getting the dirt

Recently I made contact with an oral historian out of Austin. She’s been recording accounts of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath from the survivors themselves. It’s a wonderful project, of course, to collect stories from the people who experienced this tragedy firsthand. Not only does the story-telling have therapeutic value for the survivors, but their testimonies will serve history by forming a tapestry of truth, as reflected in the project’s name: Alive In Truth.

At least, this is the idea. Feel free to visit www.aliveintruth.org to hear for yourself. I can’t speak with much authority here because I haven’t yet tuned in, the reason being that much of my post-Katrina life in New Orleans already involves listening to the people around me tell their stories. Even before the storm, this part of this country hosted a myriad of story-telling heritages—from the gothic Southerners to the colorful Cajuns to the passionate Blacks to the dramatic Drunks—and it follows that now, after being in the national limelight, no one here can shut up. This is fine by me, since it seems that one of my purposes in life is to hear what the people have to say and then blab it on to the next guy.

So naturally I got behind the Alive In Truth idea, figuring that I could hone my interviewing skills and contribute to the annals of history. And, in post-Katrina style, I am making rapid progress: in the month since I’ve decided to contribute my services, not only have I purchased a tape recorder, but I have done one interview.

However, I am learning what thousands of journalists worldwide already know: it ain’t the same on tape. Let me use Miss M, my lone interviewee thus far, as an example. When we first reunited with Miss M a few weeks ago, she regaled us with tales of staying in the French Quarter during the storm. One of the juiciest tidbits—and dare I say, the most poignant “truth” she shared—involved the SWAT team, a crack house on her street, and the mother of one of the crack proprietors. I would love to share more, except that when I met with her again for the interview, she pointedly did not want this tale retold. She gave me a fine, animated interview, but it paled against the impromptu storytelling we originally got over red wine and a mouthwatering eggplant ragout.

Still, I plan to keep interviewing my fellow New Orleanians. Later this week, I’ll be taping another friend who stayed during the storm and was evacuated by the authorities. I doubt the second retelling of her experience will be as vivid as the first, but I’m still looking forward to recording history as narrated by the common gal.

In the meantime, I’ve been shoveling dirt. The community garden across the street from us has been leveled so that the owner can fence it off for private viewings of his metal sculptures—art trumps vegetables, in an upset—and so mounds of soil sit curbside. Having been a community gardener, as well as the only one left in the area, I have an interest in dirt, especially the rich, dark, mostly-organically fertilized dirt that’s been left for the trash man.

Not to say that shoveling dirt is my highest priority or first-choice chore. That dirt’s been sitting there for days, waiting for a loving shovel to scoop it away. So with rain forecast for last night, yesterday afternoon I rolled my wheelbarrow over. I began shoveling and promptly struck a hunk of concrete with a jolting clang. I began again, lifting and tossing soil littered with grassy roots, oyster shells, and the occasional brick. As glamorous as it sounds, shoveling dirt isn’t something I’d want to do all day, or even more than two wheelbarrow’s worth. But it is a double wheelbarrow.

To keep my spirits up, I considered the value of my dirt-shoveling. I thought about the millions of people worldwide who would jump at the chance to take home such fine soil. Third-world patriarchs trying to feed their starving families on land whose topsoil blew away in a long-ago drought. Grubby city urchins desperate for the nutrients in a home-grown tomato. American suburbanites who drive out of their way to pay several dollars for a bag of dirt. It seems doubtful that anyone would pay cash money for what I was shoveling, knowing that it was Katrina Flood dirt, but I’m confident in its quality. The dude who runs our neighborhood gardening program stayed through the storm and assured me that the floodwaters in our part of town may have been a little salty but not toxic. And in my hour or so of shoveling, I didn’t see any human bones or mutant worms, so I’m not going to worry.

I took a break from my shoveling to coax Maggy out from under the house, which involved going into the neighbor’s yard. This is how I met E. J., leaning up on his truck out front, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. He’d been hired to put up sheetrock on my neighbor’s flooded first floor.

Like everyone I seem to meet, E. J. wasn’t shy about sharing his tragic tale. He owned two houses: one in Lakeview, which got seven feet of water, and one in Chalmette, which was not only demolished, but demolished at the center of the Murphy Oil Spill. True, the good folks at Murphy Oil were cleaning up the mess, but E. J., being a man that worked with his hands, knew that you don’t clean up oil (pronounced by E. J., who grew up in the Nint’ Ward, as earl) with soap and water alone—you need a degreaser. Or a degreezer, as the case may be. And E. J. may be a man who works with his hands, but he knew that the $20,000 Murphy offered him and all the other beneficiaries of the earl was useless without a guarantee that his property would be completely cleaned. Murphy Oil did intend to send out their private environmental agents to evaluate the toxicity, but would guarantee nothing in writing. Still, the Murphy representative assured E. J. that they would adequately clean everything, including his swimming pool and the water in it. E. J. responded that if his pool water was clean, he could rent a pump and pump the pool water into the canal which Murphy already had cleaned for $1.2 million or maybe billion (didn’t have my tape recorder for this conversation). The Murphy rep didn’t like that idea.

E. J. didn’t sign for the $20 grand. Even though I’d never met him before, I was proud of E. J. He planned to wait things out and focus his efforts on his place in Lakeview. Like everyone else here, it’s all he can do: wait and distract himself in the meantime.

So I’ve been shoveling dirt. And I would have offered E. J. some, seeing as his Chalmette soil will be leaking oil for years to come, but he’d already been ribbing me about my manual labor. “Your man should be doin’ that,” he told me, nodding towards the wheelbarrow.

I said that I didn’t mind, that it kept me in shape. “Aw, come on,” E. J. said, trying to be my friend. “You shouldn’t be workin’ like that.”

He pointed to the low-rent section of the neighborhood behind my house. “Get one a’ dem niggers over there to do it,” he mumbled, hiding the words in his mouth.