oh no, not McBourbon St.
Wash Us Away
for release 09-03-05
Washington D.C.
by Lightning Rod
The first time I went to New Orleans, I intended to stay for three days. Three months later I finally tore myself away from my first infatuation with The Big Easy. When I arrived in the French Quarter in the early 1970's, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Music was everywhere and they served drinks all night long.
The women were friendly and I found that by the simple expedient of opening my flute case on Bourbon Street and playing for about fifteen minutes, that I could earn enough money for a steak dinner. I was in paradise.
I remember thinking that the residents of the French Quarter were probably crazy and stayed up all night because they lived ten feet below sea level. Something about altitude or barometric pressure must have a long-term effect on the human brain. If you have ever had two drinks at sea level and then gotten on an airplane and gone to 30,000 feet, you'll know what I mean. Once I was in Montego Bay at the airport waiting to fly to Miami. The plane was late so the kind folks at the airport served us complimentary rum cocktails for about two hours before the plane arrived. I was fine when I got on the plane but when we reached altitude I passed out because of the combined effects of the alcohol and the lessened atmospheric pressure. When the airplane descended to sea level, I was fine again.
It works just the opposite in New Orleans. It's below sea level. You can drink more.
But as we all have seen from the television reports in the last couple of days, things are not easy in the Big Easy right now. It boggles the mind to see an entire city swept by flood and destruction. But it would break my heart to see New Orleans bulldozed as Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives has suggested. That would be like razing the Library in Alexandria or pillaging the Louvre. New Orleans represents some of the richest cultural history that America possesses.
It's nothing new for cities to be built in hazardous locations. Pompeii and San Francisco come to mind and most of the cities in Florida. Nature is cruel at times but humans are suckers for cheap land and opportunity.
New Orleans was no accident. It sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River and is the natural embarkation point for the bounty of products from the heartland of America.
But tides shift in coastal areas. Now the port of New Orleans takes in exports from the rest of the world to be distributed to the bountiful markets in the heartland of America.
When New Orleans was established in 1718, it was built on the natural levees that were created on the high bank of the Mississippi at its last curve. That's why they called it the Crescent City. It wasn't below sea level then. It was built on the higher ground.
In the 1910's an engineer named A. Baldwin Wood devised a system of pumps and levees and canals that made it possible to develop the swampy low land between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain. This advance in technology set the stage for the recent disaster. It has long been anticipated that a breech in the levees would result in the kind of disaster that we are witnessing today in New Orleans. The scene is biblical.
First we had the deluge, and now we have the Exodus. We watch the busses file into Sodom to remove the refugees. Why it took five days to get a bottle of Perrier to these people is beyond me. Don't look back or you'll turn to a pillar of salt.
After five days the Federal government finally sends water to a city flooded with sewage with gasoline floating on top. And when the military finally arrives and they file into the Super Dome, they are not carrying cases of water, food, insulin and diapers, no, they are carrying guns. Oh well, I guess I can understand. After all, the president is visiting today. Despite the fact that we have spent billions since 9/11 in the name of Homeland Security, Katrina has demonstrated how utterly unprepared our nation is to handle major disaster.
The Poet's Eye gazes sadly at the pictures on CNN. I think of Preservation Hall and all those years of jazz and fashion and culture. I think of Louis Armstrong and Al Hirt, Pete Fountain and Dr. John, Fats Domino, Harry Connick Jr., the Marsalis family and the Neville Bros. New Orleans has given us some great music. We can't let this unique city die. That would be a tragedy. A bigger tragedy would be for the displaced residents to return to their formerly quaint city after the cleanup and find McBourbon St.
The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
--Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927
to hear lrod version click here
