Funny, this site is supposed to be my outlet, my way of sharing with others what I’m experiencing, and yet I write nothing of one of the most difficult times of my life. The only explanation is that my brain has, up to this point, not fully processed the devastation surrounding me. I’m not entirely sure that it yet has. I only know that I experienced a moment this morning in which the phrase I’ve uttered countless time has really meant more than just the words, “It will never be the same…”

There has existed, in this tiny city named Harahan, for as long as I have memory, a “Sno Ball” stand named Ro-Bear’s. Some of you might be familiar with Snow Cones… To call this business a mere Sno Ball Stand is to put to shame the art with which they created sugary concoctions to tempt both young and old alike. Many a nights I stood in front of four 8-foot tall signs listing all 100 flavors of syrup and special combinations available, trying to decide if I wanted to add condensed milk or not. Then, finally remembering that I’m really not a fan of that syrup and I’d something I can’t get anywhere else…

“I’d like a dipped chocolate ice cream, please.”

Into my greedy hands would be placed a cone with a mile high of solid, hardened chocolate shell. This thin layer would protect the soft serve chocolate ice cream from melting down my arm in the harsh Louisiana summer night air. The tiniest of bites and the shell would crack gently in just the right place, but nowhere else.

In returning to my hometown, I was hoping to share this and other such memories with my son. I never dreamed I would see the day they knocked the building down (yes, it was really a brick structure in which this art was created). It seems silly that I might cry over the destruction of a building I never set foot into, but somehow it represented everything else here: the lives forever touched by the losses large and small. The Destruction of Our Legacy.