Party time

kinlin

Party time

Like so many Saints fans, Deandra and Milton Carr held a party Sunday at their home on Charbonnet Street. As 40 to 50 people gathered at their pretty brick home, complete with new cabinets and a matching hardwood floor, it was a chance to celebrate two momentous occasions.

Saints fans had plenty to cheer after their team beat the Vikings in overtime 31-28.
(Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)




First and foremost, there was the Saints game, where New Orleans broke 43 years of frustration by beating the Minnesota Vikings 31-28 in overtime to make their first Super Bowl in franchise history.

Second, this was the Carrs’ first party in more than four years, a “house warming” of sorts, the 56-year-old Milton said. As residents of the Lower Ninth Ward for some 25 years, the Carrs used to entertain this many family and friends five or six times a year.

“I’m not a big football fan, I’m just really learning the game,” said Deandra, 54, who has a small Saints flag attached to the window of her car. She described that life here is now “tolerable.” As she spoke, she pointed to a set of cars roughly 25 yards from her front door where she suspected a drug deal was going down.

“We can’t depend on the city to help us right now,” she said. “It’s still too hard. … But [the Saints game] puts a smile on your face and helps you forget the day-to-day problems.”

“This was known as the service area of the city way back when,” Milton said. It’s the area where the maids and butlers and other people who worked on the other side of town years ago made their home. It’s about two miles around the bend of the Mississippi from the French Quarter in an area also known as the “Back-O-Town” to locals.

For the Carrs, it was a place where they were surrounded by family. Six of the nine homes on this block of Charbonnet used to house relatives. Only three of the six have family now.

Moreover, the rituals that used to bond the family are gone. Every Thursday used to be lawn-cutting day. As the men in the families returned from work, they would one-by-one grab a mower or edger or whatever other tool and pitch in to trim the yards of all six houses. When they were done, the men would gather in the carport behind the Carrs’ house and drink beer as they relaxed.

Despite the neighborhood’s reputation for crime even before Katrina, it used to look like one big-time party. From orange to pink to purple to green, the vibrantly painted homes of the Lower Ninth Ward used to reflect the splashy spirit of New Orleans. There was pride in this area because it was mostly family-owned – not an oversized rental community like so many poor neighborhoods.

After the disaster, the interesting colors that made the area unique were gone, covered in the greenish gray mud that was left after the flood. Now, the colors are slowly starting to come back.

Put the emphasis on slowly.

FEMA trailer outside a New Orleans home in December 2009, more than four years after Katrina.
(AP Photo/Cheryl Gerber)




“You had to scrub that stuff off by hand and it took forever,” Milton said, describing the process of removing mud and painting over the house’s beams in order to prevent mold growth. It took him and three other men from his family four days to do one house. It was obvious they needed help.

“Some people were upset with the Hispanics who came in here to do all the work, but I’m not one of them,” said Carr, who is black. “We needed them. We didn’t have people here to do it.”

Most families in this part of town couldn’t afford to return, the challenge of rebuilding too overwhelming to consider. Throw in dishonest contractors and other scam artists said to take advantage of the situation and the frustration was too much.

Deandra said others lost their homes because of paperwork. As houses were passed from generation to generation in this area, the paperwork wasn’t always done. In the aftermath of Katrina, the city apparently claimed the property.

But mostly, it’s just too hard to come back. Some of the Carrs’ family is in Houston still, where they fled initially after the hurricane’s damage left the ward flooded for months. Some are in Dallas.

Milton is a trained electrician, a former union president at Domino Sugar and serves as a tour guide. As a fifth-generation native, Carr can talk in vivid detail about every part of the city. He used to have family everywhere around town, making mid-day pit stops an easy routine.

That’s gone, but Milton flashes an optimistic smile through it all. He is the embodiment of the sign posted on St. Claude Avenue, just as cars cross over the bridge into the ward.

“Welcome to the Lower Ninth Ward. Remember Our Past. Celebrate Our Future.”

Go Saints!