Storage - Alextown | Adventure Terminal | Adventures of Cheryl and Alex | Metairie, Louisiana

It had been more than a year since the hurricane, but you wouldn't have guessed that by looking. You would have thought it had just passed through. Many of the businesses we passed were still torn up.

Metairie

Louisiana 2006

We took the back roads to Hwy 90 and then took that to Metairie. We passed through all the little cajun towns. We bought boudin balls in New Iberia, but the flavor was not what I was expecting. I'd had boudin sausage before and this had a distinctly different taste. It tasted like breaded and fried liverwurst. Alex didn't like it.

Going across the Huey P Long bridge was very scary. The bridge is way too narrow for two lanes of traffic. We made it across, though, and then we were in Jefferson Parish. It had been more than a year since the hurricane, but you wouldn't have guessed that by looking. You would have thought it had just passed through. Many of the businesses we passed were still torn up.

Driving through Metairie, we saw houses with white FEMA trailers everywhere. Roofs were torn up, trees were down, and there were piles of ruined household items in front of nearly every house. Where you didn't see the stuff piled outside, you could see it through the windows, piled high inside, or stacked in the garages.

It was awful. I felt so bad for all the people who had lost so much. We stopped in front of a house that was being rebuilt and put Alex's hair in a ponytail.

Alex's dad, Sean, and his Maw-Maw, Betty, and Paw-Paw, Dan, were so surprised and very happy to see Alex. We talked for a bit inside and then let the cats out in their back yard. Haldir loved the bird bath fountain Sean had made. We went back inside and Betty played "In the Dark" with Alex. We ate dinner and then we all played a game of Trivial Pursuit.

The next day, I was planning to look up some old friends while Alex spent some time with his grandparents. Traffic was so heavy and stressful that I changed my mind. Metairie was such a different place these days. I washed the truck and took a very long nap while Betty took Alex shopping and to the park.

That evening, Betty cooked a nice dinner for everyone, then Alex put on his karate uniform for pictures. He showed Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw the Runescape article he had written. Dan gave him a bird identification book and some of his cousin's old legos.

We told them we would be leaving in the morning, but we weren't sure where we were going. Losing my sister recently made me want to go see my other sister, Linda, in Tennessee and also my sister, Wanda, in Oklahoma.

I had let the cats run free all day and left them out for the night, too.

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