Ethnographic Fieldnotes

Below are the fieldnotes that each member of our group took while in Chalmette:

Amara Stafford:

When I first entered Chalmette, I drove to the intersection of W. Judge Perez and Paris Road. As I was driving down W. Judge Perez I noticed there was a lot of construction going on. There was construction being done in order to fix parts of W. Judge Perez and construction being done at businesses along the sides of the roads. In this section of town there was a grand opening for a Big Lots happening. However, across the street there was a run-down plaza. There is also a Wal-Mart that is not open but construction is being down on it and a new KFC. The construction helps show that Chalmette truly is still in the rebuilding process from the damage that it suffered during Katrina. While it has made tons of progress because the community reopened itself, there is still much work to be done to restore places like this run-down plaza. At the lights there were four elderly men with red hats on from the Riding Club who were collecting donations from the people who were stopped at the intersection. This is interesting because actions like this would be frowned upon in other cities or towns because it makes their community members nervous to have people approach their car at an intersection. In my past experience in other cities (I have been to many Northeastern cities because I am from New Hampshire.), it is often generalized that people who approach your car for money or food are shoe shiners or homeless people.

When the light changed green we turned left onto Paris Road. Following this road down towards the bridge I noticed a lot of bait stores, places to buy boats, and a Marina Hotel. On the side of the road there was an African American man and young boy fishing in the water that runs alongside the side of the road. Due to the fact that this entire road is primarily based around fishing or boating activities, I would have to say this is something that people of Chalmette enjoy doing. It would be interesting to look further into this observation in order to find out if this is just something that they do occasionally, alone, with the family, etc. After turning around before the bridge and heading back towards the intersection at Paris Road and W. Judge Perez, I noticed that in the water alongside the road that the man and young boy were fishing there were a couple of little fishing boats that has sunk halfway. This makes me wonder why the community has not made an effort to remove the boats from the water. Perhaps they do not care about keeping up with appearances this far down Paris Road. Perhaps the boats have just recently gotten there. At the end Paris Road near the intersection again is the Nunez Community College. Before coming to see Chalmette I had previewed the demographics and population of Chalmette on City-Data.com and found that as of 2007 there were only 9,491 people. Therefore, it was quite surprising to me that such a small community has their own community college. However, I do know that the population of Chalmette was much larger before Katrina so it was more fitting to have a community college in the pre-Katrina population.

Next thing I did was take a couple of smaller roads right before you back to the W. Judge Perez. As I drove these couple of small roads I noticed that a lot of the houses are pretty well-kept so seem to be all rebuilt. Every once in a while, I would run into some houses that were empty and still had the markings that had been sprayed on them after a hurricane (probably Katrina) on the same road as these other well-kept houses. Like the boats that were left on the side of the road, these run-down and left behind houses seemed to be completely ignored. It was as if the rest of the neighborhood simply fixed up their houses and ignored the random house in the middle of them all that was run down from the hurricane. Since this is the second example of something being left behind and ignored, I think that this community either is not all that worried about the aesthetics of their community or they simply do not have the financial means to rebuild themselves and help with everybody else yet. When I circled back around to W. Judge Perez I drove by a car wash that was being hosted by a cheerleading squad. Across the street from the girls was a sign advertising something called the October Festival. The community seems to have a good attitude towards community based events like the festivals and the school fundraisers. This gives me the impression that Chalmette enjoys coming together as a community whether it be to get a job done like helping the cheerleaders or just to have a good time at the festival.

Next I went to the opposite end of Paris Road towards the Chalmette Ferry, Chalmette Battle Grounds and a couple of factories and oil refineries. When I got to the intersection by the ferry I could already smell the strong scent of oil in the air. When I got to the Chalmette Battlegrounds I noticed that it was very clean and well-kept. The battle ground has a large field with a couple of cannons overlooking the field. At the end of the driveway is a large monument where you can climb 100 feet to the top. Behind the monument is the plantation house and behind that is the Mississippi River. While I was walking around and taking a look at things I noticed that two women were by the cannons overlooking the fields with 3 young children. The children, all boys, were dressed up in Halloween costumes (Superheroes). The women pulled out a couple of pumpkins and set up a camera. These women are taking Halloween pictures of their children at a historical battlefield. Either these women think the Battlefield area is really pretty or they pride themselves on the history that is behind Chalmette and the Battle of New Orleans. Then they proceeded to take pictures of their children. Inside the monument was an young girl and her parents who were joking around about what a strenuous job it was to climb all the way to the top of the monument. The only other people I saw at the battle field were teenagers who were there exercising. The young girl had her iPod on and was walking around. The teenage boy was running on the paths and doing sit-ups. While I was observing all of this two fighter jets flew over the top of my head.

When I left the battlefield, I turned left towards Abri. Right outside the battle field was a large factory with the Dominoes sugar logo on the water tower. The factory did not appear to be running because it was really run down. If this factory used to be an important part to the economy, where is the community getting that missing income now? Also outside the battlefield is an entire row of houses across the street from an oil refinery that are all spray painted with the words “NO ENTRY.” This is another example of how the community is still rebuilding from Katrina and how sometimes the community is just forced to live side by side with houses that are still empty due to the devastation that Katrina caused. However, there is a small difference with this area. Up until now I had only sporadically seen a house here or a house there that was still empty. This was an entire street of houses that were still empty. I am interested in finding out why that is. Does it have something to do with the oil refineries? Was this just a lower-income neighborhood so those people could not afford to completely rebuild? One thing I noticed about Chalmette is that it is very small, in an instant you can wind up in the next town/suburb over whether it be Meraux or Arbi.

On the drive out of town I noticed that the town had a Latino Store. I also noticed that there were a couple of Hispanic families walking around pushing strollers or just strolling up the street . The demographics show that in 2007 Hispanics only make up 4.8 % of the population so I was very surprised to see this many Hispanic families. This observation could suggest that there are more Hispanics in Chalmette since the last data was collected or it could suggest this area of town (leaving town, by the Latino Store) is habituated by most of the Hispanic population.

* The bold faced font indicates reflections on the field notes that I took while the regular font is the field notes.

Emily Pripas:

It’s about 2:30 on Friday afternoon. W Perez Road heading into Chalmette looks like the freeways that are all over the country, and that have all manner of chain stores just off the side. The main difference is that a lot of those stores have closed or been abandoned. One store looks like it had been a fast food restaurant, complete with the board that would advertise specials. The shopping center that comes up right after that looks like it’s filled with shops, but only one is actually still open. There are still signs for the rest of the shops that are there. Only a Big Lots looks completely open and functional. The parking lot is filled with cars, and from the top of the store to a few of the light posts, shiny streamers are flying with balloons. Soon, smaller abandoned buildings come up. At W Perez and Paris, there is a Walgreens and a gas station. Randomly, on Paris, a mattress and bed frame have been thrown out onto the street. More cars are around up here. We turn onto Paris and then into a neighborhood where we slowly drive around. Almost all the houses here are made of brick and are about one story. They don’t look like New Orleans houses. They look like they could be anywhere (Note: they remind me of Queens, actually) However, there’s a lot of variance. On one side of the first street, the lawns are perfectly manicured. On the other side, the grass has grown wild. The first street we were on was perfectly paved, but soon, the street is rough and ragged. Another house has put up elaborate decorations for Halloween already. This includes ghosts, goblins, and cobwebs in their trees. Most of the houses look new and nice. Nice cars are parked in the driveways, SUVS, Saturn cars, Nissans. A firefighter lives in one of the houses, as is shown by a flag hanging outside. Another house has the Confederate flag flying, and a truck is parked in the driveway. It’s one of the houses that are nicely kept up. On one street, instead of a one story red brick house, there is a much larger pink house with bricks. It stands out, and its lawn is nice kept with flowers and cut grass. There is a jet-ski in the driveway. However, across from this clearly more expensive than average house, there is a house that is clearly uninhabited. Its lawn is overgrown, and the windows are broken. Several houses still have the X with information about how it was checked post-Katrina, but the vast majority of houses do not. A school bus passes, and an older black kid gets off. He is wearing a school uniform of a white polo and khaki pants. This is the first person I have seen. As we follow the school bus for a bit, four more kids get off, two black and two white. All are wearing a pretty similar uniform, with two wearing a red polo instead of a white one. Every block or so, another house is fully decorated for Halloween, already. As we drive down another block, the St. Bernard Sheriff is parked in front of a house, and across the street, a St. Bernard parish government car is parked with someone inside of it. We pass a small park with plastic jungle gym furniture. One man and woman are there with about three small children. As we pass a nice well manicured house, I notice a sofa randomly outside on its porch. An older woman rides past on a bicycle, not wearing a helmet, while another older guy walks by. He’s white and wearing a camo hat. A trailer is sitting next to a very nice house, which looks larger than most here, as a two-story. We drive back onto the main drag, and stop at a gas station after passing a waffle house and a McDonald’s. Inside, there are two white guys. One is wearing an oversize t-shirt and a Yankees cap and baggy jeans. We stop and get something to drink, and ask the cashier about where the library is and where people go in Chalmette. I was paying for a drink at the other cashier, and didn’t hear all of what she said, but at the end she told us to be careful. It was somewhat strange. Down Perez, I can see an apartment complex that is half in ruin (Note: I’m guessing from Hurricane Katrina). Another abandoned shopping center is on my right, but there are two really nice palm trees there. After accidentally passing the library, we go around. At one intersection, there are two gas stations diagonally across from one another, but one is abandoned, and the other, a Shell station, is still up and running. A run-down looking thrift store is on the road, and clothes are outside of it. A house that looks like it was broken in half is right down the street from the library, and is set up on some kind of metal rafters. The library itself is in a temporary building, like the ones put up at my high school while it was under construction. It is wheelchair accessible. The parking lot isn’t truly paved. Instead, it’s been covered with hard rocks. There are about six or seven cars in the parking lot. Walking inside, it’s only one room. It has nine computers and two librarians. While we ask the librarians for some information, I notice two younger girls on the computer. They’re both white and playing some sort of fashion or Barbie game. We learn that the library lost all of its books, and that the library building is being used by the parish right now. The small room is filled with boxes. In fact, we have to move some in order to get to the books we need. Right above these historical books are romance novels on tape. In the library, more space appears to be devoted to movies than to books. When we leave, I notice that across the street is a place called “Across the Finish Line- Off Track Betting” and a primary care center. We pick up some local newspapers as we leave, and notice that they list every single arrest in it, including arrests for being drunk or having marijuana. Another store as we leave town reads “Tobacco” discounts.

Analytic notes: Chalmette was really destroyed during Katrina, but it’s clearly been rebuilt in a much better fashion than the lower 9th Ward, which we drove through to get there. In a lot of ways, some of the neighborhood we went through reminded me of Beltway, except for the fact that it was not as well controlled and cared for. But the houses and the way certain houses looked really seemed like it.

Joe Paluch:

Driving past the ninth ward, I was reminded of the horrific affects of Hurricane Katrina. Homes were still collapsing against one another, trash seemed to cover the ground almost as much as the grass, and every other store seemed to be shut down and abandoned. Immediately next-door was Chalmette. Both were devastated by the hurricane, but the latter seemed to have recovered a significant amount more. Driving the car, it was a bit more difficult to study the details, but it was apparent that there was a major difference between these bordering towns.

We started our field notes by driving through the local neighborhoods. Turning down a small side street, most of the houses seemed to be small to medium-sized. Most were made of brick and seemed to be built recently. The new homes (demonstrating the means to rebuild) may be indicative of economic differences between the home owners in Chalmette and those in the upper-ninth ward. There was a confederate flag raised high in one of the yards (which may reveal some racial tensions that still exist, or may just represent southern pride). Many of the driveways stationed jetskis and small boats which were probably common due to the canals and bodies of water nearby. The grass on some of those properties seemed to stand out to our group. Not only was it perfectly cut, but it also was extremely, and unnaturally green. While the movie Pleasantville seemed to encapsulate much of what I saw, there were obvious, simultaneous contrasts in the neighborhood. Remnants of abandoned homes with overgrown grass scattered across the neighborhood reminded me that the area had been hit hard by Katrina.

We continued to drive hoping to see more Chalmetians, but the neighborhoods were empty for the most part. The exception was a family of three in one of Chalmette’s small parks. The family was getting out of a red pick-up truck; the family included one shirtless father (white), equally aged wife (white), and a child that was about three. We drove on, feeling somewhat creepy for staring at the family for an uncomfortable amount of time. Even though it was 3:15 PM, we saw no more families. We found a bus and decided to follow it, hoping to see the children that got out of it. A few children walked off the bus at the two next stops. They all had uniforms on (red/white shirt and navy blue pants), and the majority of them were white. Two of the, maybe, eight were African American. After stalking the bus, we decided to talk to a Chalmetian at the local gas station.

There, we planned to ask the cashier about the town and the central meeting areas in Chalmette. The cashier was a white woman about forty-years-old, with curly hair. When we asked her about Chalmette she came across as reserved and questioned why we would study her town. When we asked her about the community center, she responded as if she was holding back. She said that she “didn’t do that” and was about to continue but held whatever she was going to say next. We asked here next about the library, assuming (falsely) it would be a public meeting place; she told us that the trailer that is Chalmette’s library was down the street. She frightened us slightly when she finished with, “Be careful where you go, babies.”

Finally, we drove to the library trailer. The small, one room library was smaller than our classroom and housed more DVDs and Cds than books. The library was full, which didn’t say much; there were eight people at each computer. We approached the librarian, who also seemed guarded and suspicious of why we would study Chalmette. We had to emphasize multiple times that our class was studying urban sociology, and different parts of New Orleans. She was helpful and warm, though, within minutes. She couldn’t direct us to any books for help, since they had so few. But she tried her best to find websites with us. As it began to get dark, we left the trailer and returned home to the bubble we call Tulane University.

Miriam Ragen:

We stopped at the Ponstein’s Gas Station and Convenience Store on Paris Road to get directions to the library. At 3:30 pm the convenient store was fairly busy. Behind the counter stood two women. The one we talked to was a middle-aged white woman who was missing a few teeth. When she spoke she did so with a very strong southern accent. We asked her if there is a community center in Chalmette. The response we got was surprising. She said yes there is one but she does not go there because…and then she cut herself off. It seemed like she didn’t want to tell us what she really thought about the people who go to the community center. As we were leaving she cautioned us by saying, “be careful where you go babies.” We were unsure how to take this comment and it made us slightly nervous.

The library was easy to miss. It is a trailer right on the side of Judge Perez Drive, in front of the “old Wal-mart.” The dirt parking lot was full with about six cars. A little girl in her school uniform stood on the steps waiting for her mother to walk over with their books. The white trailer was lofted about five feet from the ground. It had wooden steps and a wooden ramp making it handicap accessible. When you walk in you are immediately at the information desk. Two librarians, both white women who looked to be in their fifties and had matching short haircuts and sense of style. The desk is covered with information about the going abouts in Chalmette including many local newspapers. There were nine new looking computers in the small trailer that couldn’t have been more than thirty feet long. The librarians told us that they had been in the trailer since 2008 and had lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. The new library collection seemed to have more DVDs than books. The DVDs were all new releases.

The patrons of the Chalmette library can be broken into two categories: parent and their young children and preteens who were there by themselves. The preteens were all absorbed by internet games that let them dress up Bratz dolls. These young girls were in their school uniforms. The parents and children were all in the right side of the trailer and were browsing books and occasionally looking up information on the computers. The back right of the trailer was cluttered with boxes and signs warning people not to touch the books in this section. By the boxes was an impressive collection of books on Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath.

From the library I took a copy of The St. Bernard News. The free newspaper is filled with local information about events that just happened and are coming up. The most striking part of the paper is in the middle, the “Sheriff’s Department Arrest Reports.” This full-page details all the arrests have taken place since the last printing of the paper. Each listing gives the suspect’s name, age, address, charges and bond. An example is, “Dontron Bienemy, 24, 2301 Guerra Dr., Violet: gambling in public; $500 bond.” The majority of the listings are about some sort of driving problem ranging from driving without a license to turn signal violations and driving while intoxicated. There are also very serious crimes such as murder and aggravated assault listed. The St. Bernard News dedicates over half of its pages to classified ads and advertisements for local goods and services.

While in Chalmette we turned into a neighborhood and were immediately driving behind a school bus. When the us stopped it let off students who looked to be in high school. Each was dressed in their school uniform of kahkis and a polo shirt or button up shirt. The students were half white and half black, half male and half female, yet they all interacted with each other. This might not be a representative sample of Chalmette, especially if you consider that according to the 2000 Census over 90% of Chalmette is white, but it was nice to see that at least these half a dozen students did not self-segregate and that the schools have at least some diversity.

Victoria Alexis:

Before visiting my assigned site, I did what any other student would do, researched and painted a vivid picture in my head of the area from facts and “stories“. In my research I found that Chalmette is St. Bernard Parish “seat city” and very essential as a New Orleans Metro Area City. As a native from New Orleans, I did not know much about Chalmette. I knew that it was overwhelming destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and the citizens were against “change” in their city.

As my group and I started our venture to Chalmette, stories of racist whites replayed back in my head. I did not inform my group of this because I didn’t know if it was true, and if it was, every place has the opportunity of change. The drive in the lower ninth ward was really difficult for me because I am a New Orleans native. That was the first time I had been there since Katrina. I could tell it was in better condition then before but it still touched my “Katrina spot”. A spot that is always soften or angered by the affects and current conditions from Hurricane Katrina. We drove over a bridge, leaving the sparse land behind and coming full face to an area of businesses and homes. Our Chalmette experience had began.

Even though I am a New Orleans native, this was the first time I had been to Chalmette. My anxiety and curiosity was on the same level as my group, but for different reasons. As my grandmother would like to say “ my black, southern girl instincts kicked in”, I knew that my anxiety was more in association with fear than that of my white northern group members. We stopped at a gas station to ask for directions and to purchase some snacks. The look of the gas station was not like that of the a New Orleans gas station, that is mostly owned by Indian descent or foreign ancestry, this gas station was White , privately owned. The group reached the register, and I gently asked the cashier for directions to the library. She looked at me as if I was asking her directions to the Moon. She quickly changed her facial expression when the other group members explained why we were looking for the library, after she asked “Why were we looking for the library?”. The cashier depicted the library as an area by the “old Wal-mart”, which made perfect sense to me, post Katrina directions are given by where things use to be before the storm. I then asked her where the community center was located. She basically had a mere break out of fussing and cussing. The woman continued to mumble some words then with clear voice blared “ I DON’T GO THERE, OH NO, IT’S CHANGED”

My group and I looked at each other with confusion. We wanted to know the rest and why she didn’t go to the community center, why the sudden stop in her monologue, but before we could ask she the words that confirmed all my anxieties. The woman walked away from the register and slowly turned around and said “ BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU GO ,BABY.” I don’t know if I am paranoid or not but I felt her eyes looking directly towards me, her voice directly in my ear and my fear ,that I passed on as a funny to my group members, all over my body. We left the gas station and headed toward the nearest neighborhood.

The neighborhood we drove through was like the physical pictured I portrayed about Beltway. Joseph and I immediately noticed the manicured lawns. It was very strange to us because the grass was so perfect for at least three blocks or so. I noticed that all these grand houses had Halloween or Fall ornamentals, nice cars, jet skies. One house that really stuck out to me, mainly because of our previous warning, had a Confederate flag soaring high and mighty in their front yard. The neighborhood was really quiet, too quiet for us. There weren’t any children playing outside or residents sitting outside, which is common in New Orleans. My conclusion was that either that these particular residents had enough money to afford child care and the other luxuries that I’d seen and/or was busy working to pay for their luxuries. The little time I spent in Chalmette was interesting but more so intriguing. Even though my anxieties of “ being careful where I go” are still present, I am interested in the sociological background of this community.