Why New Orleans Must Be Rebuilt: An Essay

Why New Orleans Must Be Rebuilt: An Essay. By Christopher Eck As a former resident of New Orleans, I have watched in saddened and stunned disbelief at the magnitude of the devastation that has overwhelmed that city and the whole region in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. A horrified world has borne witness to the inability of the local, state and federal government to quickly assist the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose visceral desperation has become so painfully apparent to us all via television and print reporting. Moreover, I was flabbergasted at House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s condemnatory suggestion that it “doesn’t make sense” to rebuild New Orleans. To me, it seems unconscionable for anyone with any real understanding of the development of American culture to truly suggest that New Orleans is not worth saving. In fact, I can think of no other city in the United States whose larger contributions to American society and identity have been so wholly unique. On so many levels, the world is a forever richer place because of the unparalleled melting pot of people and cultures that is New Orleans. And though it is undeniable that the city has been both enriched and plagued by its race relations and ethnic and class differences, cycles of economic booms and busts, celebrations and conflagrations and natural setting and weather, each of these factors has undeniably contributed to the wealth of its indigenous heritage in architecture, literature, music, customs and cuisine. This is also a place that has on many occasions been “reborn” and recovered from its tragedies, whether they were from war, riot, corruption, fire or storm. Despite its flaws, for three centuries, New Orleans has developed into a city of contrasts that draws people into it like a hypnotic vortex with qualities that can be both alternatively admirable and insufferable. It has been the interplay of these complex contrasts – culturally conservative and socially libertine, dogmatic and syncretic, inventive and inflexible, provincial yet cosmopolitan – that has allowed its most significant attributes to take seed and flourish in the rich silt and the humid air of the Mississippi delta. As Mark Twain wrote nearly a century and half ago, “I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.” The “Big Easy” has long drawn into its powerful grip some of the most talented sons of Louisiana’s sister state, Mississippi, which is also now reeling from Katrina. William Faulkner, Walker Percy and Tennessee Williams – Mississippians all – were adopted into the literary family of New Orleans. Others too, from all parts of the United States and abroad – Twain, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, and Andrei Codresciu, to name but a few – have become part of this family and have joined native born New Orleanians such as John Kennedy Toole and Anne Rice in helping to form the panoply of literati that have shielded the city from obscurity, but not from the drama that has presently unfolded upon the world stage. But the pens of those who have written in and about New Orleans would likely never have been drawn to or grown up within the abundant fertility of the “Crescent City” without the vitality that has been created there within its kitchens and by its musicians. For three hundred years the complex tastes and ingredients and intuitions of American Indian, French, African, German, Spanish, Irish, Acadian, Caribbean, Southern, Italian, and, recently, Asian cookery has been mixed and stirred and experimented and, most importantly, perfected into a regional cuisine par excellence. It is harmonic in its effect. There is such an inherent cultural respect for the importance of eating in New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole that if a list were to be drawn up of at least 100 reasons of why the city must be rebuilt, there would be enough justification from its food and drink alone – Abita beer, andouille sausage, Bananas Foster, beignets, chickory coffee, crawfish etouffee, eggs Pontchartrain, gumbo, jambalaya, muffulettas, Oysters Rockefeller, po’ boys, pralines, the Sazerac, shrimp remoulade, Sno-Balls, Tabasco, tasso, et cetera – that have been developed in and around it to demand recovery. “New Orleans food,” Twain wrote, “is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.” And no discussion of the justification of the salvation of New Orleans would be complete without a mention of its music. The world would have no jazz – the only truly, indigenous form of music developed in the United States – without New Orleans. Music is as much an inseparable part of the soul of New Orleans as spice is from its food. The names of those musicians who were born or raised or inspired or aspired in its homes and street corners and bars and clubs are too numerous to name in so short a space. But a short list alone would have to note Louis Armstrong, Allen Touissant, Irma Thomas, Fats Domino, Aaron and Charmaine Neville and the Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Ellis, Branford and Wynton Marsallis, Mahalia Jackson, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton, Harry Connick, Jr., the Radiators, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and the Rebirth Brass Band. Fats Domino himself recently underscored the city’s metaphorical quality of resurrection from tragedy when he was discovered in his flooded home following the hurricane and brought to safety after being believed dead. The contrasts continue with the built landscape of the city, a place that is at the same time disheveled and graceful, ancient and new. In many places the city seems to teeter on the edge of decrepitude, and its landmarks are continuously being restored and shored up, making modernity in the city seem like a somewhat anachronistic contrast. Somehow, before the storm, it all worked. Perhaps the unseemliness that some see in New Orleans is partly a product of it being created from and associated with a swamp. But as much as a swamp conjures up in some minds unhealthy visions of miasmal decay and constant danger, the reality is that swamps are incredibly diverse environments teeming with life. So, although New Orleans may have been created out of a dismal swamp, there is no denying that it too has teemed with life for fifteen generations. From the media, a stark feeling of abandonment appears to emanate from this isolated city of contrasts that is strangely reminiscent of the lines in Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, “The City in the Sea”: Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest. But this tragic event should not – shall not – be the swan song of the City of New Orleans. We owe it to ourselves as Americans – and to the whole “wonderful world” as Louis Armstrong might say – to ensure that it continues to live for another fifteen generations in the “bright blessed day and the dark sacred night.” There is no doubt in my mind that our children and our children’s children will be forever grateful at the rich legacy that they inherit as a result of our efforts to help the people and the City of New Orleans rebuild. Christopher Eck is the administrator of the Broward County Historical Commission and the County Historic Preservation Officer. A resident of Fort Lauderdale, he is an archaeologist, historian and attorney and received his bachelor’s degree in history from Loyola University in New Orleans and has written for numerous publications.