Louisiana Plantation Map

I was born and raised in New Orleans. I often refer to it as NOLA (New Orleans, LA. Geddit? Pronounced like Lola.) I have a love/hate relationship with the city. The picture above is a section of a large framed map I inherited. It sits on a wall in the garage/basement, gathering dust. Don't let the 184858 date under the title fool you: it's actually a 1931 reproduction on posterboard in a cheap frame.

When Betsy, the last big hurricane to hit NOLA, came through in 1965, it almost killed me. My room on the third floor had two walls that were almost all windows so I slept in my sister's room down the hall. The next morning we discovered that none of the windows had broken in my bedroom but damage to the roof had allowed water to leak in and soak the thick stucco plaster ceiling. At some point, a huge section of heavy wet plaster had dropped directly on the top half of my bed from the ceiling. Actually, it was a direct hit to the pillow area.


Map Detail of New Orleans, LA

Currently my mother lives generally in the area of the red dot on the map. Well, at the moment she's in Memphis, TN I think, having left with my sister a couple of days before Katrina's landfall. I have no idea what's going on with her house or my sister and brother-in-law's house.

Very soon, the remnants of Katrina will come through where I live in Massachusetts, carrying the particular scent of hurricane with it. I await it.