New Orleans after Katrina: Back to Stone Age
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-07 08:59

Keeping up tradition

Still, not all is desperation.

On a third-floor balcony in the French Quarter, a dozen neighbors have come together, toting water from the Mississippi to flush their toilets, sharing what food they've got left on a stove that still has gas, keeping their homes safe and dry.

"I've got a pear and an orange left," said Jill Sanders, an artist and paralegal who is better known around the neighborhood as Jelly Sandwich.

A bar or two stays open. "I go down to Molly's in the evenings. I put on makeup and something nice. It cheers people up" -- and it raises her own spirits, she said.

Around the corner, a few dozen staffers at a hotel they've kept open held a Labor Day barbecue. Tradition is tradition.

Some holdouts here believe they'll be just fine if they could only get water, or power, or phone service. None of it is coming soon, officials say.

So far, people can find shelter and food to scavenge, but not forever. In their place are many, many threats: disease in the dirty floodwaters. Fires in wet homes, and overtaxed fire crews that can't respond. Lawlessness.

Eventually, officials say, they've got to evacuate everybody, and start over again.