What We Thought We Knew, Before Katrina

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ALEX CHADWICK, host:

Finally today, we are always in a struggle in this country for our national soul, and it is sometimes violent and brutal. Even so, this has been perhaps the most disturbing week in America in memory.

Unidentified Man: Form a line.

CHADWICK: To call the scenes and sounds coming out of the Gulf Coast in the last days unbelievable is to miss something. The destruction of a unique American city, the crippling of an entire region, is no longer unbelievable. It's undeniable. Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster, what the insurance companies call an act of God. The response has been entirely of our own doing, or undoing. The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, has been calling for help for days. The state and the feds say they are helping, but this is what the mayor of this stricken city said last night on WWL-AM radio in his city.

Mayor RAY NAGIN (New Orleans): I keep hearing that it's coming, this is coming, that is coming. And my answer to that today is, `B-S.' Where is the beef? Because there is no beef in this city. There's no beef anywhere in southeast Louisiana and these (censored) ships that are coming, I don't see them.

CHADWICK: Something extraordinary happened four years ago after the terrorist attacks on this country. It was a terrible shock and a total surprise, but even through our grief there was a decency, a steadiness, a kind of clarity. New Orleans now, the only thing clear from this week are things we don't want to see, that Americans are so much closer to chaos than we had thought, that we live in a country where doctor call desperately from public hospitals saying they've been abandoned. They aren't calling officials anymore. They've tried that. Nothing happened. They're calling reporters to plead for help. The mayor issues what he calls a desperate SOS to the nation.

This is what I remember about New Orleans. When you go there, more than any other American city I know, it's almost like being in a foreign land, that sweet blend of flavors, Southern and French and African, the way time slows to a different pace, the afternoons so hot you find it easier to stop whatever you were trying to get done to just stop and notice how lovely this place is--or was.

(Soundbite of "Dig A Hole")

LITTLE FREDDY KING: (Singing) Sonny, same thing is happening to me.

CHADWICK: Among the missing, New Orleans musician Little Freddy King. That's him on guitar. He's not been seen since last week. Friends think he was at his home on the lake side of town. He was a child in Mississippi when he saw New Orleans on a school trip and knew he was going to live there.

LITTLE FREDDY KING: The train gets close, close. We got nervous. It started blowing the horn. So I run and it passed by and I latched on and I latched on and jumped on that, hoboed all the way into New Orleans on that train.

CHADWICK: Now everyone who possibly can is fleeing New Orleans. No one would go there. We've lost something, a national treasure, in that glorious place. And more than that, some element of our national selves that we badly need to recover.

(Soundbite of "Dig A Hole")

LITTLE FREDDY KING: (Singing) Son, how can you be so happy with brother William in North Korea? Yeah, my mama said to me, `Son, how can you be so happy with your brother William in North Korea?'

CHADWICK: The music is "Dig A Hole," the voice and guitar of Little Freddy King.

(Soundbite of "Dig A Hole")

LITTLE FREDDY KING: (Singing) ...trouble, son, the same thing is happening to me.

CHADWICK: This is DAY TO DAY, a production of NPR News with contributions from slate.com. I'm Alex Chadwick.

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