The little things

Sometimes, it's the little things.

When I was a child, back in the early 1960s, we had hard freezes in New Orleans three winters in a row. By "hard freeze" I mean it got down around 17 degrees. In most parts of the country, 17 degrees is par for the course when it comes to winter, or maybe it's even a warming trend. But in New Orleans, it's a big deal. You see, back in the old days, before people discovered it was cheaper to build houses on slabs, all the houses were built two to three feet off the ground on piers. This enabled easy access to water and gas pipes under the house. It provided a cool breeze in summer. It provided some termite protection (maybe) if there was no wood-to-ground contact. And it gave you one to two feet of protection when (not if) it flooded.

However, when it gets down significantly below freezing temperatures and stays there for a few hours, unless you run a thin trickle of water from your faucets, your exposed pipes under the house will freeze. And that's what happened in the early 1960s. We had an exposed water line running the length of the north side of the house, and when a freeze was predicted, my mother would turn the hose on a fine spray. It came down from the upstairs porch and settled all over the confederate jasmine below. In the morning the whole bush would be an ice sculpture. Really pretty. I can't recall if it killed the bush or not. Maybe we replaced it, or maybe it came back in the spring. But for a child who rarely saw snow and ice, it was a wonder.

We also had a bouganvillea on the south side of the house, beside the brick chimney. Now, you may have seen bouganvillea growing in places like Hawaii and the Caribbean. Or you may have grown one in a hanging basket. You might think the branches get around 12 to 18 inches in length. This bouganvillea went all the way up the chimney to the second floor level, more like 12 to 18 feet. When it bloomed, it was covered with gorgeous deep red sprays of flowers. And it had thorns. Must have been an inch long. You didn't go anywhere near the bouganvillea unless you wore tough leather work gloves.

Well, the bouganvillea is a tropical plant. When it hit 17 degrees, the bouganvillea froze. Not an easy job, to cut down 12 to 18 feet of dead bouganvillea, whose vicious thorns were still very much operative. Every year, when the bouganvillea froze, we thought that was the end of it. But in the spring it would surprise us, putting out new shoots from the roots and growing up just as tall as ever by midsummer.

I sold the house twenty years ago, a few years after my mother died. It has had three owners since then, and they have all kept the bouganvillea. I would drive by the house and see it with its magnificent red cascades of blossoms and smile.

The other day, I went by the house. I've been by there a few times since Katrina. The neighborhood took on about six feet of brackish water that sat for about two weeks. I went to check on the bouganvillea. It has a thick stump with two or three trunks, maybe two or three inches in diameter. There are no shoots coming up from the base. I saw a few hopeful green things coming up, but on closer inspection they turned out to be weeds. The bouganvillea, which must have been fifty years old, which survived three winters of hard freezes, is dead.

Katrina, you b****.

Sometimes, it's the little things that get to you.