I was driving out of New Orleans today when my boss asked me a question.

‘What did you think of Mr. Rob?’ he said, referring to the man he had just interviewed and I had just photographed.

I paused for a minute before answering, glancing at the scenery. Flashing past were the fallen shells of strip malls, the debris of suburban street signs, even the semi-rusting metal skeletons of a Six Flags amusement park, all abandoned in the wake of Katrina. In slightly more than a year, one of the most tamed and cultivated environments – the parking lot of a roller-coaster park and its surroundings – had been overrun by nature. Ever seen what happens to grass and weeds when left for that period of time? Instead of a blacktopped surface, gridded with yellow guidelines for cars, you have a veritable prairie. Even strip malls, normally something I despise, were almost heartbreaking, not just because the sign for a furniture store was twisted and laying on its side, but because of what that destruction meant: Nature was not fucking around last year.

I paused for a minute longer, thinking about 30 minutes earlier when I was driving down Canal Street toward the French Quarter. Something as symbolic as a McDonald’s sign had been destroyed by winds, its letters missing, the plastic covering its golden arches gone. Entire blocks of New Orleans had become demilitarized zones, complete with semi-closed fast-food restaurants still operating by taking walk-ups at the drive-through window, hordes of people milling about and a general air of confusion punctuated only by the occasional walking beat officer. Nothing was right; the entire city seemed … broken. But just a few streets south – in the tourist casino district and the French Quarter – it was if Katrina had never happened. Businesses were open, active construction was taking place, drunk people were walking down the middle of a Bourbon Street that reeked of vomit and urine. In short, things were back to normal in the areas that were actively visited by non-New Orleans residents. Something didn’t seem right.

I paused even longer, thinking of Mr. Rob, a man who stayed on Tulane’s campus in the middle of the most destructive hurricane in recent memory, a man who kept the house safe from looters and bailed water out of the basement. A man who talked Cubs baseball with me while I was taking his picture, a man who declined to remove his Seattle Seahawks hat during the shoot because it had been given to him by a friend, a man who unabashedly told me of his two ex-wives and three children. A man who told me that his destiny was to appear in the magazine I’m taking his picture for.

He told me his life was now complete. After 13 years of living in New Orleans and watching over the countless undergraduates in his care and living on the South Side of Chicago and serving in the 82nd Airborne and loving women and siring children, his life was now complete because I took his picture for a magazine.

‘I think Mr. Rob is the right man in the right place at the right time who is surrounded by people he cares for, and who is cared for in return,’ I said. ‘I think Mr. Rob is doing exactly what Mr. Rob should be doing.’

With people like Mr. Rob around, I think things are going to be fine.

But let’s be honest, here: Stopping for a drink on Bourbon Street before heading out of town helped the situation too. New Orleans, you’re okay.