I’m crying and lots of others are, too, for New Orleans.
I can’t stop thinking of Tim Henderson’s song, circa 1981, predicting the city's destruction. Here are some excerpts:
Atchafalaya, she’ll be comin’ on down
Ain’t no way to stop her, ain’t no high ground
There’s a swamp and a bayou ever’where around
And a couple small Cajun towns
Up a billion-dollar alley north of New Orleans
The Mississippi don’t come away clean
Lord, the Corps of Engineers, try to do good things,
Hell, tell it to the Cajuns when it floods next spring,
Cause the Corps ain’t God and they can’t turn the flow
The Lord made the Mississippi a long time ago
He’s still working.
Atchafalaya, she won’t rise slow,
Volunteers to the Levee,
Fool, you better not go!
Pack up and run with what you can save
Cause the river’ll be boing on your grandpa’s grave, tomorrow
The river’ll be boiling with snakes tomorrow
One of these days and it won’t be long - she’ll be a ghost town.
You can listen to the song here until Sept. 9
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1 comment:
I linked to this post on my blog. The song spoke to my thoughts about putting a city inside a bowl, floating on the water and expecting it to stay dry. We have spent many a wonderful day and night in New Orleans, with art work by its natives hanging on our New England Walls. I wonder if the right thing to do, after the people are all brought to safety, is just crash the bowl and let the river clean out the mess.
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