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A painted warning in the Garden District As I drive into New Orleans on the West Bank Expressway, the bruised-look ing Superdome is on my left, and an abandoned, 10-foot boat sits on the shoulder to my right. T hey're pointing the kinds of guns that could put a Dodge Stratus-sized h ole in my Dodge Stratus. I hold up the plastic card that says I'm a writ er, and they let me go. Seconds later, I'm driving over the Mississippi River on the Crescent City Connection Bridge and headed into the city. In the two days I've been in Louisiana, I've heard enough Katrina horror stories that I'm afraid to look at water. A friend from high school wait ed for a week for the levels to recede enough so he could open his door and find a neighbor with a working cell phone. A seventysomething relati ve of a friend swam in the murky water thinking he was about to drown on ly to cling to a tree and eventually climb to his roof. That all happene d in wet New Orleans: the Lakefront, Mid-City, and pretty much everywher e else that isn't within spitting distance of the high ground near the r iver. On my first day in the city, I start in the small, sheltered encla ve of dry New Orleans, the arid streets between the river and St. Charlesthe wide, mansion-filled avenue where th e streetcar runshas always been a good way to get myself reoriented to the city after being away. It's still a good place to startas I drive t oward Uptown, the damage isn't as severe as it could be, but there's eno ugh flotsam around to steel me for the waterlogged areas. Charles , sagging power lines arc just eight feet off the ground, and downed tre e limbs clog the sidewalks. When I get out and walk, the tiny twigs that cover the ground crack und er my feet like potato chips. The weirdest sight, though, is all the Mar di Gras beads lying in the middle of the road, shaken loose from the bra nches that once caught and held wayward throws 50 feet off the ground.
Reports of fires in the Garden District have been all over the news, but on my abbreviated tour of the area's fancy houses I don't see any with s ignificant structural damage. Many of the three-story private homes do c arry distress signals, though. Among the hastily painted warnings on fen ces, walls, and gates: "GO IN AND DIE," "LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT," or the m ore curt "LOOTERS SHOT." Looting may have been rampant a few days ago, but I've never felt safer i n New Orleans than I do driving around today. High-riding military vehicles and gun-toting troops b lanket every block. Every so often, someone asks me to roll down the win dow and show ID before waving me on, but the soldiers mostly look like t hey're killing time. Sitting on milk crates and folding chairs in the mi ddle of the road. On Carrolton Avenue, a forklift sticks out from the front of a drugstor e where a group of enterprising scofflaws used it to peel back the steel security door. For the soldiers standing guard, the novelty has long si nce worn off. I ask one of them what they talk about to make the days go faster.
Enterprising scofflaws used a forklift The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the authorities in New Orlea ns have started telling the city's few remaining residentseven those wh o live on dry streets and have enough gas to run their generators for mo nthsto evacuate or else. I don't see any conversations like that, but a ll the folks I run into on the street (primarily white homeowners, one o r two a block in the most populated areas) tell me they're not getting o ff their land, no way, no how. Charles in the Garden District, a woman named Suzie Lyons leads a petting-zoo-sized convoy of small animals up Seventh Stree t Lyons says she's broken into at least 30 houses at the owners' behest kicking down doors, breaking glass, finding hide-a-keysto feed and res cue dogs and cats that owners left behind in their rush to evacuate. "Ca n you imagine if they die in their houseshow that would smell?" she ask s Mixed in with the people who won't leave are a few who sneaked back in, m andatory evacuation be damned. When I see a guy wearing scrubs, I roll d own my window to ask what hospital he works at. Turns out he's not a doc tora dentist friend of his gave him scrubs so he could sneak past the s ecurity detail.
A normal New Orleans scene On Napoleon a few blocks north of the bar Tipitina's, I find a normal New Orleans scene: five guys, several shirtless, drinking cold beers on the porch. In the shade next to the neighbor's house, there are enough bott les of liquor and mixersMaker's Mark, Crown Royal, pineapple juice, Dr. Pepperto keep the party going for at least a few more days. Kirby Gee, who owns the house, works as a bartender at Miss Mae's down th e street. He says the bar did pretty good business even through last Wed nesdaythe cops kept them in shotgun shells as long as they kept pouring drinks. Gee says the police taught everyone around here how to loot. Th ey were the first to bust into the grocery store down the street and the Wal-Mart a mile or so up the road. He also says they took to breaking i nto car lots in the days after the storm and driving off with brand-new Escalades. I'm not sure whether to believe him, until a cop car drives b uy towing what looks like a mint-condition Corvette Stingray. "And these are the people telling us to evacuate," says one of the porch dwellers. Every time a Humvee rolls by, a few of the guys make sure to flash the peace sign.
Don Meinert in Audubon Park Driving toward the river on Magazine Street, I see Audubon Park on my lef t and pull into the parking lot. A guy driving a motorized cart and smok ing a pipe passes by, and I ask him if I can hop on and ride around with him. Don Meinert, who works maintaining the park's small golf course, s ays he's been living in the maintenance shed since his house got deluged by floodwater. The golf course looks like you could play on it tomorrow in fact, Meinert says a couple of National Guard guys have played a few holes in the last couple of days. The park is completely dry but there's lots of tree damage, mostly to you nger, smaller trees. When we see one felled giant oak, Meinert stops the cart. "I miss it, but it's gone, ain't nothing I can do about it." As we're winding back to the Magazine Stree t side, Meinert stops the cart again. "Don't tell me they did that," he says, looking toward a group of soldiers who've set up camp 100 yards aw ay. He says it again, more loudly: "Don't tell me they did that." I'm as suming they chopped down a tree or somethingthere are a couple of big o nes down in our field of vision. "They're flying the Texas flag," he say s "Ain't gonna let no other flag fly over this state."
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