September 27, 2005 | Andy Sullivan Redux

Andy Sullivan, SSN pal and intrepid reporter, got on a jet plane today to head back to D.C. and his lovely wife after 10 days of covering post-Katrina New Orleans.

His penultimate New Orleans story, focusing on a family returning to the Terrebonne Parish, is here.

Hopefully Andy will forgive me for quoting liberally:

The mud boat skirts down the bayou past trapped dogs, ruined hunting cabins and capsized shrimp boats, carrying Alcide "Joe" Boudwin back to his flooded trailer.

The state troopers have set up a roadblock to stop residents from returning to the low-lying areas of Terrebonne Parish that Hurricane Rita flooded on Saturday.

But they can't block off the bayou. So Boudwin, 56, his granddaughter Tiffany, 15, and his son-in-law Junior, 45, keep an eye out for alligators and cottonmouth snakes as the flat-bottomed boat noses around the bridge, past the flooded sugar cane fields, over the road where the Bayou Strangler, a local serial killer, dumped his tenth victim a few months ago.

All the way to 4894 Shrimper's Row, to see what nine feet of salt water from the Gulf of Mexico has done to their home.

Three dogs bound out of a rust-streaked trailer and swim across the yard, tails wagging above the water. The bearded Boudwin's Old Testament features light up with joy as he sloshes out to meet them.

But his spirits sink as he looks around his property.

"Look at my lawn mower, it was brand new," he says, waving his hand toward a sunken riding mower. "How'm I going to cut the grass now?"

Out back of the rust-streaked trailer, Junior shouts: "Look at where the washing machine's at!"

The Boudwins are the type of family whose most valuable items are the ones they keep outside. Now the washing machine, the Soloflex strength trainer, and a toilet and sink sit under several feet of water. The shrimp boat out front has cracked its hull when it drifted off its trailer.

SWIMSUIT TOP

Wooden framing shows where the front deck used to be before it washed away. Only the swimsuit top and the cutoff jeans on the clothesline are dry.

"We had $5,000 sunk into that sucker," Junior says, pointing to a mammoth boat engine.

What's Andy think about coming home?

I'm ready to go back to DC. Back to the lobbyists, public-relations attack robots, and 22-year-old congressional aides who have never washed their own dishes but think they know how to run the world.

It's a lot easier to write about people who are more powerful than you than it is to write about people who are way, way, way less powerful than you. People who had nothing before and even less now.

I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. Compassion is much more draining than contempt, that's one way of saying it. Another way, perhaps: afflicting the comfortable is a hell of a lot easier than comforting the afflicted.

Go read the whole post here.

Posted by Ryan Singel at September 27, 2005 12:16 PM

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