Something that probably isn't there anymore.
Mon 2005-08-29 18:05:54 (in context)
I'm breaking my promise. I wasn't going to do any blogging that didn't have something to do with actual progress on an actual manuscript. But life throws us for unexpected loops, and this makes no sense in the context of writing, not really.
The image featured here, courtesy of Google Maps, shows my home. My parents' home, actually, but I grew up there. Eighteen years I lived there. Every time I visit, I stay there; I sleep in the bed that I probably wet as a very young child, stare at the ceiling that sheltered me, listen to the same annual peeping of nesting purple martins in the eaves, start at the same creaks that once I believed were made by "baby bugs in the walls, calling to their mothers for dinner." That's it, right under the pink arrow with the dot. Home.
The bit in the white circle is the Bonnabel Canal Pumping Station. The Bonnabel Canal runs off into Lake Pontchartrain, a bit of whose south shore you can see here.
You've already heard about Katrina, right?
The good news: My Dad's OK. Mom, who evacuated to Hot Springs, has heard from him. He's been working hard all night at Touro Hospital, so he's tired, frustrated, and unhappy, but he's alive. And WDSU video shows UNO pretty dry, even if Robert E. Lee Blvd. and Paris Ave. is flooded up to the eaves. Dad's office, near Robert E. Lee and Franklin, is closer to the one than the other.
The unknown news: We're unsure about the status of family members last heard from at St. Tammany Hospital. We think they're OK.
The bad news: The pumping station circled here no longer has a top. I wasn't clear on whether it was the storm surge from the lake or the winds in excess of 150mph that blew its top off, but according to Dad, it's gone.
I imagine that if the pumping station succumbed, my childhood home fell like a house of cards. Either the wind took the gabled roof, or the water leaping the banks of the canal rushed into the back yard. In any case, the message I left on my parents' answering machine last night when I was still panicked with casuality predictions and cell phone silence, the one that just says, "Dad, I love you," I don't think anyone will ever listen to it. Thankfully, it's because the answering machine is gone, not because the people who own it are.
But still. Home. Is probably. Gone.
Somewhere in Metairie or maybe out in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain, a big Rubbermaid bin full of Dr. Seuss books and other childhood favorites is floating away. If anyone finds it, give it a good home.
The crayon scribbles in One White Crocodile Smile? I did those.