Hybrid.

Carlos' car didn't float away like we expected. We thought sure it would have risen up and broken out the terrarium kitchen window, floated toward the street, and maybe over into Pratt Park or down Pratt Drive.

But it was parked exactly where we left it in the carport, next to the intact kitchen window, completely covered in baked-on Katrina effluent. The undoubtedly awful odor inside was completely undetectable from outside, thank you Honda.

Odessa, my '95 4-Runner, lived up to her name on our 2300 mile cross-country trek. She's always been good to us -- a loyal and trusty friend. She's probably got another good 90K left on her engine, but it remains to be seen whether she will ever again fulfill her most important duty: to be our hurricane evacuation vehicle. She's high, dry and tough. She can climb high curbs and park in the grass without getting stuck, even in a New Orleans flash flood. She's not too big and almost big enough.

Before Alex came along we could get ourselves, the Weimaraner, the German Shepard and a small amount of valuables inside. The clothes, sleep gear and lifetime photos went on top. Once Alex came along the photos had to stay behind. (This time Katrina tried to claim the photos, but came up 3" short).

Oh, and did I mention that Odessa is beautiful? 14 MPG is a small price to pay for a gal like that ($600 in gas from Alexandria to Portland). S

So far we've done just fine with only her, but the handwriting is on the wall: $5-a-gallon gas and a stir-crazy husband.

* * * * *
In the New Seasons grocery parking lot the other day I saw four Toyota Priuses. Two of the exact same model and shade of blue sat right next to each other. A white one nearby and a silver one across the lot. Every time I stop at either Walgreen's or New Seasons (they share the same lot) I see at least one Prius, sometimes a Civic hybrid.

In New Orleans I saw not a one -- ever.

Hybrid counting. If I end up playing I'll post the results. Hybrid clustering? There must be some solid social indicators in there.

Personify means to assign a human quality to an object. What about the other way around? Hybrid is a good way to peg us these days: feeling so at home here in a place that is so... possible, and yet home feeling so far away and improbable.

Sinkage.

Sinkage. I wonder if people in the city of roses are familiar with the term. Now that I am on the outside looking in, sinkage seems like a strange word. Here in Portland, it seems like you might notice a rut in your yard one day and think only that something is sinking over there. But the "...age" in sinkage -- a word everyone in New Orleans knows all too well -- denotes a common problem, a phenomenon. Do they have sinkage in places like Portland, or would you say merely that your yard is sinking? Is that sinkage, or just a crack in your driveway?

Mud Hog is one of the firms in New Orleans that will come in with as much river sand as you need. 2 or 3 truckloads every ten years or so will cover it, more if your whole front and back yards are badly sunken. The DIY-ers have the truckloads of dirt dumped on their front lawn and spend the next 5 weekends wheelbarrowing and shoveling it under the house, only to find a large dead spot of St. Augustine grass under where the heap of dirt was. But Mud Hog will come in with a truck outfitted with a water tank and long flexible pipe. The sand and water are mixed together and pumped under your house. Presumably someone gets under your house with the end of the pipe to see that it is evenly distributed, and that your sewer pipes attached to the underside of your slab don't get broken in the process.

Earl's Plumbing tank trucks were a common sight on my block. Their job was to find the breaks in your sewer pipes, fix them, and fill back up the underside of your slab with dirt. Occasionally I'd actually get to see the poor sap who was one of a crew of 3 or 4 assigned to the truck -- sucking himself out from a narrow mud hole under the house. Strongly evoking images from both the movie Raising Arizona and Booty Call (remember the saran wrap scene?). The only skin showing on these guys is a piece of the face. Most often I saw them in a rigged outfit consisting of a welders hat, boots and workgloves, looking something like a mud torpedo, but the lucky ones got a rubberized suit. These were the poor guys who had to go down there.

*******

New Orleans houses have traditionally been built on 2 or 3 foot brick piers -- enough to let the floodwater go under but not in. The 1950's ushered in the era of the brick ranch house -- a house that never should have taken root in New Orleans. But it just so happens that many of the low-lying reclaimed swamp areas that Katrina decided to take back were the very areas that were sprouting up brick ranches in the 50's.

I swore I'd never buy a slab home in New Orleans.

It's the sinkage. If the ground under your raised house starts to sink, your house doesn't move (hopefully) because it is likely built on a chainwall which is in turn on top of long wooden pilings driven deep into the ground. You just throw some more dirt around and maybe put a new carpet of grass, new driveways and sidewalks down every 15 years or so. But if the ground is under your slab house, somebody has to go down under there to put that dirt in, and usually it is after your sewer pipes that were supposed to be attached to your slab have fallen off and broken, something that sooner or later happens to everyone. When there was a strong rain and the ground was saturated, something in the air outside...just...wasn't... Well, I wouldn't want to be one of the guys who had to go under there and see what wasn't holding up.

In the end (was it the end?) Katrina didn't discriminate between slab home owners and raised home owners. Most everybody in the previously-called backswamp area got standing water, courtesy of our esteemed levee system. May have been 4 feet, may have been 12 feet. In our house it was 6 1/2 feet. How long it stayed that high, we don't know. We never did see it. But the water didn't get gone for more than 4 weeks.

The carpets are still squishy.

Rose

The idea of New Orleans having risen is certainly an attractive one. The city is at present saturated through-and-through with the rising. Rising water; and now rising, as in resurrection. There was one -- is there going to be the other?

Names

New Orleans is the crescent city.

Portland is the city of roses.

In which they were splattered and scattered...

To Portland and everywhere else.

Following fellow evacuees John and Angie in seemingly everything, here's the blog. As much a manner of keeping in touch as it is the desire to chronicle, here we go.