THIS WAS MY OWN PERSONAL STORY I WROTE IN AUGUST, 2006 ABOUT MY MOTHER'S HOUSE IN CHALMETTE...

The official anniversary of Hurricane Katrina isn’t till Tuesday, the
29th. So already being kinda depressed all week watching all the
Katrina specials on tv, I got an email today from my mother that
really hit harder than anything I've been seeing on tv. The
house that I grew up for 30 years is now a cement slab. a blank
space... nothing left but a quarter of a dead magnolia tree in
the back yard that once towered over the neighborhood. Yes, the interior house was destroyed by Katrina with 8 feet of water in it for over a week. Yes, I've been back twice since then to rummage through the house to salvage the slightest memories of what little could be salvaged in the ruins. But, from the outside, it was still our house. It still looked like the house I grew up in... Now, it's gone. Katrina still delivers a crushing blow almost exactly one year after her first devastating blow that took away life as I knew it in Chalmette and the whole city of New Orleans.

My parents and I moved in that house in 1973, when I was 3. My brother, Tommy, was born in 1975, and Steve in 1980. Tommy and I shared a room with bunk beds while Steve was a baby, and then I took over Steve's room in the summer of '84. My parents divorced in '90, and I moved out in '91 to start my own life. I moved back home in 2002 for a brief 9 month stay between relationships that has brought me here to Wisconsin.

The memories are countless. The good times, along with the bad times remain in my heart. Even post Katrina, I could still walk through the walls that was my home. The two times I've been back since Katrina, sure it was a struggle to push through the rubble and upturned furniture, but it was still home. It was still the house I grew up in. I could still go in my room, see where the bathroom is, push my way through Mom and Dad's room to get to the garage, go up to the attic. Now, when I go back again, I will stand on an empty slab that was once my house. I will be standing outside where my room once was. I will be in the street and see the dead magnolia tree trunk eye level that once allowed me to climb and see the whole neighborhood. I will not drive up to a perfect house on the outside that brought so much joy to my life. The red bricks are gone. The porch is gone. The red fence that I drove my bikes through on the side is gone. That bitch, Katrina, made it official today, and took the exterior of my house away. She couldn’t settle for destroying the inside. She couldn’t stop at taking away being able to go "home" anytime I wanted just to sit in my room with the Star Wars curtains still up, or the living room with the tan curtains, or the kitchen with the flowered lamp shade over the kitchen table. She had to take away at least being able to drive down Palmetto Street 3 blocks from Judge Perez Hwy. to the curve, and see my house, 3120, as it’s always been since I was old enough to barely walk. And I can remember being so proud that I was able to throw my football over the house from the front yard and hit the mid section of the magnolia tree in the backyard. Now, the only thing that separates me from the stump
in the backyard is air.

I can bore ya'll for hours on this sentimental crap, but I'll stop now. Those of you from the south know exactly how I feel. Those of you from the north who have never gone through something like this, I'm sorry for boring you with my sob story. I needed someone to vent to, and you happened to stumble across this.

3120 Palmetto Street, Chalmette, Louisiana, 70043, 504-277-1548. ..Katrina can take the house away, take the phone lines away, take away the building that was "home" away. But she can not and will not take the spirit and memories away from my heart. She can not take away the love I had for that house, and the love I had for family and friends that passed through that house all the years I spent there.

Katrina can burn in hell for all I care. The memories and people that lived my life at the house will always be with me forever. Nothing, and no one, can tear down the walls of memories I shared in that house that will always be with
me. Bricks or no bricks.

-Written by Joey Garic