Aftermath (install. 1)

JEFF DAVIS AVE. LONG BEACH, MS. OCT.18,2006

When people asked me where I was from, which happened quite a bit in Phoenix,AZ., I would state clearly, ‘Long Beach’. Folks asked this because of my still noticable southern accent. I purposely would not reveal the state causing most folks to assume,that living out west,I was refering to Long Beach,California.
Childish manipulation with a prideful purpose attached to it, for sure. My wish was to make my Southern heritage a defining characteristic about me that people remembered. I have always resented it when people characterized Southerners as hicks, hillbillies, racists,lazy,ignorant, etc. and etc., ad nauseum. In most cases, folks remembered that I came from Long Beach, Mississippi,on the beautiful Mississippi Gulf Coast.
I often referenced native son Brett Farve, who hails from Kiln,Ms., around ten miles northwest. Quite often, I threw in Jimmy Buffett, who was born in Pascagoula, about twenty miles east. I will come clean and admit that I didn’t volunteer that Mr. Buffett was raised in Mobile, Alabama,hi-jacking all credit for that talent for the Coast.
I have always percieved the folks of the Gulf Coast as an eclectic, funky mix of south Louisiana Cajun and Mississippi gracious. The fusion of people Catholic and Baptist,’sophisticated’ big city and country bumpkin’, farmers and fisherman,party revelers and teetotalers. I have always seen them as simply a cool bunch of people.
So, standing on Jeff Davis Avenue looking south at mostly just empty beach with my mouth dry and my body pouring sweat, having become unaccustomed to the humidity, I began to see the reality surviving friends had been trying to explain to me. That until I actually saw it and felt it for myself, I really couldn’t know.
I had been in hurricanes strong and weak. I had taped windows, secured everything. Stocked up on water, candles, canned goods. Grabbed the ‘important papers’ box, flashlights, the kids and grandma and driven north to search for a hotel my share of times. A few of the lesser storms, I had ridden out. I had made decisions, good and bad, based on the predictions of the weather service, civil defense, Daddy’s age old advice, a little instinct and possession of or a lack of possession of, common sense.
When the wind and water went down, we simply went back home or opened the front door or sobered up from an arrogant and stupid hurricane party and begin to put things back where they belonged. A fact of life for us very similar to the one people who live up north deal with in their co-existence with snow. Hell, I thought we were better off because snow came every year, storms didn’t necessarily.
As far as I know we never had to try pick things up and put them back where they belonged in their proper places when there were NO things and no places. Period. Thats what I was seeing or not seeing , as the case was. For as far as I could see down the beach in both directions, except for the army of ancient Live Oaks, there wasnt a structure standing anywhere that existed prior to Katrina.