I thought things were getting better. I thought maybe we could see outside ourselves and realize what it is like to be human. Everything has resorted to racism and name-calling and those two things will get us nowhere. Where are you going? Fucking nowhere. What exactly was the Brown hearing? Was anything decided there or did everyone call him an incompetent waste of air and leave it at that? I could have done that, but there are still homeless people in Mississippi. Then I read about the thousands of trailers just sitting at the distribution point and the thousands of people in tents trying to keep the wind and rain from Rita out. Something doesn't seem right about that. Then on top of all the idiocy Homeland Security is accusing FEMA of freezing temporary housing orders.
Red Cross is no different. Now that we are a little further away from the storm, it is getting a little easier, but I knew one out of every ten people were getting through. The only reason we got our application in is because Joel is working for the Hancock County and the Harrison County Emergency Operations Center and turned one in, only for the Red Cross to lose it. So now we have to reapply. I called the donations hotline one day to vent my frustrations, they answered right away:
"Yes, I was just wondering if you were actually helping people with this money you are bringing in? I have been unable to contact the Red Cross help line and have had people tell me they wait in line for five or eight hours at a distribution point only to be turned away."
"I'm sorry, we only take donations on this line."
"I bet you do."
The 'What the Fuck?!?' moment of the day:
It was gone even before the storm hit. I managed to save a couple of bricks. When I gave my dad one, he looked at me and said “thank you”. That was all I needed to know I did the right thing. My mom had to ask me to do it. I don’t think Dad could have. It was weird not seeing it there. It had been a car shop forever. When I was a small child it was my grandfather’s car shop. My dad used to work there too, so naturally I was there all the time. I was never let in the garage part, but I could roam around the office all I wanted. If I looked pitiful enough, I could weasel my way into the garage, but I never really liked it. Everything was dark brown or black in there and very greasy. Most of the time it was very loud. I enjoyed the office most of all because I could sit at my grandfather’s desk while he worked and he had a constant flow of quarters. Behind his desk was my favorite thing in the world, a large gumball machine. He would hand me quarters, usually from under the desk, and I would get gumball after gumball and shove them all in my mouth. If I sat at his desk all I had to do was spin the chair around and I could reach the machine. Spin and chew, chew and spin, blow a bubble.
After my grandfather sold the shop, it was still a garage, just owned by some guy named Butch. But I was happy because I was getting older, and my afternoons were full, so I had less and less time to go to the garage and sit with my grandfather and chew on the gumballs from that gumball machine. It was still there and every time I went passed it I would remember my grandfather and that gumball machine. Then one day there were no cars in the garage, and then there was no garage, just a pile of wood and concrete and bricks. I stared at the lot and wondered what happened. The large sign on the corner of the street told me “coming soon, drug store”. Let me just say that what this town needed was another drug store. I was appalled, I was shocked, I was angry. That shop was a good memory for me and now it was gone so some drug store could come in to a small town that already had five.
Then the storm hit. My husband and I came back to our hometown after evacuating and didn’t recognize it. Most of the town was obliterated or damaged to the point of non-recognition. For a while there were no stores. Most of the businesses were south of the tracks. Eventually one of the two grocery stores that were still standing opened with a limited stock. There was one drug store left untouched, the drug store that sat on the lot where my grandfather’s shop used to be. I had to have medicine, so reluctantly I went in the store. I tried to get my bearings and remember where everything was. Where the cars used to be, shampoo and conditioner were on the shelves. Where my grandfather’s office was, a photo center stood. I saw the place I am sure the gumball machine used to be. Well, at least they got that right: the candy aisle.
I keep hearing “it’s never going to be the same. It isn’t the place where you grew up. It has changed forever.” And I believe the contrary. The coast while I was growing up was small. The roads were more than enough for the people to get around on. There were more vacant lots than houses and the beach was unobstructed by large purple monstrosities. I played in the vacant lots and I could get from Long Beach to Biloxi in fifteen minutes. Then the casinos came and suddenly it took thirty to forty-five minutes to get to Biloxi from Long Beach, the infrastructure wasn’t enough to hold the population growth and the vacant lots I used to play in were being cleared and cemented over for fast, affordable housing. My small town grew close to thirty thousand and by the time I graduated high school, my class was over three hundred students strong. That’s when things changed and it ceased to be the place I grew up in. Businesses boomed, more moved in and more and more people relocated to the Gulf Coast. Some people were happy about the sudden economic boom. Others shook their heads and asked what was to happen when a hurricane comes. The “Big One” they called it. The people who remember the last “Big One” began to grow few and far between. About seventy percent of the population had probably never seen a hurricane, let alone lived through one. Camille was the name. Camille was the mark, a Category five that hit in 1969 and destroyed the towns of Long Beach and Pass Christian and heavily damaged Gulfport. There was a ship that had washed up north of Highway 90 in Gulfport that, instead of being towed back out to the gulf, was turned into a souvenir shop. For the last thirty-five years people watched the gulf cautiously waiting for the next “One”. It was bound to happen. I admit I was one of the people that shook my head every time I passed the casinos on the beach and thought, “wonder where they will end up when it happens.”
I found out. Katrina, the one to knock Camille out of the running, showed us just what would happen with all those casinos. Most of them ended up in the middle of the highway. Some sank, some crashed into hotels and homes. Bridges were washed away or moved several feet. Businesses were washed away, people are deciding to move or just to not come back. Going down the beach now, it looks like it did when I was twelve. The fast and affordable houses have given way to vacant lots and so many people have been displaced the roads are nearly empty most of the time.
This is the place I grew up in. No casinos, empty beaches, smooth roads and vacant lots.
Pine cones and branches buried like land mines. Some of them will have to be pulled up by tractor. Trees are twisted, bent, and mangled. Some of the tap roots didn't even bother to come out of the ground, they snapped at the surface. The ground pulled up like the carpet in the house across the street, the trees lay dying, busted, torn, splintered. The air conditioner is half a foot from where it needs to be, and who knows where that battered piece of metal came from. Four different shades of shingles scattered in the yard, and a lost shoe. The roofs are patchwork quilts of tarps flapping in the unusally cool breeze from the east. "Verizon" and "Low Prices" flash on top of some houses from the tarps and plastic signs used to keep the weather, flora, and fauna out. The people across the street from me have been hauling lumber out of their yard for eight days straight. They are saying that the casinos will be back in the amount of time it takes to have a baby. Razor wire two rows thick block south of the tracks from Biloxi to Bay St. Louis because the people they need to patrol the area are in a war we harldy remember. Helicopters shake the windows and my ear drums, but I have become numb to the thumping. It usually stops around eight anyway. Do not leave your homes, it isn't safe. Do not go back to your homes, it isn't safe.
And i thought things were changing before...
There is no reason for these things. Why did this guy's house stay and the next one get completely obliterated?
I have gotten more panic-y phone calls than i ever wanted to receive in my life this week.
Joel is back at work. He is working with the EOC in Hancock county to aid the emergency workers in getting in and helping people.
I had two jobs, but now I have none. The Pass Christian Library is gone and the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center is still standing, but the first floor is gutted and I am sure the second floor isn't a five star retreat. They are condemning buildings left and right and the huge bulldozer gets ever closer.
I am home, but it isn't really my home. It is a refuge for people who no longer have four walls and a roof.
This was the decision maker, wasn't it?
If you weren't sure about staying, now's the time to get out.
I don't know what I am doing.
I don't know what I am going to do.
I don't know what normal is.
I don't know when I will be able to leave my home town.
I don't know where i would go if I did leave.
Everything seems so nice from inside my bubble.
Wouldn't you like to come in?
We are okay. Family is okay. Friends are ok. Thank you to everyone who is concerned. You can contact either Joel or myself thru our website. Leave comments and we will get them. Thanks.