ALWAYS WITH MUSIC: By Pat Milligan

I had that dream again last night. Our families are sitting outside laughing and talking with the neighbors while the kids are chasing each other in one of their noisy games. Down the street the wail of the saxophone completes the contentment of the evening. It’s a warm, joyous, relaxed time. My best friend and I are whispering secrets and giggling over what happened today at the drug store where we both work after school. Suddenly there is total darkness and the sound changes to banging and splintering and objects are whipped around and crashing into us. We are caught up in the dark and screams replace the laughter and the saxophone. I spin in the darkness my hands outstretched for protection. . Above me I hear a whirring sound and open my eyes to see helicopters in the dimness above me and water below. People are standing on the roofs of houses waving. Now there is no sound. I continue to whirl and all around me is confusion. Below me there are no houses, only murky, debris- filled water which keeps rising toward me. Floating on top of it are bodies of people and animals. The water keeps rising while I am beginning to fall. The odor is terrible – decay, mold, human waste. Just as the water touches my hands I awake screaming.


It’s been over two years now since Katrina. I have come back to live in New Orleans because I can’t live elsewhere. My grandma died before she could be evacuated. My family now lives in Houston. They say they will never come back. My best friend finished high school in Orlando and has a better job now. She isn’t sure she wants to come back. She is afraid the levees will not hold and that there will be another hurricane. I miss her a lot. I’m living with my aunt whose house has been cleaned up by a group of kids who came down to help us. Lots of people have come to help rebuild and clean up houses and other building. I think some of them are puzzled by my determination to stay in New Orleans. They do bring us hope though. At least I have a full time job now. That helps some. I still have the dream though! Once I went back to where I used to live. I miss it so much. But there is nothing there now but the lingering smell that permeates the whole area. The houses are all gone with only splinters of them scattered here and there. I won’t go back there again. I will remember, though, those wonderful carefree evenings when we absorbed the music and the fun and the love that once was our neighborhood.

After Louis Armstrong became famous and no longer lived in New Orleans, he described some of the youthful activities of his early days here and then said “In those days in New Orleans, there was always something nice and always with music”. I’ll stay here in New Orleans because I believe that the ugly dream will stop and I’m waiting for the days when again there will be “something nice and always with music.”