Ain't Dere No More

Last Christmas, my sister gave me a T-shirt that read, "Ain't Dere No More." Inside each of the letters was a running list of culturally significant New Orleans businesses that, well, wasn't there any more. ("Ain't dere no more" is kind of colloquial New Orleanian slang, spoken seriously only by "yats.") Anyway, just a few weeks ago, since I was going to be in New Orleans with my family, I brought the T-shirt to wear as a pajama top. And when I left, eight days ago, I folded it up and put it in the dresser drawer of the room at Mom's house that I usually occupy, along with my "New Orleans" copies of the Liturgy of the Hours and the Field Guide to Eastern Birds (and a few pairs of cotton socks).

"Ain't Dere No More."

Only now it's not just familiar New Orleans institutions like Schwegmann Brothers or McKenzies Bakery or K&B Drugstore or "Rosenbergs, Rosenbergs, 1825 Tu-lane." It's the City that Care Forgot--and suddenly, harshly, remembered.

I talked with my Claretian friend, also a New Orleans expatriate. (If you're from New Orleans, you know what I mean; no matter where you moved, or how long ago that was, you're always a New Orleanian.) It was so helpful to have cafe au lait (and chicory) with a similarly uprooted soul. One of the priests at St. Peter's here in Chicago spent 20 years in New Orleans. The pastor there told me that yesterday, Father spent most of the day talking with people about New Orleans, connected with friends from there, and blinking back tears as he found himself humming (all day) "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?" (Man, I didn't need to hear that.)

I am still in a kind of massive denial about all this. It seems impossible for a city to disappear. But with the mayhem that has broken out, the combined result of poverty, abysmal education and plan bad government, it is becoming apparent that the city will never be the same.