ROUGH AND RUGGED | KAREEM KENNEDY

Sorrow, abandonment, and a chilly feeling in my spine are the feelings I felt when I reentered a stepping stone in my life.  The wicked water line wrapping around the building like a belt of mental pain.  What used to be happy homes filled with people are now full of water-tossed furniture and personal belongings—pictures that let you look in the past mixed with dry and mildewed objects. 

The project used to be so live, like a drummer beating his drum.  I thought about the project when everyone would get off work and school to come out and socialize amongst each other.  I remember when my Aunt Rose used to send me to the store with a list and told me to make sure to bring back the receipt.  I reminisced on hanging on the porch with my homies, ribbing, talking about chicks, and smoking.

Growing up in the Seventh Ward and the St. Bernard Development—it’s like a you’re being a sponge, soaking up all the good and bad things. Respect and team always came first. If my Aunt Alice or Aunt Rose sent me to the store and, as I am walking, I notice Papa Henry struggling, bringing out the trash, I would lend him a hand.  When I’d pass by the porches, my friends would yell out, “Yooooo!” which is ghetto for “What’s up.”

I have grown to love and respect my stomping grounds. When Katrina struck it made me appreciate everything about my hood. I thought about the little pleasures like coming home from school with my aces and walking the court way to snatch a couple of frozen from Ms. Urline who lived on the first floor. Tootie Frutie was my favorite because she would put real fruit in them.

The raw, rough, and rugged place many of us used to call home still stands tall.  It won’t be long before those contractors come in and finish the job the storm tried to do.  Can you imagine growing up in a place fro your whole life, then a storm washes your city out, then you are forced to leave because of the water?  You live in a city that is unfamiliar to you and after a year, you are ready to come home, but there is no place to call home because they people who own your home never fixed it up.  You look in the paper to find a place to live in the city, but the rents have doubled or tripled.  Now reality has set in, you start to stress out because you really want to come home.  After researching info, you find out that federal trailers are available.  You are skeptical about living in a tin can, but it’s all you got.