1 Dead in Attic (14 page)

“Animals know how to take care of themselves,” David said. “They've been dealing with storms for thousands of years; that's how they have survived. In a storm like this, horses just put their butts to the wind, their heads down, and their ears forward—and they say their horse prayers.” Nevertheless, by that Monday afternoon, it was clear that the Circle G had hosted its last rider.

The deep, slow-rolling, fourteen-mile path through the woods was a litter of fallen trees. All access to Catahoula Creek, where riders stop for picnics on a long sandy white beach, was blocked; the trail, carved out by more than thirty-five years of riding, was, in a word, obliterated.

In a matter of hours, a beloved local business was wiped off the books.

Aside from the massive cost and time to rebuild and clear the trails—and fix the barn—there were other concerns.

“I realized that the majority of my customer base was probably gone and those who remained would be involved for a long time in other pursuits that don't include horseback riding,” David said.

So he folded his hand. Over the past few weeks, David has torn down the barn and sold the horses, kissing each one good-bye before they were led away. “I've cried more than a few times,” he said.

“We get calls every day now from our old customers,” he said. “Some are ready to come back, and they get very upset when we tell them what has happened. They say, ‘No! I rode there when I was a kid and now I ride there with my granddaughter. It's our tradition. You can't do this!' ”

Some folks even offer to bring their own chain saws to help clear the place out, but they don't realize the enormity and futility of the task at hand. The Circle G—it's toast. Another notch in Katrina's belt.

“I'm too old to start over,” David said. “This has been my life for thirty-five years, but I'm ready for page two of my life—or page three or four or whatever page I'm on now.”

But it was a good run. Over three and a half decades, David was joined in the business by his parents, his son, David, Jr., and his family, and eventually his fourth wife, Augusta.

Quite the family affair they built, from taking phone reservations in the morning to laying out the hay in the evening and everything in between; a small, self-contained private paradise in the woods.

“When I was a little boy, six or seven or eight years old, I always wanted to be a horse farmer,” David remembers. “I wanted to move to Montana or Wyoming and own a ranch. Well, I never made it to Wyoming, but I got to make tens of thousands of people happy, and I guess that's the best thing.

“I never had to work for a boss, and I wish I had saved more money, but I guess you could say I was a little kid whose dream came true.”

At this time of year, many of us are asked to ponder the true meaning of Christmas as some way of recalibrating our actions, lifestyles, and character.

Tooling around the Fontainebleau neighborhood the other day, I came across a wasted yard in front of a wasted house in the middle of a wasted neighborhood with trash, debris, and the specter of loss everywhere, and there, on the corner of this pathetic lot, was a wasted little brown tree wrapped in a single strand of white Christmas lights.

One might ask: What is the point? What are they trying to prove? Are we even on Santa's itinerary this year? Or will he write off New Orleans, grab a quick bite at Ruth's Chris in Baton Rouge, and continue on to cities that have Fortune 500–based companies, there to stuff their CEOs' stockings full of FEMA contracts?

Besides, all our chimneys either fell down or are covered with blue tarps. What's a jolly old elf to do?

Whether this small effort—this one pathetic little Charlie Brown Christmas tree in a town full of Charlie Brown Christmas trees—represents hope, delusion, or faith, I am not sure. I suppose time, God, and the Corps of Engineers will be the ultimate judges of that, and not necessarily in that order.

But tradition marches on, and so it must be. Out in a Kenner neighborhood where I often take my kids to look at the spectacular holiday light displays put on by the rich folks, many of the houses are gutted. But the FEMA trailers parked in the front yards are decorated with twinkling white lights instead.

It is both the saddest and most beautiful thing you ever saw.

And in places with no trailers, some folks have just decorated their curbside refrigerators and left it at that. Merry stinking Christmas to you, Uncle Sam.

Never mind that Entergy is going to bill you $800 for the use of a single strand of lights this month ($1,400 if you blink those suckers), the weird and oddly celebratory manifestations of the holidays around here are just another sign that
you can't stop us.

Sure, you can slow us down, pare our ranks, tear at our foundations until we cry for mercy. But
you can't stop us.

Perhaps no civic organization has shown its resilience in the face of all odds more than the Drunken Santas, a tight-knit group of New Orleanians who, after a round of drinking games at Madigan's bar one night in 1998, decided to take an activist role in the holidays rather than sit around getting soused by themselves.

So they decided to get soused with others. Spreading the cheer is their aim. So they dress up in Santa costumes (or skimpier facsimiles thereof for the female members of this organization, the Ho-Ho-Hos) and they charter a fleet of limos and they pub-crawl.

These guys are right up there with the Salvation Army and Rex when it comes to giving back to the community this time of year. As Ho-Ho-Ho Natasha Daniel put it, “We have a good time. We push people into garbage piles. Make them take shots with us. You know: all the reindeer games.”

Now, I realize that at this point in the story the eyes of the righteous are rolling. Wait until they hear about this in Congress, I hear you saying. Now they're
never
going to give us that $2 billion we need to rebuild New Orleans.

Well, frankly, Congress can go Scrooge itself. And so can the eye rollers, holy rollers, and professional bowlers. (Sorry, I need a third entity to make the rhythm work in that last phrase and I couldn't come up with a damn thing.)

They'll never understand the hardships the Drunken Santas have been forced to endure: from ninety-two participants and twelve limos last year, their ranks were devastated by Katrina to the tune of just twenty-two riders this year—only three of them Ho-Ho-Hos, perhaps the worst part of this whole tragedy.

One fellow named Jonathan drove in from Baton Rouge for the event Thursday night only to find that the tree that had fallen through his roof had caused significant water damage to his auxiliary closet (or whatever you call the closet where you keep things like Santa suits) and destroyed his costume.

He was forced to participate in street clothes. When will the horror stop! How much more can we take!

Anyway. Shrunken Santas might have been a more appropriate name for the group this year. But they endured. “We love this city and we love this tradition and we want normalcy and we're not going to be stopped,” said Drunken Santa Matthew Dwyer as the group filtered out of the Monkey Hill Bar toward their limos and into a night of destinations unknown.

The Drunken Santas did what they did for no other reason than it was something to break pattern in this wretched little city and—as distasteful as this behavior may strike some—truthfully: it's nobody else's concern. They rented limos to take everybody home, so no one crashed into your house, so let it be.

Actually, if they had crashed into your house, that might have helped out with the lousy insurance check you're going to get, but that's a cause I'm somewhat hesitant to get behind:
More drunk drivers!

Now, the more astute of you readers out there may have sensed a metaphorical undercurrent here in this sordid tale of debauchery and weirdness.

Yes, I'm talking about Mardi Gras. And why we can't even think about canceling it. I was going to go into that in far greater detail in this story but I'm out of room here and sometimes even I get tired of reading me so I'll pick up that thought in my next column and I'll let you go after one more thing:

Christmas is a mangled institution and taken all out of context by crass commercialism, awkward passes at co-workers at the office party, and a cacophony of maudlin Christmas carols by Dolly Parton.

But does anyone say:
That sends the wrong message! Cancel it!

Do what you do. This Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Paddy's Day, and every day henceforth. Just do what you do. Live out your life and your traditions on your own terms.

If it offends others, so be it. That's their problem.

Personally, I think blinking white lights on those stark white FEMA trailers is all wrong, totally missing the point, but I'm not going to knock on your door and tell you that you've got your priorities messed up and you're sending the wrong message and that the Senate Finance Committee is going to kill the appropriations bill that could save us all because of your stupid trailer.

No, instead, when I drive by your house with my kids next week, I'm sure we'll all agree in the privacy of our car that a subtle combination of red and green—nonblinking, I might add—would have looked much better.

Now, about that inflatable snow globe . . .

Mardi Gras. It's not on the table. It's not a point of negotiation or a bargaining chip.

We're going to have it, and that's that. End of discussion.

Folks in faraway places are going to feel the misery of missing it, and that is a terrible thing. In the past, I have missed the season a couple of times because of story assignments elsewhere, and it sucked to be away from the center of the universe and not be a part of this city's fundamental, quintessential, and indelible cultural landmark.

But we can't turn off the lights and keep the costumes in storage and ladders in the shed for another year just because we are beaten and broken and so many of us are not here.

In fact, we have to do this because we are beaten and broken and so many of us are not here.

Katrina has proved, more than ever, that we are resilient. We are tougher than dirt. Certainly tougher than the dirt beneath our levees.

The social and celebratory nature of this event defines this city, and this is no time to lose definition. The edges are too blurry already.

Some folks say it sends the wrong message, but here's the thing about that: New Orleans is in a very complicated situation as far as “sending a message” goes these days. It's a tricky two-way street.

On the one hand, it is vital to our very survival that the world outside here understand just how profoundly and completely destroyed this city is right now, with desolate power grids and hundreds of thousands of residents living elsewhere and in limbo.

Jobs, businesses, and the public spirit are all about as safely shored as the 17th Street Canal floodwall. We're leaking. And we could very well breach in the coming year or two.

We very well could.

On the other hand, we need to send a message that we are still New Orleans. We are the soul of America. We embody the triumph of the human spirit. Hell, we
are
Mardi Gras.

And Zulu can say they're only playing if they get it their way and Rex can say nothing at all and the mayor—our fallen and befuddled rock star—can say that he wants it one day and he doesn't want it the next day, but the truth is: It's not up to any of them. It's up to me now. And we're having it.

And here's a simple, not-so-eloquent reason why: If we don't have Mardi Gras, the terrorists win. The last thing we need right now is to divide ourselves over our most cherished event.

If the national news wants to show people puking on Bourbon Street as a metaphor for some sort of displaced priorities in this town, so be it. The only puking I've seen at Mardi Gras in the past ten years is little babies throwing up on their mothers' shoulders after a bottle.

To encapsulate the notion of Mardi Gras as nothing more than a big drunk is to take the simple and stupid way out, and I, for one, am getting tired of staying stuck on simple and stupid.

Mardi Gras is not a parade. Mardi Gras is not girls flashing on French Quarter balconies. Mardi Gras is not an alcoholic binge.

Mardi Gras is bars and restaurants changing out all the CDs in their jukeboxes to Professor Longhair and the Neville Brothers, and it is annual front-porch crawfish boils hours before the parades so your stomach and attitude reach a state of grace, and it is returning to the same street corner, year after year, and standing next to the same people, year after year—people whose names you may or may not even know but you've watched their kids grow up in this public tableau and when they're not there, you wonder: Where are those guys this year?

It is dressing your dog in a stupid costume and cheering when the marching bands go crazy and clapping and saluting the military bands when they crisply snap to.

Now that part, more than ever.

It's mad piano professors converging on our city from all over the world and banging the 88s until dawn and laughing at the hairy-shouldered men in dresses too tight and stalking the Indians under the Claiborne overpass and thrilling the years you find them and lamenting the years you don't and promising yourself you will next year.

It's wearing frightful color combinations in public and rolling your eyes at the guy in your office who—like clockwork, year after year—denies that he got the baby in the king cake and now someone else has to pony up the ten bucks for the next one.

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once.