The Desire bus rolls no more, ending our modern connection to Tennessee Williams' iconic streetcar route. To retrace that historic downtown-to-9th Ward circuit is to enter a microcosm of a city stuck somewhere between sorrow and hope.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Chris Rose
Every day is a matter of taking stock. Ten months after The Thing, you still look around to see what is here and what is not here anymore.
Every day, it seems, you can find something missing. While following the ongoing financial drama of the New Orleans transit system, I discovered that the city's most (in)famous bus line is defunct.
The bus named Desire is no more. It ran its last route on Sunday, Aug. 28. When the Regional Transit Authority rolled back to life last winter, the Desire route was not among the resuscitated lines.
With last week's announcement that the Feds will pick up the tab for limited bus service until November, it's unlikely Desire will roll anytime soon, if ever again.
And so goes a small and curious piece of the city's history.
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The New Orleans Railway & Light Co. debuted the streetcar named Desire in 1920. The Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway on Dec. 3, 1947. The real streetcar ran its last route in New Orleans almost six months later, on May 30, 1948.
The bus that replaced it more or less followed the same route, from the vast 9th Ward residential sprawl to the Quarter via Decatur Street. Legions of restaurant and hotel workers relied on it for decades.
A few years ago, Desire's route was shifted and its traditional route through the Bywater, Marigny and Quarter was streamlined into a straight shot from the 9th Ward to Canal Street via Claiborne Avenue.
I decided to retrace the route of the final bus named Desire this week by foot and bicycle. I don't really know what I was looking for. Maybe a glimpse of history, or maybe just to see what's out there in the city now that everything is different.
Maybe I was just taking stock.
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The bus named Desire's official departure point was the corner of Elk Place and Canal, the nexus for a huge portion of the RTA fleet; buses headed Uptown, to the east, to Kenner and to the West Bank all stop here.
There's a statue on the neutral ground at this spot where all the buses converge. It was made by New Orleans sculptor Enrique Alferez in 1943. It's a tribute to the women of war, called "Molly Marine," and she is one tough broad.
But no one ever seems to notice her. She's just so much landscape, like the untended shrubbery and the busted marquee of the Downtown Joy Theater or all the pay phones on the wall that nobody uses anymore. Invisible.
The bus named Desire would head west on Elk, then right on Tulane Avenue to Claiborne. It passed under the shadow of Charity Hospital, another institution gone with the wind and water.
The first thing you notice at the corner of Tulane and Claiborne are the water lines on the walls. On Desire's outgoing route, the water was thigh high. Across the street -- a stretch of dead zone under the interstate -- it's at shoulder level.
The second thing that strikes you, heading down Claiborne past Canal and into the desolate stretch between the auto pound and the back of the old cemeteries, is the litter.
Everywhere. Every five feet, within every rotation of the bicycle wheel, within every step.
It's not storm debris. It's litter. Trash. A discarded hardpack of Kool menthols, an empty bottle of Bacardi, a bag of Doritos, a Styrofoam take-out container, napkins, envelopes, on and on and everywhere, the ubiquitous tumbleweed of downtown New Orleans.
You wonder: How can people contentedly settle into a life surrounded by their own detritus? It's a sociopathy I have never understood.
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It's June and it's hot and most of the activity on the streets, sidewalks, yards and rooftops is repair crews, fixing what Katrina hath destroyed. The sounds of jackhammers and generators and that ubiquitous pneumatic tat-tat-tat of roofing nail guns; this is the music of the summer of 2006, the sound of a city putting itself back together.
Down Claiborne, I pass a couple of indie hip-hop record ompany offices and hair extension salons and Club Fabulous and Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge, where six freshly glazed cast iron bathtubs full of newly planted flowers line the sidewalk.
I pass two old men sitting on their stoops, one white, one black. Their imperceptible nods -- the slightest tilt of the jaw -- are the only signs that they are alive.
Rounding the bend on Claiborne at St. Bernard Avenue, I pass the old classic rounded facade of the Circle Food Store and I get the first -- and strongest -- of the powerful whiffs of decay that will assault my olfactory on this journey.
The Circle Food Store, it smells like last October, and if you were here you know what that means and if you weren't, be thankful you don't.
The old route of the bus named Desire went past the newly opened Family Dollar store at Claiborne and Elysian Fields and it is positively bustling, a beacon of commerce here at the entry point to ruin.
Across Elysian Fields, then Franklin, the road begins its climb up the overpass that shadows the railroad tracks below and, off to the right, in the train yard below, there are two sheet metal Mardi Gras dens all blown apart by the storm and you can see from here the hallucinatory papier-maché smiles of the jesters and mythic characters of several wrecked floats.
The Easter Bunny and Little Red Riding Hood -- or is it Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz"? It's hard to tell from here -- have fallen out of the front of the float dens and they tilt toward the train tracks, greeting the conductors upon their arrival to New Orleans.
From atop the overpass, you can see back over the city skyline, downtown. From here, it looks just like a regular American City.
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As the Claiborne overpass descends into the 9th Ward, there at the bottom of the ramp, on the right, is the unassuming brick facade of the New Light Baptist Church. As I pass by, the Rev. Gregory Davis is out in the churchyard spraying citrus wood cleaner on a 1954 Hammond C-2 Organ. It's a classic model, the staple of Southern Gospel church music.
With Davis is David Tarantolo, who stands next to a white van marked "The Organ Doctor." Together, they are bringing the organ, which was halfway submerged for three weeks, back to life.
"The electrical components work; they missed the water by just a few inches," Davis says, his eyes shaded by a ridiculously oversized sombrero that his wife picked up once at a Chevys Fresh Mex restaurant but which does the job it's supposed to do. "We're working mostly on appearances now."
Davis' flock is largely scattered, Houston to Atlanta and everywhere in between. He figures about a third are here in town but the church has had no services yet, so he can't be sure. The church's drum set, sheet music and Bibles are stacked all around him in the yard and he works it every day, getting it fixed, getting it ready.
"You know, when I first came back here (in November), it seemed that there was no hope," he said, and that's a serious problem for a man who makes his living dispensing hope.
"But looking at it through the eyes of faith, I see that there is progress. Just to see a red light function, I rejoice. A gas station opens, a grocery store opens -- I rejoice. I rejoice at the small things. They give us hope."
On the second Sunday in July, Davis is going to send a brass band into the neighborhood to gather the people and lead them back to the church. Then, Davis will conduct the New Light's first service since August.
Now there's cause to rejoice. For hope. For new light, indeed.
Tarantolo -- The Organ Doctor -- mostly smiles and says very little. Finally, I say to him: "Organ Doctor? You must hear every stupid joke in the world."
"I've heard some good ones," he tells me. Then he pauses. "But not in the presence of a minister, please."
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When you're on a bike, you notice all the other people on bikes. At the corner of Robertson and Desire, where the bus used to take a left into the flatlands of the Upper 9th, I ask a fellow rider where the closest place is to get a cold drink.
I have a feeling -- which would bear true -- that once I head toward the lake, there will be no open businesses.
He sends me on a detour down to St. Claude, and then he rides up alongside me, asks if I'm from the neighborhood. I tell him no and I ask the same of him.
"I'm from the Lower 9," he tells me, "but I'm staying by here since I got back to town. I was only one block from where they blew up the levee and if it wasn't for a Bobcat tire, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
"I can't swim -- couldn't swim from me to you right now to save my life. I was trapped in an alley and a Bobcat tire floated up and I grabbed it and floated out and then saved two other people with it. We got to a rooftop and then got out."
Everybody here has a story. New Orleans was always a place where people talked too much even if they had nothing to say.
Now, everyone's got something to say.
As we part, the man asks me: "Got 50 cents?" I reach in my pocket, find seventy-five, and give it to him.
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Back on the bus route, riding up Desire, more wasteland. You know the drill: Piles of household debris. The occasional FEMA trailer. All the houses bearing the inscription of our loss, the Xs and Os, like morbid football plays, painted on the weatherboards and doors.
It's third-and-long. Very long.
At the improbably named Bunny Friend Playground, two federally contracted security officers -- one from California, one from North Carolina -- sit in lawn chairs under a makeshift shade cover.
They tell me the job is pretty easy. The California guys tells me: "We heard this neighborhood used to be pretty bad, but it's all good now. All the trouble is Uptown these days."
Bunny Friend, like so many other playgrounds in the city, is paved over with stones. It doesn't exactly exude neighborhood warmth, no family-friendly vibe from all these pristine trailers crammed together like cellblocks.
Not much of a place to raise kids, but it is what it is. There's a brand new playground set in the corner of the lot. That's a start, I guess.
At the corner of Desire and North Miro, Georgiana Mitchell sits on her stoop finishing off a cheeseburger and a Coke. Her nephew is gutting her house.
"It used to stop right here in front of my house," she says of the bus named Desire. She rode it for 31 years, as dining room manager of Le Pavillon Hotel and also as a salad maker at Antoine's restaurant.
She's retired now. Trying to get back in, get back home. Thieves recently made off with what little survived the flood.
"My crystal, my mama's china," she says. "They took it off the porch." She pauses. "We thought we had lost everything anyway -- before we found it -- so I guess it doesn't matter."
She gives me a look that says: It matters.
Her family, all of whom lived within three blocks of this corner, have spread as far as Hammond, Houston and Atlanta. They're not coming back. But she wants to.
"I just love New Orleans," she says. "It gets into your blood. I'm 70 years old and I thought at this point in my life I'd just be out here in the yard fooling with my sunflowers and rose bushes and going to the Wal-Mart. That's what I was going to do."
And now, this.
"Look at my grass. I can't believe there's no St. Aug at all! Let me tell you: When you come by here some day and see all the pretty grass and all the pretty flowers, you will know I am back."
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Further up Desire, there's a boat on the side of the road, right where the flood deposited it. It's a Scottie Craft, about 15 feet. It's called Zombie.
Perfect.
A shirtless, heavily tattooed guy with a Billy Idol haircut, rocker shades and pierced nipples is gutting a house. He's the only white guy on the block, in the whole neighborhood, for that matter.
His name is Eli, a general maintenance man at the tony Bombay Club in the Quarter, and he tells me: "I'm the only one around here who's not related by blood or marriage. But it's a good place. Historically, it's not a bad neighborhood. It's a poor neighborhood, and crime tends to gather in poor neighborhoods. But it's pretty quiet now. That's for sure."
He cooks on a wood fire in the front yard and had been sleeping in a tent there until the woman across the street got power and now he runs an orange extension cord across the street to power a fan so he can sleep.
"I went from having $200,000 worth of material possessions to what was in two duffel bags," he tells me. "I had my pity party, but you dust off and say, all right, it's time to rebuild. The family that lives on this block, they're all coming back. You can see: It's the only clean block around here. We're going to turn this little block into a Garden of Eden in the middle of hell."
It does get hellish up the block, toward where the big Desire housing development used to cast a gloom over the whole area until it was torn down. Now it's all empty fields and empty hair salons and juke joints and grocery stores; that smell.
The rats have become legend around here. Someone tells me the firemen come by and shoot the rats with paint guns, but I don't know if I believe that.
Here, at Desire and Florida, the bus used to head down to Mazant Street and start its loop back downtown.
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At Mazant and North Galvez, a stunning spectacle breaks the pale and dusty horizon. A man has moved himself and what few belongings he has left onto an abandoned corner lot and, in the process, he has become a bona fide Southern Gothic art installation.
He has positioned broken cars, trucks and barrels around himself as a perimeter. Yard umbrellas and tarps make his shade, and flags and mirrors and stuffed animals and plastic flowers and just plain stuff, lots of random stuff, is scattered throughout, making for a strange oasis.
It's a junk yard, but an artful junk yard.
The man says: "I am Willie Gordon, 64 years old, 1425 Egania Street." He says this like he says it a lot and from the Superdome to Houston to a series of Texas hospitals to FEMA to the Red Cross and everybody else, he has.
He says to me: "That's EGANIA. Do you know how to spell that?"
I tell him I do. He pauses. Says: "You know, I lived there for 18 years and just learned how to spell it six months ago."
He's a truck driver by trade, an eccentric by birth and, from the looks of all the empty bottles on the premises, a drinker.
"I'm the Special Man!" he tells me.
Egania is in the Lower 9th. His house is still there but he says he's afraid to go back.
"The water . . . ," he begins and he tells an hour-long story about the water rising around his car and his long walk through it and the surgeries from the infections he got from it and the cab driver in Houston who scammed him of his money, and the story, which began as a mirthful exposition, takes him from playful wisecracker to the depths of human sorrow and he begins to sob.
It's hot outside. Hot as hell. I don't know what to say to this guy. "I'm shook up," he says. "I'm scared. I'm 64 years old and I am alone. What am I going to do?"
He has big, gold earrings like a genie would wear. He was wearing boxers when I arrived, but he has put his pants on now.
A guy in a muscle T-shirt rides up on one of those too-small bicycles that gang-banger types favor and he starts to sing: "Dun-dun, DAH-dah! Dun-dun, DAH-dah-dah-dah-dah."
It's the theme from "Sanford & Son." The guy on the bike says, "What's up Fred!" and Willie Gordon gives a good natured howl in response. The guy looks at me and says: "Where y'at, Lamont?" and then he rides away, his laughter echoing in the canyon of broken houses.
A man across the street, on a cell phone, yells into it: "What do you want from me?"
Willie Gordon looks at me and says: "Women."
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The bus used to roll down Mazant, which matches Desire in its presentation: the good, the bad and the ugly. The route turns right on Claiborne to head back downtown and along this stretch, volunteers from Common Ground are gutting houses.
On the street, folks around here tell you they trust white people more than they used to because of all the help from Common Ground and groups like it. It's kind of weird, but almost all the volunteers you see working in the 9th Ward -- upper and lower -- are white.
Young and white, from out of town and dressed in space suits and doused in patchouli, gutting out the ruins of a city they never knew.
The route runs past the recently refurbished Stewart's Diner, where the mayor, the governor and the president stopped for lunch one day in March. Bush had red beans and rice with potato salad, smoked sausage, veggie.
On the menu, it's called The President's Special now. Served five days a week. $8.50.
I ride my bike, my big red bike, down Claiborne and under the interstate where a million cars are waiting to be carted off. The tires are missing off a lot of them. Those are just about the only salvageable parts on the water-logged auto farm and, in a town where everyone gets a flat tire once a month, they are no negligible commodity, those tires.
I ride by the newly opened Cajun Fast Food to Go, operated by Asians and patronized by African-Americans and isn't that a New Orleans story?
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Back at the corner of Elk and Canal, the bus named Desire would have finished its run. But it doesn't run anymore, so I look at the buses that are here, loading and unloading passengers, and I see on the marquee scroll on the front of a bus, in those letters made from green dots of light: "SULLEN."
This bus goes to Algiers. To Sullen Place, to be exact. And I am astounded.
The bus named Sullen instead of Desire and what is there to say?
Taking stock of things, that's pretty damn funny.
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Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com; or at (504) 352-2535 or (504) 826-3309.
