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NINTH WARD MEMORIAL MOMENTS
Mr. John Mullen From The Lower Nine
Went to the Ninth Ward this morning for the memorial. There was a dedication in front of the levee walls. Hundreds upon hundreds of white candles, like the little Jewish Yahrtzeit memorial ones. Drummers, led by Luther Gray, lead the crowd alongside the wall to the altar. The media was out there like Hollywood. It was the most media I’ve ever seen in New Orleans since the flood. And they were being really intrusive. Racing over to talk to people who went to the levee wall to pay their respects or have a private moment, 100 or so cameras clicking away forever it seemed, getting every sigh, every tear drop, every intimate exchange between families of the neighborhood. It turned me off, shut me down so, I put my own camera and notepad away and just meditated on the memorial. I guess the national attention is a double edged sword. While we certainly need the rest of the country to stay aware and keep us a priority, having reporters descend upon the perceived suffering and jamming cameras and microphones into their faces, asking inane questions… just made it all feel shallow and distorted.
One news reporter from NBC World News, I forgot his name – he approached a black woman who was standing in front of the levee wall. He’s in a Hound’s tooth jacket and Eddie Bauer Dockers and, in this very official newsworthy voice, asks her, “So…what do you call this particular neighborhood?”WTF!?! As if there’s a chance in hell he doesn’t know he’s in the NinthWard! C’mon man! I just groaned and walked away, I was so mortified – people like him make it hard for people like me to do my job. What a nudnik!
As I left the NBC nudnik withhis Ninth Wards specimen, an elder Black man walking alongside me struck up a conversation. We asked one another about our respective neighborhoods. He told me he’s from the Ninth Ward, Winthrop Street at Tonti. I said, “So, what’s going on with your house?” He smiled.
“Gone.”
“You gon’ rebuild it?”
“Oh yeah…. See, the trick to living down here is…”
He waited with dramatic pause for me to lean in, which of course, I did. If he’s got the secret to success for living in the Ninth Ward, I need to hear about it.
“The trick to living down here is…you gotta have a boat,” he says triumphantly, like it was the most logical, practical solution to the community’s problems.
“Really? So, if you have a boat, you’ll move back?”
“Oh yeah. I aint scared of no hurricanes, aint scared a no levees. I can swim. Just need a boat.”
He was so full of smiles and personality. He reminded me of a 65 year old country fisherman version of James Evans.
He is John Mullen, retired 6th grade teacher from MLK. He told me about riding the storm, his house flooding. Said there was a boat up in the telephone wires. He and some other guys climbed out of their attics, on to the roofs, pulling themselves with the phone lines through the water until they reached the boat. They were able to save 18 people. He was telling me all this with the mischief of a college boy recounting a wild keg party.
We walked over to his car for him to show me his photo album. “I took 16 rolls of film at the Convention Center.” He smiled a sneaky grin, “Some friends thought I was depressed so they commandeered me a camera and some film.”
“That’s my neighbor,” he pointed. “When we got to San Antonio, he was arrested for what? Shoplifting! Aint got nothing but one hand!” he snorted. On closer inspection, I realized that guy’s arm wasn’t bent at the elbow, but completely missing from the elbow down.
“And these two old people,” he said pointing to an image of two old folks with wild, uncombed hair, “they married. They had Alzheimer’s. I didn’t know it and took the husband off with me to find a phone. Then he disappeared. I had to go back and tell his wife that I lost her husband.”
He’s such a character, telling me these stories. I’m focused
on him like he’s TV.
“So what’d she say?”
“She said, ‘Take me to go find him.’ And I did - and lost her too! That’s when I realized they were both out there,” he loops his finger away from his head. “They came back though.”
Every picture he showed me were of his neighbors, all with some wild footnote story attached, adding a funny hook to the catastrophe they all went through together.
Folks like Mr. Mullen are the reason the Ninth Ward holds such a soft spot in my heart. Although the press beehive was swarming to the extent I couldn’t have my own process of reckoning with all the souls I’ve met there through my interviews, the shattered empty homes that have become as familiar and beloved a neighborhood to me as my grandmomma’s hometown, I was blessed with a different kind of reckoning through Mr. Mullen. This hurricane year is toughening my skin, showing me again and again the power of laughter in the face of tragedy. I don’t have it down yet. But I’ve made up my mind to try and get there.
Memorial Erected In the Lower Ninth Ward on Claiborne Ave.
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8/30/06 6:51 PM