Soul
I have worked in many ugly places, and Jefferson Davis County tops them all. The houses are squat brick warts that grow incessantly off a never ending maze of non-descript streets. The commercial districts are forgettable automobile-oriented spines that snake down the long and narrow county. Rusting refineries, belching all colors of smoke, abut neighborhoods and mar the horizon. The river, in the few areas where it is not swallowed by factories, is hidden by over-sized levees. As if any one neighborhood like this is not bad enough, the scene plays out over and over again for forty miles. An endless stream of cheap brick facades and quicky-marts. The residents, however, are something else.
I have also worked in a lot of communities with amazing people. Places with visionary leaders and remarkable citizens. And I’ll tell you what, Jefferson Davis County has them all beat. I have never seen a place with as deep a soul as this county. It is a county of little leagues and Kiwanis. A county where people are born, grown up, grow old and die with no thought of moving. A county of coups de mains where the men gather to help each other build a deck, put up siding or replace windows, and the women cook the best Crawfish Etoufee and Seafood Jambalaya I have ever tasted.
While the world’s eyes were on New Orleans and its scenes of desperation, the story of Jefferson Davis was just as compelling, but completely different. Jefferson Davis rescued itself one house, one family at a time. It is the type of place where two neighbors might have feuded for thirty years, but would do anything to be living on the same block again.
It has been four months since the water receded and the county looks like more similar to images from disasters in the developing then from our own country. Every building, literally every building, in the parish was damaged, many beyond repair.
Amid this, every Saturday a group gathers at the gutted county office building and throws their names in a hat. They draw a name and everybody helps gut the lucky person’s house. They have a strength and faith that I do not pretend to understand, but I know I respect.
What scares me is that the Citizens Recovery Committee (CRC), a group of good hearted bankers, lawyers, doctors and judges who are charged with spearheading the redevelopment effort, have a vision with little room for low income residents. Pre-Katrina, Jefferson Davis was a blue-collar community, 88 percent of houses sold for under $125,000. If the CRC has its way this will not be true in the future. They want to double the lot size of any areas that will have widespread demolitions so the new buildings are more expensive. Along a similar vein, the county government is requiring individual hearings for any multi-family rental building owner who wants to rebuild.
They have seen pictures of shiny new communities with beautiful houses and fancy shopping districts, and this is what they think they want. They are forgetting is what makes Jefferson Davis special, what gives it soul.
A 30 foot wall of water may have crashed through the county, but so far it not do any lasting damage. If the county chooses to rebuild in such a way as to exclude most of the residents, then Katrina has won and maybe it is time to let the marshes reclaim their ancestral home.
I have also worked in a lot of communities with amazing people. Places with visionary leaders and remarkable citizens. And I’ll tell you what, Jefferson Davis County has them all beat. I have never seen a place with as deep a soul as this county. It is a county of little leagues and Kiwanis. A county where people are born, grown up, grow old and die with no thought of moving. A county of coups de mains where the men gather to help each other build a deck, put up siding or replace windows, and the women cook the best Crawfish Etoufee and Seafood Jambalaya I have ever tasted.
While the world’s eyes were on New Orleans and its scenes of desperation, the story of Jefferson Davis was just as compelling, but completely different. Jefferson Davis rescued itself one house, one family at a time. It is the type of place where two neighbors might have feuded for thirty years, but would do anything to be living on the same block again.
It has been four months since the water receded and the county looks like more similar to images from disasters in the developing then from our own country. Every building, literally every building, in the parish was damaged, many beyond repair.
Amid this, every Saturday a group gathers at the gutted county office building and throws their names in a hat. They draw a name and everybody helps gut the lucky person’s house. They have a strength and faith that I do not pretend to understand, but I know I respect.
What scares me is that the Citizens Recovery Committee (CRC), a group of good hearted bankers, lawyers, doctors and judges who are charged with spearheading the redevelopment effort, have a vision with little room for low income residents. Pre-Katrina, Jefferson Davis was a blue-collar community, 88 percent of houses sold for under $125,000. If the CRC has its way this will not be true in the future. They want to double the lot size of any areas that will have widespread demolitions so the new buildings are more expensive. Along a similar vein, the county government is requiring individual hearings for any multi-family rental building owner who wants to rebuild.
They have seen pictures of shiny new communities with beautiful houses and fancy shopping districts, and this is what they think they want. They are forgetting is what makes Jefferson Davis special, what gives it soul.
A 30 foot wall of water may have crashed through the county, but so far it not do any lasting damage. If the county chooses to rebuild in such a way as to exclude most of the residents, then Katrina has won and maybe it is time to let the marshes reclaim their ancestral home.
posted by JNA | 8:35 PM
1 Comments:
This was your most inspired entry. It sounds like a travesty. Maybe since Uncle Sam is throwing money at the problem, it could subsidize the houses, so the big fat expensive houses could go to the poor prior residents.
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