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From Pillar to Post to “Hilarity”
Posted Jul 6 2008
Miss Anne, my 80-something-year-old neighbor on South Scott Street, furnished the title for the second chapter of the book when she described to me what happened to her after the levees failed. Above is the photo I snapped of us that day while holding the camera out with my arm.
The short version of her story (the long version is in the book) is that she stayed through the hurricane, was picked up from her porch by a girl in a canoe, was flown by helicopter from Mid-City to the airport, was loaded into a plane and eventually ended up at an army base in Arkansas. When I ran into her for the first time after the storm, a few months later, she was outside tidying up her small front yard. She recounted her journey, and told me she’d been “from pillar to post,” a term I later nicked as a chapter title.
For a dose on the perspective that nearly three years remove will give, here’s the conversation I just had with her this afternoon:
“I’ve been thinking about that whole time and what happened to me, and you know what? I think it’s hilarious,” she told me. “Just hilarious. I just can’t believe it sometimes. If I were writing the story, you know what I would’ve called it?”
“From pillar to post,” I offered, smiling.
“No, I would’ve called it ‘Coincidence,’ she said. “Because, you know, a lot of what was happening to me seemed like it was coincidence, but the more I think about it, I think maybe it wasn’t, you know?”
I don’t know anyone else who would describe her post-Katrina odyssey as “hilarious,” or even funny, but that’s Miss Anne for you.
Topic: New Orleans Now
