Days have passed, yet I can still see him, this old, weathered man sitting all alone on the porch of his ruined home, one hand resting on his barbecue, simply staring out at us as we rolled slowly through the utter bleakness the hurricane left behind.

He didn't seem to much mind being there, even though he was perhaps the only living soul still on the otherwise deserted, battered street.

We figured he had probably been born there, and likely had no other place to go. He wouldn't be there if he had, we agreed.

I grew up in relative poverty, have lived in riot-torn Watts, and walked through war-torn Baghdad. I have never, though, seen anything remotely close to the utter devastation and heart-rending poverty that is the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans today.

Two years after Hurricane Katrina roared through the city, the Lower 9th remains a swath of America that clearly has been forgotten by the state and federal governments, and, it is possible to think, even by God.

I did not go there for work. Rather, I traveled there simply to see my son, Ben, off as he began college in the not-far-away Garden District.

We, of course, went to Bourbon Street, fattened ourselves at Mother's and the Camelia Grill and even took in a minor league Zephyrs ballgame.

Watermarks.

It is what you notice in New Orleans. Driving into the city from the airport, the poorer sections of town whizzing past, you can still see the squiggly marks on rooftops left by the floodwaters.

It's impossible not to cringe, too, as Interstate 10 crests and the Superdome rises off to the left, the mind's eye flashing back to news footage of the filth and dead that spilled from it two years ago.

Yet you put that aside and plunge into the city center upon arrival. You grab a hotel room and quickly hit the streets of what everyone has always told you is a grand, not-to-be-missed, crazy American city.

But you can tell immediately that something is off.

Maybe it is the Dumpsters that still front much of tourist New Orleans, the still-boarded-up hotels and shops that line Canal Street, the weeds that are overtaking the quaint, still-idle trolley car line that runs past the grand homes of St. Charles Street.

Bourbon Street, of course, could only exist in New Orleans. It remains ear-splittingly loud, alcohol-soaked and strip-club nasty. Oldies rock cover bands, sadly, have now mostly replaced the jazz and blues artists who once dominated.

Yes, something was off.

"No, it ain't what it used to be, and will never again be what it was," a woman from Metairie mournfully told me as we waited in the beer line at Zephyrs Field last Sunday afternoon.

After three days in the city at that point, I kind of knew that. And it was she who told me to go see the Lower 9th, if I really wanted to know what it meant.

Imagine all of, say, Park Hill, now completely dry, but the homes there still abandoned, two year's worth of uncut front lawns flopping in the sticky hot, muggy breeze.

On each house, still, is a large "plus" sign, one corner reading the date it was searched, the opposite corner telling how many humans were found dead.

Most of the homes bore the date 9-14 or 9-15 - TWO weeks after the hurricane hit. Five was the largest number of dead we spotted.

Entire blocks of homes lay deserted and empty, their windows either shattered or covered by plywood. A few hopeful souls had placed "for sale" signs somewhere on the property.

On some streets, the government had delivered trailers. There, small groups of little children frolicked in the tall grass of deserted homes, darting through the open doors and windows, or around the cement foundations of those shoved off and destroyed by Katrina.

We rode wide-eyed in the car, and in complete silence.

Monday morning arrived. It was my 50th birthday.

We met Ben outside of the university bookstore, where my wife and I had purchased notebooks and pens for him.

Odd, it seemed like only last month that I had handed him his lunchbox and watched from the window as his preschool teacher led him to class. He handed me a birthday card. It was beautiful. We hugged each other long and tightly.

For another long moment we just stared at each other. I patted him on the back. His first college class was in 10 minutes. I watched him walk away, thinking I was somehow losing something. I desperately fought back tears.

You see, I had been dreading turning 50, getting old, my life pretty much being over. Yet ever since that moment, I have thought often of that old, weathered man, one hand resting on his relic of a barbecue, sitting on the porch of his busted home, content as anything.

Life and what you do with it is the only thing that matters. It is what I now think the old man was teaching me.

Rich, poor, old or young, there are no rules to this life, except to savor every moment of it,

Self-pity, his lesson went, only mucks it all up.

johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2763

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