Never Clean Your House During Hurricane Season

by Modine Gunch, Liz Scott Monaghan (Creator), Rosemary Ruiz Lewis (Illustrator)

Before Katrina, Modine Gunch was Everywoman who fought with pantyhose until they went out of style, shoved dirty dishes into the oven when her mother-in-law was coming up the walk, shudderingly oversaw school science projects involving roaches, and insisted that a dish that didn't survive the dishwasher didn't deserve to live. Her family's adventures have tickled the funnybones of New Orleans Magazine readers for 25 years and have appeared in two Never Heave your Bosom in a Front-Hook Bra and Never Sleep With a Fat Man in July. But in 2005, home was where the levees broke. The Gunch family's houses, strung comfortably close together along one block, were among those washed away. So the Gunches found out that they were double-wide and their FEMA trailers weren't; "Don't come knockin' if this trailer's rockin'" meant somebody was stretched out in the vibrating recliner; and the talent God gave Modine was for cleaning out putrid refrigerators. But five years later, the Gunches are still standing -- when they're not second-lining.

172 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2010

Reviews

[Phrodrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time there was a place, more of a storied place called New Orleans. Then it almost was not. Some fool thought up the idea of a boutique city but it was not laughter that had him scuttling fast off stage. The dividing line was a period of several week exactly measured from early AM August 29, 2005 and continues for weeks, into months after. Least any forget two major hurricanes did their very wet dirt that year. We had our story, and over time I learned a lot of families had their storm, flood or fire. Katrina is a word that mean something along the central Gulf Coast in America, but it has its counterparts in all manner of natural disasters. What we all learned was that what was thought to be important like a clean house, suddenly is not.

Meantime:
Ther are some who say her real name is not Modine Gunch, but those are the same kinds of people who do not want you to leave Mark Twain alone. Never mind what the editors of Never Clean Your House during Hurricane Season say at the back of the Book, Modine is or was from the old neighborhood and we all knew or know her. If you have to know she now leave behind the Sloth Bar in the French Quarter. In what had been built as slave quarters. Modine Grunch is our neighbor, if you are not too uptown, (meaning up river) And her book Never Clean Your House during Hurricane Season is for her neighbors, but also for anyone who has seen their home used, floor to ceiling as a Gumbo pot, or worse, find that: it ain’t there no mo.

These selctions, reprinted from the pages of The New Orleans Magazine are about life lived through an eye for the ridicules, but ever so slightly touched by disaster. Modine and her nearest and dearest have all been pushed about, some as far away as the North Shore, some in places that even have snow. They are all family and none are to be found in the latest fashions. Except maybe her sister in law Glorious who lives uptown, where it did not flood.

Never Clean Your House During Hurricane season is the same off center, funny world of the same lady who wrote: Never Heave Your Bosom in a Front Hook Bra. Just as silly, just as local and perhaps more universal than “nachally Nawlinz”

[Ann Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modine makes me laugh. I loved this book and laughed out loud many times.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, true-ish & definitely n'awlins.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of laughs