My last trip to New Orleans was in June of 2005. Three months later, the city was underwater. That September I took a week off from work, found an ad hoc rescue group on Craigslist, and went looking for my lost city. I couldn’t get into New Orleans, and ended up at a camp for reformed convicts outside Slidell. I stayed in a Winnebago where the rooting of a pen full of wild hogs kept me up at night, and emptied trucks with donations from New Jersey for two days. Then I was sent to a Christian summer camp where I cut and burned felled trees for another four days. I still haven’t been back to New Orleans, but I wake up at 3am to the rumble of boxcars, the smell of beignets, or the sound of rooting hogs at least once a month.
Digitized from Converting the Lovebugs
Just added to The List and the Story: My Aughts