The Long and Winding Road by George Ziemann -- July 4, 2010 Last modified -- July 7, 2010 -- 2:30 a.m. Sometimes your life gets turned upside down and, even though it seems like a disaster at the time, it sets off a series of events that opens your eyes, changes your perspective and maybe takes you to high enough ground that you can see more of the picture than was possible from what you perceived as your comfort zone. In my case, it was that my wife told me to leave. The reasons for this are not worth mentioning, but it crushed me, made me suicidal and, after I got past that phase, sent me on an unplanned journey of rediscovery. Getting tossed out was like the first domino falling which starts a chain reaction that branches into multiple directions. Once it starts you can't stop it, you have no control over what happens. All you can do is watch and either ride the wave or try to jump off. Here's the weird part. In my eyes and the ears of several carefully selected listeners, Hurricane Alley's Category Two was finished. I had uploaded the final track so Carl could hear it about 5 minutes before I got the heave-ho. At the time, I thought it was a great group of songs that might have some wider appeal than our earlier efforts. What I didn't know was that I was about to live almost every song on the album. And I wouldn't realize it until about halfway through. The early clues were obvious, but I blew them off as coincidental. The first song on the new record is titled, "Lost Without You." The name of the song alone describes the first phase of how I was feeling. When I got in the car to drive, I didn't turn the radio on. But I was listening to "Somehow," the last song I had edited. It's normal for a song to play over and over in my head when I have just listened to it a dozen times or so to mix it. In fact, my rule of thumb for calling a song finished is that I can listen to it at least five times through without hearing something I feel compelled to change. Here's an earlier version of this tune (Stream....Download). It was written by Steve Swindler in 1996. The opening verse says: I was driving down the road, with the wind in my hair. North, South East or West, I didn't really care. Don't think I was running. Don't think I was scared. Just had to leave, had to get out of there. Phoenix is already pretty close to Mexico and I didn't take my passport, so south was a bad choice right out of the gate. My wife had instructed me to stay in Carl's empty house south of Tucson, but she had no right to make that suggestion without talking to Carl, not to mention that I was of the mind that whatever she told me to do was on the list of things not to do at any cost. With south ruled out completely, I headed north first. At Flagstaff, you've gotta choose between back roads to Lake Powell to continue north. Otherwise, you've got to figure out a way to cross the Grand Canyon. I thought about Lake Powell for a while but only because an old girlfriend lives there. Female companionship was not at the top of my list of things that were important. I was down to east and west. Do I go to Los Angeles and try to make a start there? Or do I go east, where I came from in the first place? "Somehow" stopped playing in my head, replaced by the chorus of Concrete Blonde's "The Bloodletting," which Carl and I liked to play (Click here to download a copy of us doing it in 2007). I've got the ways and means to New Orleans. I'm going down by the river where it's warm and green. Have a drink, and walk around. I've got a lot to think about, oh yeah. I've got an aunt that lives in New Orleans. I had a car, a little cash, and a business line of credit with room on it. Since my ultimate goal was to get together with Carl and make final decisions about the album (he left in early April for a better work opportunity), it was going to be a legitimate business trip anyway. I had the ways and means to New Orleans and a lot to think about when I got there. Joyce, my aunt, has lived there for about 35 years, and I had never been to the Big Easy. Our band is called Hurricane Alley, in consideration of Carl's experience on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain during Hurricane Katrina. It's really hard to ignore a cosmic message like that. The dominos were starting to fall into place. The chain reaction had begun. So I headed east. "Somehow" was playing in my head again. I drove for 30 hours, only stopping for gas, drinks and a single cheeseburger from McDonalds in Albuquerque. I finally rolled into Baton Rouge just before dark on Sunday, June 13. I was hesitant about hitting New Orleans for the first time at night and trying to find my way to Joyce's house, so I checked into a motel and got a solid night's sleep out of pure exhaustion. New Orleans Baton Rouge is only about 55 or 60 miles from New Orleans. Less than an hour. After a 30-hour run, it was a snap. I knew that Joyce lived in Metairie, which I-10 takes you into before you actually get to New Orleans itself. That's about all I knew. I've never carried a cell phone, had no list of contacts, no physical address book. I picked a Metairie exit at random and got off. The first thing I encountered was Lake Lawn Metairie Cemetary, one of those typical New Orleans above-ground graveyards like we've all seen in the movies. Pretty ominous and a little creepy, even in the bright morning light, but still kind of fascinating nonetheless. I wasn't ready for a graveyard tour quite yet, so I went in search of a pay phone. Pay phones in Metairie are pretty scarce these days. I was driving through little strip malls, asking people at random. No one knew where a pay phone was. Finally found one outside a little convenience store. The lady at the counter inside let me look up the number and address in her phone book. I tried to call, but got no answer. But at least I had an address. Went back inside, bought a map and found two places where the street name appeared. Circled them both and set out to try to find my way. In just a few minutes, I encountered a group of four police officers, who were standing in the middle of a small 20 mph street, I was driving at the speed limit, even slowed down a little when I got close to them, as I was sure there was something going on and I didn't want to become part of the problem. Didn't help. One of them yelled at me to pull over. They had picked this slow residential area to use to catch people who weren't wearing their seatbelts. In Arizona, not wearing a seatbelt isn't a primary offense. If they stop you for something else, you get a bonus fine if you're not using your seatbelt, but they can't ticket you based only on that. In Louisiana, they can. This was probably the only time in my life that I considered getting busted to be a lucky break. After he finished writing me a ticket, I asked him for directions to either one of the two places I had circled on the map. He pointed at one and said, "This one is closest, but you're going the wrong way. Turn around, go to Bonnabel. It's the next major street. Go north all the way to the levee." He pointed at the map. "That'll put you here. You'll be just a few blocks away." I thanked him, buckled my seatbelt and followed his directions. The first iteration of the street wasn't the right one, but after looking at the map for a moment, it was easy to pick the main streets to get me to the other area I had circled. Looking back at the map now, without having a clue where I was going, I got off of I-10 within 7 miles of Joyce's house. If I had taken the first Metairie exit, it would have been within two miles. But I wouldn't have seen the cemetary. By the time I got to her house, it was somewhere between 9:00­9:30 a.m. Judging from her reaction, I was probably the last person she expected would be the one ringing the doorbell and waking her up on a Monday morning. While her house, which is very close to Lake Pontchartrain, suffered some water damage from the storm surge, it was far enough away from where the levees broke during Katrina that it was at least still there when she came back from Houston, where she had evacuated to before Katrina hit. Spent the rest of the day just resting, visiting with Joyce and my cousin, Rick, who lives with her. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement, as far as I could tell. Used Joyce's computer to send an e-mail to Carl with the phone number. He called within an hour. Gave me an open invitation and ten minutes after that, he gave me flight information to get on a plane to LaGuardia on Wednesday, where he or Cara were going to pick me up and take me to Westport, CT. That night, I made Rick listen to some of the new album, used YouTube to turn him on to a band called Crimson Glory. There is a song on Category Two called "Midnight," which is a tribute to Crimson Glory's previous singer, who died a little more than a year ago. Carl used to be his roommate. Tim, our bassist, wrote it, but Carl wasn't happy with how the lyrics came out. It's the first song I've ever seen Carl take the time to dissect word by word to make sure it conveyed exactly the correct message. Talking about the lyrics and Midnight as a person was the first time I've ever seen Carl cry. From what I understand, there are a lot of people that Midnight effected just as deeply. Rick responded by pointing me to the YouTube catalog of Lillian Ax, a band he used to play in that has gone on to some apparent success, as they are just releasing their 13th CD. This, and his personal mp3 collection, offered up more than one iteration of the band, a change (or two) in singers plus a developing maturity in arrangements, harmony and things like that, in some cases with several versions of a song to compare. I liked them a lot. Back to YouTube and a viewing of "Slayer Zed," a three-part vampire movie some of his friends made using video equipment from the local public access channel. Impressive stuff and being there made it so much more creepy, which is the only good reason to watch a vampire movie in the first place. Day Two On Tuesday, Joyce decided I should get the real tour of New Orleans. First I had to go to the bank, take some cash out of my business acount, then go to WalMart and get some clean clothes, as I had left Phoenix with only the clothes on my back and I was having that "not so fresh" feeling. While we were out, a pretty severe storm popped up and it looked as if maybe the tour of the city would get cancelled. Though intense, it didn't last that long. The sun came out and after an hour or so, Joyce decided that we should get going. There was a lot she wanted to show me. One of the first things I learned is that Metairie does not rhyme with "prairie," as one might expect from the spelling. It's pronounced "Met-a-ree." Having adapted to Spanish in Arizona worked against me in New Orleans. Spanish is actually pretty simple in that every vowel sounds the same every time it is used. The French influence in New Orleans is like anti-Spanish, if that makes any sense. For example, Xavier is a completely different word when applied to the San Xavier Mission outside Tucson than when referring to Xavier University in New Orleans. Another tip -- if you look on some maps (like the local phone book) and can't find the French Quarter, look for Vieux Carre. And it only took me two days to adopt "Nawlins" as the name of the city. Saying "New Orleans" brands you as an obvious tourist. The faster you adopt the Louisiana drawl and phrasing, the easier it is to understand what people are saying to you as well as making it not so funny to them when you talk. It's actually pretty contagious. The French Quarter was the first focal point of the tour. We took Claiborne into the area, which took us past the Superdome and the Convention Centerboth of which are in th center of town, near the edge of the French Quarter, which is why those are the places where people congregated after the levees broke and the city flooded. It is on the highest ground of the city. I was struck by how small the Superdome was compared to even ASU's Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, AZ. The heart of the Franch Quarter was pretty much like you see on TV and the movies. Bourbon Street, Toulouse, Canal St., Rampart St., the balconies, bars, St. Louis Cathedral, Tulane Medical Center, voodoo shops, horse-drawn carriages, open-air marketplaces, and a few too many transvestites for my tastes (the subject of "Masquerade," another song from Category Two which has a previous version available -- Stream....Download). The most striking thing about the French Quarter is that it has this odd characteristic which compells you to become aware of the distinct feeling of good and evil that can be felt on the same street. It's very literal and almost overwhelming. What followed next was almost a blur -- a back and forth quick trip past all of the tourist spots a statue of Robert E. Lee, Loyola University, Tulane and Xavier (all of which looked smaller than my high school), and a city packed with architecture from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Beyond the basic tourist landmarks, Joyce knows where the haunted mansion that Anne Rice used to live is located, the house Al Hirt owned, where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie live, and has Sandra Bullock's New Orleans dwelling narrowed down to a block. In addition to all of this came the first grim reminders of Katrina, as houses in various sections of town still bore the markings which were spray-painted by rescuers searching for the living and the dead after the storm.   At right are a couple pictures I took when I returned to New Orleans (with a cell phone, through the car windows), just to illustrate the fact that some people haven't bothered to erase the markings, even though some of the houses seemed to have otherwise been painted. The pillars and railings of the top photo seemed too white not to have been repainted, but the markings near the door remain.   These places were almost anomalies. All of the rest of the houses on a block may be improved except for one or two. Some houses were still scarred by a high-water mark, the height of which I'll discuss in more detail during the next section of the story.   It was obvious that every neighborhood in New Orleans had been punished by Katrina. What was not so obvious to me yet was the fact that, despite the evidence of flooding that had not been entirely removed, these neighborhoods had survived. The houses were still standing, unlike what I was to see next. The Lower Ninth Ward We went over a drawbridge, which I can see on a map meant we were on N. Claiborne Ave. Less than two miles later, we were in the Lower Ninth Ward. While I knew that this was the area that had been hardest hit when the levees broke after Katrina, and had seen evidence of the flooding on the outside of residences within the heart of the city, I was simply not mentally prepared for what I was about to see. While the rest of the city still bore scars from Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward looked to me like Katrina could have happened a couple of weeks ago instead of five years. There was one house that was immediately recognizable, even to me. Probably had something to do with the big letters that said "Fats Domino." In the Katrina news coverage, I had watched as Fats was pulled through his attic by rescuers and placed into a boat that was floating above the actual roof line. We didn't actually get out of the car, but went by very slowly so I could have a look at it. I thought it had been repaired and, judging from the height of the roof, was stuck by the fact that the water would have had to be about 25 feet deep in order for a boat to get to it. This drove home the realization that if you were doing the very same activity I was engaged in, at the very same place (driving by Fats Domino's house very, very slowly to get a good look at it) when the levees broke, you were dead. That mental picture was to make everything else that I would see in the Lower Ninth Ward have even more impact. Most of the debris had been removed, and some rebuilding has begun, but for every house that had been put up, there were still another 30, maybe 40 empty lots with nothing more than a foundation left. The flooding and literally erased almost every building, knocked them down and carried them away. Even the Musician's Village that Harry Connick Jr. has been trying to get built only consisted of two or three buildings that were large enough to house multiple residents. And some building that hadn't been levelled were still standing, still flooded, with no windows or doors, only a semblance of a portion of a roof, and it was seemed a safe bet that no one had ventured inside since the rescue teams had checked the place in 2005. Even with the other debris gone, the rows and rows of empty lots, combined with the vision of the wall of water that had swept through and made it that way, was one of the saddest things I had seen in my life. You won't see this on CNN. It's old news. Seeing it with my own eyes, and thinking of the people who had been unfortunate enough to be in those houses when the devastation happened broke my heart -- and I thought it had already been torn apart. As all of these thoughts and impressions stuck me, I was still technically homeless, only had one or two changes of clothes and no real conception of where my life was going, how I was going to start over at 55, where I would end up or what I would do once I got there. When I stopped long enough to consider my situation, I had been feeling sorry for myself. The Lower Ninth Ward made me cry for those poor souls who had been there when Katrina hit. My situation suddenly didn't seem that bad. Sure, I was in a tough spot, and hitting bottom has a way of letting you know that things are as bad as they can get. What I saw all around me drove home the truth that, as bad as I thought my life was before I entered the Lower Ninth Ward, I had no right to feel sorry for myself. I wasn't drowning under 25 feet of water. My house wasn't collapsing on top of me. I'm a pretty talented guy. I can come back from a little adversity. This wasn't the first time a woman threw me out. Throughout the two days I had been there, Joyce had said several times, "Everything happens for a reason." Until I saw the Lower Ninth Ward, I had been looking back to figure out what reason could possibly be fulfilled my my sudden departure from my home, wife and child. What possibly benefit could be derived froim this, I wondered. As we finally drove away, I realized that I was looking the wrong direction. Whatever reason there was to explain my difficulties, which now seemed incredibly petty and self-centered, did not lie in the past. Whatever was driving what was happening to me was decidedly ahead of me, not in the rear-view mirror. Without going through the storm myself, I had just experienced a deep example of another song on Category Two -- "After the Rain," in which Carl describes his experience during Katrina, including "...and the wind will blow your house down." But Carl didn't get 25 feet of water dropped on top of him. He and his wife, Cara, survived. They didn't wash away into Lake Pontchartrain or the Mississippi River. They didn't drown in their house. So I had now been through five of the songs on Category Two, with one cover song thrown in for guidance and good measure. I was starting to catch a clue. I was painfully aware that I really wasn't in control of what was happening. The dominos were still falling, the chain reaction was still in progress. All I could do was to hold on and ride it out. Everything does happen for a reason, but there's no way of knowing what that reason is until it finishes happening. I still had a long way to go. Reality Check I didn't have a camera when I went into the Lower Ninth Ward. So I went searching for pre-Katrina pictures and found this one of Fats Domino's house prior to Katrina (at right). It comes from Snap Man's photo stream on Flicker and he's got more than 7,000 pictures, many of which seem to be of New Orleans after Katrina. A post-Katrina pic of the same house is here. This isn't the house I saw. It is gone, replaced by a 2-1/2 story building. The roof is higher than the house pictured here, and doesn't extend down as far as this one. This gave me a perception of flooding on a greater scale than what actually took place. The water was probably only about 20 feet deep and that's consistent with the high-water marks still visible throughout the city. That's really a minor detail, though. If you were admiring Fats Dominos house when the levees broke, you were still dead. There's one more part of this story that I noticed almost immediately when I entered New Orleans but didn't really click in my mind until after we returned to Joyce's house and I talked to Rick again. There's an odd smell that permeates New Orleans. I thought it was a result of the Gulf, the plant life in the city or maybe just one of those regional things that will give certain towns an aroma all their own. Maybe those things have a part in it, but the truth is much more disturbing. After the levees broke, there was 20 feet of water covering the majority of the city. In this water were dead humans, dead animals, corpses that had floated out of the cemetaries, raw sewage, toxic chemicals and more that no one really knows about. When the water receded, it had nowhere to go except to seep back into the ground, houses, shops, businesses, the parks and even the earth that forms the levees that didn't fail. The odd smell is death and it's everywhere. It made my nose run constantly, even for days after I left, effected my throat to the point that my voice is still raspy and my singing voice has some non-functional areas in what used to be the strongest part of my vocal range. People that live there and don't get to leave after a few days are getting seriously ill. With the oil spill added to New Orleans' problems, there's not much to be seen to justify the city's nickname. There's nothing easy about the Big Easy in 2010. In addition to the general good/evil feeling, the overwhelming realization that I was breathing in death every minute that I was in the city made me relieved that I was getting on a plane to fly out the next morning.

Page 2 New Orleans to Westport, CT via Nashville, Baltimore, and New York Page 3 New York City Page 4 Amtrak to Toledo Page 5 Toledo -- Hangin Wit Da Homies Page 6 Chicago