My editing and publishing work has dried up yet again so I now have time to enjoy the company of the fine readers and writers on substack. There was a last minute push to lower my pay as my job uses a very complicated compensation model to pay me which is based largely on average editor error scores. I might make $1 an hour, or I might make $30. The system seems to be gamed by higher ups which has been heartbreaking in some months. Despite the politics of corporate punching down I enjoy my job and might even throw out some $10 stock picks from the lower priority calls I was editing. The market is a casino so this is not investment advice.
I’d mentioned a story in my midweek memes regarding the damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I was sure that I’d written about this event in my book Travels With Nemo as I had vowed to do after talking to the police officer. I cannot find the excerpt in the book anywhere. That led to me checking my other books to see if maybe I’d put it in one of them. I still haven’t found it yet.
Here’s a summary. In the fall of 2005 my ex Joe bought a small RV and we drove it across the country. We snaked through Florida heading to an event on Key West called Fantasy Fest. There had been many hurricanes that year so we saw damage in a lot of places. It all looked natural, though. I’ve been through areas where fires have burned and floods and tornados and hurricanes have struck. The damage is partial and haphazard: the trees are burnt black trunks, skipping around a bit, some houses are partially burned, some are not affected, some places take a lot of damage while other close areas look pretty okay. The TV News can closeup to one destroyed building and make a fairly small disaster seem very big. They can also do the opposite, hiding scenes of mass destruction and chaos.
We snaked through Florida then headed west through Alabama. State route 90 had just opened up for vehicle traffic again in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This route was right on the Gulf Coast. I had a nostalgic memory of staying in Gulfport, Mississippi many years before to go to Mardi Gras with some friends. I remembered the stately beautiful colonial houses lining the Gulf Coast along the route.
We got into Mississippi at night time. There was nobody on the road but us. I kept on looking around at what seemed like barren football fields wondering when I’d see the houses. Then Joe slowed down a bit and I saw a driveway and I told him to stop the RV. I was looking at the houses.
All that was left of those beautiful stately colonial mansions were driveways. There were no bricks or blocks or remnants of wood. The bridge was out a few miles later, with only a single warning sign placed in front which was hard to see in the dark. This was very Thailand style for a road in America.
The next morning we explored the devastation around Gulfport. Everything was leveled close to the beach. This supposed storm surge was like nothing I had ever seen before. The picturesque hotel I had stayed at with my brother and friends for Mardi Gras was gone, like vaporized. There were no trees or stoplights or street signs. We had to keep on driving inland just to figure out where we were. A gigantic riverboat casino was on top of a several story apartment building several blocks inland. There were boats stuck in trees even two miles or more inland. It did not look natural. It looked like an atomic bomb had went off.
We found our way back onto State Route 90. There were a few other cars on the road, but very few. A police cruiser put its siren on us. I noticed that the police car said “Indiana State Police.” We were in Mississippi.
The police officer just wanted to talk to someone. “This road just opened yesterday.” He said as he checked Joe’s driver’s license. The blond joked about the patrol car. “Other states donated them. Ours were all swept away.” The man clearly was troubled and my ex asked about the damage.
“I was on patrol when it happened.” He’d been living in a house on the Gulf. “My wife and son were swept away. They never found them.” He began tearing up. “Please help us. Everybody talks about New Orleans. I don’t think anyone even knows about what happened here. If you’ve got some friends in LA or something tell them.” We vowed to do just that. This was in a time before smartphone videos, though I snapped a few shots on a digital camera which have mostly been lost to time. I think they’ve been playing with the weapons for a long time.
I had found out perhaps a week before that I ws pregnant with what would become my older daughter. I’m amused that both Joe and Oh did the same thing when the first pregnancy test came up negative. They bugged me to go drink with them.
This is an excerpt I found in Seven Years Later…
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