Arriving in the Big Easy

I flew into New Orleans on a Delta plane that had seemingly been borrowed from a museum. Somehow, it felt appropriate. I had wondered if the destruction would be visible from the air: it wasn't from where I sat.

When I stepped out of the terminal, the air in New Orleans was hot, sticky, sweet - a typical southern morning. The cab I hired was falling apart. One of the seats had a large hole in it; it looked like it was close to disconnecting from the van completely. The cabbie was a black woman whom I guessed was in her fifties. She hummed a tune and sang under her breath. The van was littered with peanut butter crackers and bottles of water. Something wasn't right about her. It was eerie. She seemed unhinged.

I looked out the window, curious as to what I would see. You have to look closely in New Orleans to see the destruction in some areas, in others you can see 3000 square foot piles of splintered wood that were once houses. Even when things look alright, though, they're usually not. We passed one row of houses from the highway: everything looked normal, but the FEMA trailers in the driveway were a giveaway. The houses were unlivable.

My cab pulled up in front of a building. "I think this is it," said my cabbie. I told her that it wasn't. She insisted that it was, but after a brief argument in which I pointed out that the address didn't match the one that I had given her, she huffily started driving again. A few minutes later, she pulled up in front of another building. "This is it," she said again. This time, it took nearly ten minutes to convince her that the building we were parked in front of was not my hotel. For that matter, it wasn't a hotel at all.