A really nice piece in Businessweek on the fundamentally Caribbean way of life of New Orleans:

The lost housing of New Orleans is quite special. Entering the damaged and abandoned houses, you can still see what they were like before the hurricane. They were exceedingly inexpensive to live in, built by people’s parents and grandparents or by small builders paid in cash or by barter. Most of these simple, pleasant houses were paid off. They had to be because they do not meet any sort of code and are therefore not mortgageable by current standards.

It was possible to sustain the unique culture of New Orleans because housing costs were minimal, liberating people from debt. One did not have to work a great deal to get by. There was the possibility of leisure.

There was time to create the fabulously complex Creole dishes that simmer forever; there was time to practice music, to play it live rather than from recordings, and to listen to it. There was time to make costumes and to parade; there was time to party and to tell stories; there was time to spend all day marking the passing of friends. One way to leisure time is to have a low financial carry. With a little work, a little help from the government, and a little help from family and friends, life could be good! This is a typically Caribbean social contract: not one to be understood as laziness or poverty — but as a way of life.

The same holds true of the towns of southwest Louisiana, where I grew up and where the cost of decent living is still lower than in New Orleans. That frame of mind is really what separates south Louisiana from les americains to the north.

Thanks to inheritance, I own two small tracts of land in Rayne, my hometown. They contain a ratty, 30-year-old trailer and a gas station that closed in 1968. Someday in the future, I’ll inherit the house I grew up in, whose current assessed value is around $18,000. If I ever feel like being a real estate magnate, I may buy my great-grandmother’s old house, which is a bit larger and worth about $28,000. They’re both rickety structures by American standards — tin roofs, no central air or heat, uneasy wood framing. But they’ve also been paid off since the ’60s, at least. More likely since the day they were built, since the men in my family made them themselves. Property taxes are maybe $100 a year.

You can understand the occasional appeal, perhaps, of quitting my job, setting up shop in the Louisiana countryside, and writing a few novels. (Or, alternately, running off to Colonia or Santa Teresa. Maybe there’s a reason I find Latin America so alluring.) Getting off the treadmill and all that. That’s the sort of mindset that can create a great culture.

It may not be good for the quarterly GDP numbers. But contrasted with the stereotypical style of les americains — Buy all the house you can! Keep up with the Joneses! Can’t you hear that plasma TV speaking to you? — it seems downright noble.

28 February 2007

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