The child under arrest in the attic brings a new hell to New Orleansneighborhood

Judith Martin - Recent news continues to describe the trials and tribulations of New Orleans ongoing recovery from Hurricane Katrina and its struggle to stay economically in difficult financial times, but it's the neighborhood hurts that hurt the most in tough times.

Decades

ago, in the 1950s and 1960s, suburbia was seen as the place where the
American dream could be lived to its fullest. The houses would be
occupied by well-fed, well-off families who would get along in perfect
peace and harmony with each other.  But this is 2010 New Orleans now, and life is a whole lot different.

Matters have changed
considerably in a neighborhood in New Orleans. Earlier here at GHN, a
story was published about the neighbors from Hell, who allegedly had a
vampire cult going on the premises of their home. That was the house
"right next door" and due south of a middle-aged woman, "Doris".

Could
the situation become any worse? Doris would certainly say so. Here is
what she has had to endure from her other neighbors from Hell, "right
next door" and due north.

"Our son, who is only 13 years old, is
under house arrest," said the young mother, Carol, to Doris, who had
been a resident of the neighborhood for over 61 years.

"That is
why we bought this house," Carol continued to explain. "It has a big
attic that can be turned into a bedroom for him, and we can keep him up
there."

It was June, 2005, in New Orleans. But the new family did not even have a chance to complete renovations to their house.

In
August, 2005, the man-made floods that followed Hurricane Katrina
inundated the neighborhood up to a depth of eight feet from street
level. It took the dozen families on the block a good two years, close
to the end of 2007 and into 2008, to restore their houses and return
to live. Doris was not happy to see Carol, Charles, and Louis return to
live right next door.

Taking up where she left off in 2005, Carol
continued to recount more of the saga of her adopted son to Doris
through the middle of 2008. "Our son, Louis, has been kicked out of
every private school in the city. He has been kicked out of a
reformatory school on the Mississippi Gulf Coast as well. He is just
going to have to stay here in the house until we can figure out what to
do about him."

Doris said to herself, "Why am I not surprised? I
have already seen a woman social worker in a blue 'power suit' come out
to Carol's house, to talk about Louis. She always comes with a
bodyguard, this big guy in a dark blue T-shirt, trousers, and athletic
shoes. The big guy has his head completely shaved. Plus, he wears a gun
belt in which he carries a weapon that looks like a small cannon. I
would not be surprised about anything Carol told me. And all this about a
boy who is now only 16 or 17 years old?"

In late 2009, Louis
began to throw cigarette butts, trash, and half-eaten food out of an
attic window into Doris's north side yard. He was also seen to pose like
a body builder in that same window (wearing a pair of dark green swim
trunks), as if someone in a house further down the street, could see him
and was taking pictures of him.

Doris would pick up the trash in
her yard, put it in a plastic bag, and throw the whole mess over a
property-line fence into the yard of Carol and Charles. The garbage
dumping did come to a stop. But Louis began a new attack, blaring music
from loudspeakers in his attic room down at Doris' house at odd hours of
the night.

There was a war of words between Doris and Carol. Later, Doris actually heard Charles speak to Louis. The noise ceased.

From that moment on, Doris stopped talking with Carol, Charles, and Louis altogether, and they stopped talking with her.

On
March 31, 2010, Carol and Charles put Louis and a lone suitcase into
their SUV, and drove away early in the morning. Later that day, Carol
and Charles returned, and Louis was not seen or heard from for many
months to come.

Then, in late September, Louis was back! There was even a welcome-home party for him, without loud music, of course.

Unfortunately,
once installed in the attic, Louis immediately cranked up his music
system and started to try to cause a confrontation with Doris once
again. Doris yelled up at him. The noise ceased.

Doris prays that
Carol, Charles, and Louis will decide to sell their house and move
elsewhere. However, she fears that whoever might buy the house would be
worse than that trio that lives there already.

What she dreads
the most is that -- if having the "cult" to the south and this child
under house arrest to the north -- gets to be too much, she may have to
be the one to have to sell her house and look for someplace else where
there will be peace and quiet and the neighbors will respect each other.

These are the hurts that add to the stress of returning to the City of New Orleans, in the rebuilding of lives that have to face the neighborhood's social destruction at a time when folks need to work together in harmony to come back.