For 13 evacuees, a hard trip down memory lane

Finding his bearings, Isaac Bolden asks the driver to stop at the corner where he'd lived. Stepping off the bus, the young man gawks, then pans his camcorder from left to right. All that's left of his house is a concrete slab and a few cinder blocks. Back on the bus, he struggles to hold back the sobs.

The bus pulls up to the designated brick house, and everyone walks across a layer of dried, cracked mud to get a look inside. New Orleans hasn't seen much rain since Katrina, and dehydrated silt coats everything. On automobiles, it's sometimes rooftop-high.

At the house, a black frame screen opens to the street while a white front door opens into the living room. The highest watermark is six inches from the top of the door.

The colonel had warned everyone to expect the unexpected: The refrigerator ended up in the bathroom of another house, he said. The "show house," too, contains a random jumble of household furnishings, covered in black slime.

When the bus comes to what's left of the Bankses' home, it backs down the cross street so that the couple can see what remains. Mr. Banks just shakes his head, especially when he sees the house rests on top of one of his cars. Piles of plywood and two-by-fours are scattered over three other vehicles.

The only thing that kept the house from floating further up the street is a telephone pole. It now stands at the front door. A tire is on the roof.

"I want to start cleaning and building back up," Mrs. Banks says again, her silver head bobbing up and down.

In about an hour, everyone has seen what's left of their homes - not to mention cars canted at strange angles, a tricycle stuck six feet up on a fence, a perfectly fine gate to a nonexistent house, and a church facade that is missing the church itself.

Full of chatter early on, the riders are quiet as the bus exits the Lower Ninth.

Dorothy Cage, now living in Mississippi, says the neighborhood tour helped her come to peace about the loss. "I just had to see for myself," she says.

Mrs. Banks says the trip helped her a lot, although she felt no closure until the Social Security Administration located two uncles, now in San Antonio, on the day before Thanksgiving.

"Now, we're just trying to get to the next level," she says - which for her is getting a trailer so she can move closer to New Orleans.

For Joseph Melton, seeing his house brought back memories - not all good.

"I thought I could get over losing the house, but I couldn't," he says as he gets into his car and drives off.

-Some 3,600 residents of the Lower Ninth Ward have taken a mini-bus tour, like the one described here, through their hurricane-ravaged New Orleans neighborhood. The tours were discontinued Dec. 1, when people were finally allowed to drive in themselves. FEMA is now using the buses to take residents of still-restricted St. Bernard Parish to see their homes.

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