The City I Knew

N AT I O N A L R E V I E W/S E P T E M B E R 26, 2005 ‘O

NE of these days,” my father used to tell me, “a hurricane is gonna come right up the Mississippi and hit New Orleans, and that’s gonna be all she wrote, cap.” There’s not a soul alive who was raised, as I was, in south Louisiana who hasn’t heard some version of that apocalyptic legend growing up. Now that it has finally happened, I know I can’t be the only one taking the news as prophecy fulfilled—not the prophecy of scientists (though it is), but the prophecy of old men who know in their bones that we can’t get away with it forever.

RD

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Rod Dreher

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N AT I O N A L R E V I E W/S E P T E M B E R 26, 2005 ‘O

NE of these days,” my father used to tell me, “a hurricane is gonna come right up the Mississippi and hit New Orleans, and that’s gonna be all she wrote, cap.” There’s not a soul alive who was raised, as I was, in south Louisiana who hasn’t heard some version of that apocalyptic legend growing up. Now that it has finally happened, I know I can’t be the only one taking the news as prophecy fulfilled—not the prophecy of scientists (though it is), but the prophecy of old men who know in their bones that we can’t get away with it forever.