During the early 2000s, on a Sunday during football season, the Italian Cardinale household smelled like onions fried up in cooking oil, or a roux in the making. The house on 18th Street, just two blocks from the 17th Street Canal levee, filled up one by one or two by two with cousins and uncles and aunts and whoever wanted to cheer on ‘dem Saints. Everyone called out to everyone else.
“Hey, baby?”
“How ya doin’?”
“How ‘bout ‘dem Saints?”
The gray house had four bedrooms, but on Sundays it felt more like a studio apartment because of the crowd inside. Still, it felt like home to so many. It felt like home to me. It was where my grandparents lived for 48 years as proud New Orleanians.
On Aug. 29, 2005, that house, so filled with memories, became filled with water when Hurricane Katrina burst through the levees and sent water to drown the city. The little gray house and everything within it, so dear to me and everyone else in my family, was wiped away that day. And so was the assuredness that the Cardinale family, confident their New Orleans foundation would last forever, would always be okay.
This is a story of a house that became the heart of a family long before Hurricane Katrina swept it away.
My Maw Maw, Vera Cardinale, moved into the house on 18th Street when she was eight years old after her parents brought it from the owners in 1947. At that time, the house was white with green trim and contained two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and a screened-in front porch. The house sat on a 60x120 lot in Lakeview, New Orleans.
In the ‘50s, it was home to seven people including my Maw Maw, her parents, her grandpa, and her three siblings. Despite all the people living in that two-bedroom house, she swears it never felt crowded.
Growing up, she shared a room with her sister and two brothers. The girls had a bunk bed on one side of the room and the boys had a bunk bed on the other. Her parents had the other room while her grandpa slept in the screened-in front porch that became an additional bedroom once he moved in.
Her favorite memory of her childhood in that house on 18th Street was at the New Basin Canal which was less than a block away.
She went to the canal every Thursday to catch shrimp and crab that she used in gumbo for dinner on Fridays.
As a child, she loved watching the barges pass through.
“On the days when the watermelon barge would come through, the boys would swim out to it to see if they could steal watermelons off it,” Maw Maw said. “I thought they were stupid but they did it anyway.”
The New Basin Canal, which connected to Lake Pontchartrain, closed in 1955. It was filled in to make room for roadways. It now exists as a neutral ground dividing West End Boulevard and Pontchartrain Boulevard.
When Maw Maw was 16 years old, she fell in love with her 22-year-old newspaper route supervisor, who had just returned home from the Korean War. After getting married in 1957, Maw Maw moved out of the house to start her life with my Paw Paw, Salvador Cardinale. However, when her dad died in 1960, the pair decided to move back to 18th Street to help her aging mother.
The house meant everything to Maw Maw so when the opportunity came about for her to purchase it from her siblings in 1969, she couldn’t pass it up. Fifteen thousand dollars later the Acosta house became the Cardinale house, although Maw Maw’s mother still lived there.
Maw Maw wanted to raise her family in that house on 18th Street because she loved the neighborhood and its great location.
“It was right by church and the grocery store,” Maw Maw said. “With six kids I had everything I needed close to me.”
My mom, Linda Cavallo, was one of her six kids and she was fourth out of six kids.
By the time my mom was born, the two-bedroom, one-bathroom house with seven people living in it had expanded into four-bedrooms, two-bathrooms and had ten people occupying it since her uncle and grandmother lived there as well.
The white wood got covered with gray vinyl siding and the green trim was painted white. The yard turned into a kid’s paradise. The Cardinales had a swingset, a rollercoaster, monkey bars, an oversized slide, and a teeter totter.
There was so much equipment at the Cardinale house that it was often mistaken for a daycare.
“People would ring the doorbell and ask if we had any openings,” Maw Maw said. “I’d just laugh and say that all equipment was a gift from my mother for my six kids.”
The Cardinale house was always full. Since all the kids were a year apart, it became the neighborhood hangout. Everyone on 18th Street knew who the Cardinales were.
“Whenever we would get back from vacation, my dad would drive down our street, roll down all the windows and obnoxiously honk the horn,” Mom said. “He just had to let all our neighbors know that we were home.”
There was never a dull moment in the Cardinale household. With six kids so close in age, there was always something going on at 114 18th Street. Whether it was trips to the emergency room, fights between siblings, or neighborhood kids trying to become a part of the Cardinale family, the excitement never ended.
“We were at the hospital so much that the doctors actually started to say ‘Oh, you’re back, who is it this time?’” Maw Maw said.
The older the Cardinale siblings got, the more the house seemed like a 24-hour truck stop. Someone was always coming or going. Sal could be stopping at home for a quick shower after practice while Jeanie was washing her clothes. Linda could be maneuvering her way out of the overcrowded driveway while Doug was trying to work on his truck. Tammy could be talking on the phone while John was scouring the kitchen cabinets for a quick afternoon snack.
My mom moved out of her parents’ house when she got married at the age of 21. Since my dad was in the Marine Corps, she left her family behind and moved between Florida and Louisiana depending on where my dad’s orders were. However, she always made sure we visited New Orleans at least once a year.
I loved visiting Maw Maw and Paw Paw’s house. The only thing I wasn’t so fond of was the nine-hour drive. I remember when I was little, I used to ask “are we there yet?” a hundred times along the way. Nothing compared to playing outside on Maw Maw and Paw Paw’s front porch. None of the houses in Florida looked like theirs so I was always fascinated by it. I’ll never forget walking with Paw Paw to get snowballs on Harrison Avenue on hot summer afternoons.
“Hey baby!”
“Hi Paw Paw, want to play with me?”
“I would love to but first I think we should get a little snack.”
“Can we get Snowballs?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking!”
Hand in hand we walked out the front door and turned left on 18th Street. Once we got down to the end of their street, we’d turn right onto Fleur De Lis Drive. From Fleur De Lis Drive it was a straight shot to the snowball stand. Many times my 6 year-old self couldn’t help but take off running towards it. I only got snowballs once a year and the excitement was just too much for me to handle.
“What can I get ya darling?”
“I’ll take a blue raspberry snowball please!”
The sweet smell that exuded from the stand was enough to drive any sugar addict insane. Even though it only took a few minutes for them to make snowballs, it seemed like an eternity waiting for my favorite treat.
“There ya go baby, have a great day.”
The white styrofoam cup had a beautiful pile of blue snow coming out the top of it. One taste of the blue syrup immediately left me wanting more. I finished my snowball much faster than I should have. My mouth was stained in blue and my hands were a sticky mess. Paw Paw looked over at me and smiled.
“Let’s go home and play that game baby.”
Everyone in the family gathered at Maw Maw and Paw Paw’s house. Maw Maw and Paw Paw were the heart of our family and as a result so was their house.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 my grandparents lost everything, including their beloved house.
The house once filled with happiness and laughter became filled with water and heartbreak. The photo albums, the memories so dear to my family, washed away that day in August in eight-foot flood waters.
A Failure Case Studies by UNC Charlotte asserts that the levee failure and flooding during Hurricane Katrina was the first time ever that an engineering failure brought about the near destruction of a major U.S. city.
Eighty percent of the city of New Orleans was flooded. In some areas, the water reached a depth of more than three meters (10 ft) according to the ASCE Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel. “The extent of the destruction made it difficult to account for the victims, but the toll a year later was listed as 1,118 dead people and 135 missing and presumed dead.” (ASCE Review Panel 2007, p. 1).
Not only did Hurricane Katrina completely destroy New Orleans, it changed my family forever.
“Because my brothers were firefighters, they went out on boats and sent us videos of our house underwater,” Mom said. “You could see the devastation and it was absolutely heartbreaking.”
We all had to start over since my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousin decided to live with us in Jacksonville while they rebuilt their houses.
My four-bedroom, two-bathroom went from having five people living to having ten people in it. My brother and sister had to give up their rooms and I had to give up my room as well. My grandparents took over my sister’s room while my aunt and uncle took my brother’s room. I shared my room with my brother, sister, and cousin. My world got flipped upside down. But the only thing that my New Orleans family had left were the clothes on their backs.
Even though my grandparents decided to rebuild on the same property, things aren’t quite the same.
Maw Maw wanted the house to look exactly the way it was before Katrina except much smaller. It returned to its original form. Four bedrooms turned to two and two bathrooms turned one. The gray vinyl siding and white trim went back up. The front porch was reconstructed and a plaque commemorating the 8-foot Katrina waterline (from the ground up) was added next to the front door.
It was still Maw Maw and Paw Paw’s house. However, it wasn’t the house I remembered.
For whatever reason my family stopped gathering at Maw Maw and Paw Paw’s once it was destroyed. Perhaps it was due to painful memories of Katrina’s destruction or the emotional and financial strife that almost tore the family apart. Whatever it was, the house on 18th Street was no longer the foundation of the Cardinale family.
“I miss the closeness we felt as a family,” Mom said. “Thanks to Katrina we are now worlds apart.”
Since Katrina, the family gatherings have moved a few miles down the road to my uncle’s house on Vicksburg Street.
Paw Paw has since died. Maw Maw still lives in the little gray house on 18th Street. It looks the same, but it’s not. The front door is red, for one thing. And the gray paint just seems different than it was.