *

YOU’RE NOT A SUBSCRIBER TO NATIONAL REVIEW? Sign up right now! It’s easy: Subscribe to National Review here, or to the digital version of the magazine here. You can even order a subscription as a gift: print or digital!