There's one annecdotal piece of information I talk about a lot when he comes to New Orleans, and it has to do with a dog grooming place in New Orleans East. I honestly don't know what this particular place hit me so strongly. When I first went to post-storm New Orleans in October 2005, there was misery and horror all around. The place fairly stunk of death and destruction. And when I went back this past April, things were only some measure less horrible, but still fairly awful when you consider that this is a major American city in which we expect people to make their lives once again.
Anyho, Sheralane Dog Grooming just happened to stand on a road I just happened to drive drive in 2005, and I stopped to take a photograph of it. Here's how that looked then:
Boarded up, with some horrying marks on the door indicating that not only had a dog died there, but that it had been left in a crate for more than a month. Okay, so that was taken in October of 2005. When I went back to New Orleans in April of 2007, I made a beeline for Sherlane. Again, I don't know what it is exactly about this obscure dog grooming outfit that so capture my imagination, but I figured it was at least worth heading back to and capturing another picture.
So here we are, one more, at Sheralane, some 20 months after the storm, some 19 months after the picture above was taken:
Ain't much has changed, kids, not much at all. Still boarded up. Still grown over with weeds. Still vacant. It doesn't look to me like anyone has been in or out of the place in the intervening 20 months, so who knows what has become of the dog in the crate. (Though I can't imagine that the city would allow it to sit and rot for that long. Health services does seem to have made a strong effort at addressing the most serious health risks post-storm.)
Yeah, I know that this is just one dog grooming shop, but in my mind it stands as a proxy for what has become for much of New Orleans. Things stand still the way they were just after the storm hit. In the grand scheme of things, two years isn't an overly long time. But it's a ridiculously long time when it doesn't seem like much progress is being made at all.
Anyway, when I began to forget what it's like down in New Orleans today, I think of Sheralane. Maybe you will too now.
