Trip to New Orleans (belated entry)

Last weekend (Oct. 21) Katie's uncle Chris and I made the short trip to Metairie/New Orleans looking for loot.

The trip came to be by way of Katie's other uncle Jim who had been working down in Metairie, running a hauling business for the construction crews tasked with repairing the homes down there. The crews would go into houses which were totalled by the insurance company (because of mold damage mostly) and throw everything out on the curb to be picked up and hauled off to the dump. The owners couldn't reclaim any of the merchandise because they'd been paid by the insurance companies for those items and the insurance companies weren't wasting their time going through the garbage heaps. That's where we came in.

Katie's uncle Jim told us the week before we left that we wouldn't believe the kind of stuff that was down there. Fridges, ranges, couches, all kinds of furniture all lying on the curb waiting to be picked up and hauled off to a dump. So, Chris and I decided it was worth 24 hours to find out whether Jim was exaggerating or not.

We borrowed a Dodge Ram and a huge trailer from Jim and set out Friday night. Jim put us up in the house his crew was renting (though they moved on to Beaumont, TX the day before) in Metairie.

We showed up Friday night to a house with more junk in its yard than any of the houses we saw all weekend. The house had been gutted. The bottom floor didn't even have sheet rock on the walls. It was just beams supporting the structure of the house.

The second floor was a little better, having walls, but nothing else. That's where we stayed. Because the front door was missing the glass on the upper portion and didn't close very well, and the garage door and back door were permanently open, we locked ourselves in the upstairs bedroom and shoved a bag in front of the door to keep out any possible mid-night visitors from sneaking up on us.

The next morning we woke up and drove to a 24 hour truck stop diner and had a big breakfast. It was one of the only restaurants open at the time, since McDonalds and the other fast food restaurants in the area can't find workers... after all, people are getting paid to sit at home... On a side note, Burger King was offering a $500 bonus per month to work there, with wages starting at $9/hour to entice people to get off their government subsidized butts. I digress...

We went off on the hunt and saw quite a bit of good stuff. We noted an entertainment center, but decided to come back for it. After a little more driving we found a gas dryer and stainless steel front dishwasher. Chris and I loaded those up and headed back to get the entertainment center, which was now gone... only 15 minutes later.

That's how the day went. We would drive around, find something on the side of the road and throw it in the truck. Sometimes, we'd see other people picking up good items, but I think we came out purty darn good considering we were going through people's garbage. The items we got had very little damage and most items had no damage at all. The water was probably only two inches deep at best in the ritzy area we were scouring, but the houses were totalled because of the way the mold had spread throughout the houses after having standing water for so long.

After our second trip back to the "safehouse" that Jim was renting, we saw a group of guys in trucks wandering around in the house. We pulled up and said "Howdy", and tried to find out why in the world they were wandering about in the house. It turns out that Jim had rented the house to them so he wouldn't have to pay for the rest of the month (since he was moving his crew to Beaumont, TX). So, we had to get our stuff out of the driveway so they could have better access to the garage and house. That was the only little snag in the day though...

After we could load no more, we came away with an Armoire (damaged but repairable), two chests of cabinets (damaged, non-repairable, but useable), stainless steel dishwasher, 1 book shelf unit, oak cabinets from a kitchen (to be sized, cut and installed), a leather massage table (with a hole for a face), and the prize of all prizes... my leather chair and ottoman.

It turned out to be an $1800 set that's still listed on the Dillard's website. It had no damage, apart from one of its back legs being a little busted up. It's in the same condition as the chair pictured above, and sits as comfortably as any chair... though it may be the price that makes the chair so comfortable.

Chris got most of the wooden furniture goods and I took two chests of drawers, the massage table and the chair... oh, and a little jewelry box thing for Katie.

The only other item of interest came on the way back. We were in bumper to bumper traffic for some unknown reason right outside of Metairie for about 30 minutes. After getting out of the traffic jam, we realized that the truck wouldn't shift out of first gear. So, we were stuck on the shoulder going at a top speed of about 17 mph. After letting the truck cool down a bit, though, we were off again with a working, but unreliable transmission. We made it back in about 6 hours without another incident.