Interview with: David Martin
Length: 15 minutes, 45 seconds
Summary: David Martin tells the story of his trips back to New Orleans right after Katrina. He has photos from those trips online here: Sept. 3, 2005 & Sept. 13, 2005. From that second set, here’s one the illustrates the front porch around the corner that he talks about.
Notes: My interviews are getting progressively longer. I’ll make more of an effort to keep them around the 5-10 minute range. This one just needed 15 minutes.
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if david answered that he has been here for 13 years, since 2003…how does that compute?
…on May 29th, 2006, at 5:19 pmDavid’s been here since 1993, he misspoke when he said 2003.
…on May 30th, 2006, at 11:39 amMatthew Olson (of the Common Ground Media Collective)transcribed this interview to be published in a Common Ground newspaper. He was kind enough to send me the transcript and I thought I’d post it here:
On the third of September, we were in Houston, having evacuated initially to Natchez for about fifteen minutes and then to the Sabien river where our friends were staying, from the Sabien river—when our friends left for to Oklahoma—we went ahead and traveled to Houston where my wife’s family is. From Houston my brother-in-law made arrangements with a person who owns a company in New Orleans who do large scale tree and lawn sorts of projects and they had trucks coming into new Orleans that were here to clear trees and we made arrangements to tag along. The morning of the third, about twelve o’clock at night, in Houston we took off with these trucks. I had gone and bought a shotgun and shells because we had no idea what was going on in New Orleans. We were determined to come, but we were also determined not to be carjacked, which happened to some people during that time. So we drove to a spot outside of Houston and met up with a gentleman by the name of Hines who worked for the company and I rode with Hines for the rest of the trip. The power was spotty. There were a couple places you could see lights on the way, once we got within fifty miles. We got over off at the Leland bridge and went down to the river and came along the river road until we got into River Ridge, to Hazel Park where Hines’ house was. On the way in, It’s three-thirty in the morning, there are no lights. There are a whole lot of crazy things going on. There were street lights laying physically in the middle of the road that you have to slow down and go around. At one point, Hines said ‘Well, it’s time to load the guns.’ And he got me to get out his 45 or 9 millimeter, and I told him I don’t load automatic weapons, I’ve never loaded one before. So I held them while he put the clip on and got it seated. And then we put them back away. We didn’t ride around holding them or anything. We rode on into Hazel park, the neighborhood was completely dark. There were signs up in a few windows that said ‘we will kill you if you loot us.’ There were trees all over the place, just huge oaks. The roots in the air. His house, it turned out, was alright. And I helped him load up a lot things up into the trailer. I kinda had the impression that we were all gonna help one another throughout the day to do what we could. When the remainder of the crew showed up, he took off back to Houston with his stuff. At about six ‘o’clock, we [two people on the crew] pulled into New Orleans, there was a tanker truck on its side in a parking lot. There were people with M-16’s in their hands all over the place. And shortly after we got past Oshner, we ran into water we couldn’t cross, we circled the water, which in the uptown area was at that time around Freret. You could go all up and down St. Charles and then you’d turn into the neighborhood into uptown, and you’d get to Freret and it’d be impassable. We traveled around the city quite a bit, but we were never able to get to our houses. We ended up leaving and said we’d come back as soon as we thought the water was a little further down.
On the morning of the thirteenth at about five thirty, we were back having once again pretended to be tree-cutters. We were on Claiborne and Calhoun with some National Guardsmen who had told us we should not go into the neighborhood because people were being carjacked, and there were looters with guns that had been seen, so going in there in the dark was not okay. So we waited until the sun came up, it was so eerily quiet that we were standing there, and a flock of ibis flew over and ibis aren’t particularly noisy birds, they make small noises and they were forty or fifty feet in the air at least, but the whisper of their wings on Claiborne Ave. It was utter and complete silence, it was utter and complete darkness, surreal.
When I pulled up [to my driveway] I was looking at the house. It was gray then. I was just shaking my head, I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong for a second until I realized what was wrong. The face of the house had a forty foot porch, four and a half feet tall, but it didn’t have it anymore. It was over where my car’s parked now. It had floated around the corner and it was still standing but over on the street on the side of the house.
The next time I came was on the seventeenth, but the water had fallen down by that point. Everything was covered with a fine silt of disgusting gray grit and was not dry. It was soaking wet and stinking to high heaven. Unbelievable smell everywhere you went but just sewage and over on the ground, the grass was matted and gray and sitting on top of it was a Tab can, an empty Tab can. My wife drinks it, it’s an electric pink and it was a beacon in the middle of the much that just said Rachel was here.
I just shook my head, I couldn’t figure out how to get into the house first because—the front door being as high as it is, jammed shut with the swelling. So I walked around and went to the backyard and the back door was like that also. I finally decided there wasn’t any choice but to kick them in. When I walked into the house it appeared that everything had just been shaken. Everything was on its ear. Now, as I was in the backyard I heard my cat meowing. We’d evacuated with the dogs, but left the cat. So I ran into the house and I’m calling him and I can hear him but he sounds like he’s upstairs or something. I ran out toward the street cause I heard some national guardsmen go by and ran up to them. ‘Hi, my cat is stuck somewhere in the wall or the ceiling, can someone please try to help me for a minute to figure out where he is and tear out some of the ceiling or walls. They laughed at me. They said, ‘we’re looking for bodies pal,’ and kept on their way.
I was destroyed; the house had been shaken up, the sofa was leaning against the wall at a forty-five degree angle, the desks were lifted up into their spaces it was a total equal matter covered mess. The cat wouldn’t come and I’m on the phone with Rachel, finally just crying, saying what am I gonna do? I gotta leave the cat.
In the midst of all this I decided I had to get myself out of the house. I saw we had some blockbuster movies, so I thought I’d return em. So I got in the car and went up to the blockbuster on Claiborne, pulled up and parked, and I could see that someone had broken in to the Circle K, but they{d been chased off in mid-break in because there were bottles of liquor unbroken on the sidewalk. Thought, that’s pretty weird. So I went up to put the movie in and I can hear behind me one of the Huey’s going by, one of the helicopters. And I thought, it’s not dopplering the way I would expect and I turn and I look and the guy’s there with a canon. And he’s looking right at me. He’s fifty or sixty feet up in the air. And he’s looking right at me with canon and I waved and I held up the two movies and put em in the slot and the guy burst out laughing.
And all of that time, we never saw anyone be the least bit unfriendly. Places where we drove around on the third of September, folks either waved or ignored us. One man about fifty or sixty feet away from us waved a rake angrily in the air. And that was the total of the unfriendliness that we encountered. So we felt kind of foolish having been so worried and gone out and gotten a shotgun and everything, but at the same time if anything bad had come down, you wouldn’t have wanted to bring yourself in here and left yourself at the mercy of anyone.
…on September 3rd, 2006, at 5:12 am