I've waited over a month to write about Katrina. At first I was bombarded with images and thoughts and made notes by candlelight. Then it seemed when it came time to write it coherently I was exhausted and at a loss for words. Now it seems that things are lined up in my mind as Before Katrina and After Katrina (During Katrina is still intense) even though I experienced no great loss as others did. It was a very *definite* experience.

Last year I watched as poor Florida got pummeled by four hurricanes. It was almost ridiculous. I empathized and sympathized as well as I could imagine and even got off work for three days to make a long five-day weekend for preparations for Ivan which barely brought any rain to our area. I painted my utility room cabinets while never losing power or water or cable. Hurricanes are sort of vague from a distance. We see them on TV and are interested in the devastation which always seems to hit some third world country or Florida. When Camille hit the Gulf Coast I was in Paris. In other words I didn't take Katrina very seriously - not at first.

Pre-Katrina

So there was this "storm" in the Gulf reportedly headed for the Florida panhandle (yet again) and was a little ol' piddlin' category 1, and we (Buzz and I) were headed to Yazoo City (the beginning of the Mississippi Delta) to play a party, spend the night, and have an all-round big ol' time with good friends. We left our seventeen-year-old son at home with LOTS of instructions to behave. I love Yazoo City. Always have. It's covered in kudzu and is so southern (they have huge barbecues where they bury meat in the ground and smoke it for two days and future governors come to their parties and everyone swims in the lake) and it's where the cotton fields begin. I always have a big time when I go there. We played in a beautiful large home high on a bluff overlooking the Delta spreading out in all her glory with the cotton blossoms just beginning to bloom. The party was a private affair - a birthday party - with good food and drink and merry-making and we (David Sumrall and I) were the music.

We slept that night in a former manager of a cotton plantation's older house on a pullout sofa bed - happy as could be. The next morning we woke up, started stirring around and noticed that everyone had left before us. We stumbled into the living room to see the Weather Channel on the TV screen and this monster category 5 hurricane headed right for us. We packed up and drove south as everyone else from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast drove north. It was sort of eerie. We joked about the first time we left Evan overnight alone and went to the Delta to party that a massive storm was headed right for our front door. I felt like a bad mother.

But we had almost twenty-four hours to prepare. We still had some supplies due to several other hurricanes almost coming our way but veering eastward so that we were on the "good side of the storm" and got off easy. When we got home Evan knew nothing about the storm and had slept late. I cleaned the house for the rest of the day while Buzz went to town for supplies. We seemed to have everything - candles, batteries, canned food, bottled water, and charcoal. We filled our coolers up with ice and filled several large buckets and one huge container full of water. We went outside as the wind started to pick up and put away anything that could become a projectile. I brought all my plants inside. We decided to leave the stall door to the barn open and let our horse, Annie, decide where she wanted to be. She could be inside the barn away from the storm, but if a tree fell on the barn then she could get outside if needed. I secretly said a prayer for Oranse Lamont, our new duck. I wondered whether he would be blown away and if I would see him again. I am quite fond of him.

I decided to spend the actual storm with my eighty-three-year-old father - not because he's feeble (he's not) but I don't think anyone should be alone in a bad storm. You never know what can happen and everyone needs someone else there to go through it with. My husband, Buzz, and son, Evan, would stay at our house in the woods with our two basset hounds, and they could also check on the horse and the duck, plus they could hold the house together. Right? So I packed my bag to spend the night at my father's house because the storm was supposed to hit early the next morning. He called and said he was frying chicken and why don't we all come over and eat with him. So, this sounded good and we said okay. Then the sky opened up and the wind howled. One of the first bands of the storm was starting to come through. I panicked. I fretted that we had waited too late and we shouldn't drive in this weather and how was I going to get to my father's and if Buzz and Evan went too then how would they get back once the weather got worse... and it will be dark! Buzz said I should calm down. So we drove to town in two cars and the rain quit for awhile.

So later that night I said good-by to Buzz and Evan ("Be safe!"), and they headed back to our house in the woods after dinner at my father's. It was a little bit frightening to me. All day we had listened to the radio and watched the news about the pending storm. I watched as the mayor of New Orleans begged its citizens to evacuate the city. I wondered what could happen to us. We live in a town in the Pine Belt. We have thousands and thousands of tall pine trees as well as large oaks and other hardwoods. We have serious trees here. A friend from Texas once told me he got scared driving through Mississippi because the trees reach out to cover the road from both sides, but I think he was thinking more of a horror movie or something, not the actual idea of them falling on him. My other friend, Syd, says, "We are Piney Woods people, and they can't see us from the air." We like the trees and the shade, and, of course, the trees are our income - our forest product. But now they could become projectile weapons. My father instructed me before he went to bed that when the storm started we should be toward the front of the house because there were five large, old pine trees in the back yard and the wind would be coming from the east and he had meant to have them cut down and hadn't. I looked out the window at them and wondered how tall they were as they started to sway in the darkened sky.

That night I watched "A Love Song for Bobby Long," a film that I love but will not be able to watch again for some time - not until New Orleans is doing better. I remember lying on my father's couch watching his big screen TV in the air conditioning and not being really very aware of the huge debacle that was headed our way.

During-Katrina

I woke up early the next morning and could tell even through the heavy drapes that the sky was gray and the wind was blowing. It was dismal, but I got up sort of excited about what the day might bring. My dad had made coffee and was going from window to window looking out at the storm. Buzz called and said the power at our house had just gone off. Since temperatures were running in the high 90's I asked him if he was sure he and Evan didn't want to come to town before the storm got worse because we had power. "You can watch TV and have air-conditioning." You can tell that I had no real idea of what was about to happen. He said he would think about it, and I said not to wait too long. We hung up. About fifteen minutes later we lost power at my dad's house, so I called to tell him in case he was coming into town which would be a dangerous drive. I figure now that they just turned the whole electric grid off, because trees would be coming down bringing the power lines with them and people could get electrocuted. We didn't know it but it was going to be well over two weeks before the electricity would come back on again.

The first thing that happened was a tree branch shot through the roof and ceiling as a multi-foot-long projectile into the back bathroom. I couldn't help but think what it would have been like to be sitting on the toilet when that happened. Rain was pouring in, so we got three tubs and buckets and tried to place them strategically under the hole, but no matter where we put them water was still pouring all over the floor among the pine needles. So I grabbed some towels and put them down. My dad said, "If that's the worst of it then maybe it won't maybe be so bad." It wasn't the worst.

We sat out in the carport and watched the huge trees across the street bend to a horizontal position. The wind howled and the rain blew sideways as the storm got stronger, but we seemed to be okay up in the carport behind the cars. The carport faces the west and the winds were from the south and east. Every now and then a large object would fly past. You know, something about as big as a car! We watched huge branches break off the trees and fall on the houses across the street. Power lines were laced all up and down and dangling like torn spider's webs. It occurred to me that we have all this technology that is powered by twigs holding up threads (which are what they become in hurricanes) that turn our TVs, refrigerators, and computers into dumb boulders when the twigs and threads fall down.

We were amazed to see the occasional car driving through the 'cane. Was it someone going to check on a girlfriend or family member? Someone thinking (like we did) that across town there's someone they know with power (TV and AC)? Where were they going and what were they thinking with trees and power lines crashing everywhere? There was a lack of thunder or lightning. I had been told that there were both during Camille, but all that Katrina brought was wind and rain and not so much rain as wind, wind, wind. The wind blew so hard that my friend later said it rocked her parked car and moved it a few inches.

The next thing that happened was that we heard a bump. It sort of sounded like a very large pine cone hitting the roof. Later we wondered at the lack of deafening sound as the trees crashed into the house, and I guess it was because the storm was so loud that the sound of the trees breaking was sort of muffled. We went into the house to investigate - from room to room. Finally, my dad opened the door to his study and said, "Well there it is." I peeked around the corner and the entire ceiling was open to the sky while rain and pine straw and branches made their brazen entrance. The computer was knocked to the floor and his books were getting drenched. The rafters sagged from the weight of the tree. We closed the door to keep the weather out and then went back outside. Strangely, this made sense at the time.

We had two radios, but they wouldn't pick anything up very well - just static, but before we lost the signal we heard about the eye wall of the storm - the worst part, and it was upon us. We no longer saw any cars. We saw no one. It was a lonely feeling. We knew in every house there were people hunkered down (we seemed to be the only ones outside) but they were unreachable. Everyone was on their own. There would be no help if someone got hurt - not until the storm was over. My dad, who was totally fascinated the whole time, kept going to the end of the carport and peering around the corner where he could see all the havoc being wreaked. If he were to step out too far I'm sure the wind would have carried him far down the road. I stayed close after him and would call out, "Dad, maybe we should go inside!" He would agree and we would go inside just in time for another tree to come through the roof into the house.

I called Buzz on the cell phone, and he and Evan were going through a similar scenario. Two trees were already lying on our house in the woods but had not seemed to puncture the ceiling, although rain was pouring in. He said he had sat in his chair in the living room and watched water pour down the bricks of our thirteen-foot fireplace as the wind pushed the rain up under the sheets of the metal roof and water ran down into the house. One carpet was completely soaked. I told him that we had a giant hole in my dad's roof, and I watched my dad take a step into the den just as another giant tree came crashing through his house knocking the chimney bricks into a precarious teetering ton of potential crushing debris sending everything on top of the mantel crashing and broken to the floor. I yelled "Dad!" The phone went dead. I wouldn't speak with my husband again for almost three days. He said after he talked with me he got his mother on the phone, and while he spoke with her, the front door on her house blew off its hinges. Then her phone went dead. The hardest part was not knowing what happened to your loved ones.

Back at my dad's house we discovered a giant crack in the ceiling in the guest bedroom where I had slept. The whole ceiling was filling with water and sagging, about to burst. I saw that a steady stream of water was leaking onto the bed and my belongings which I had brought with me. I left them there, afraid that the ceiling would cave in. The hallway was already littered with boards and nails and pine tree branches. The carpet sloshed as we walked through it. There was another hole in the ceiling at the south side of the hall just above the pantry. The fold-down door to the attic had fallen and was blocking the hallway. My dad carefully tucked it back up into the ceiling where it hung at an angle. To this day (since nothing has been repaired yet) we have to walk down that hall with our hands over our heads to catch it in case it falls again. The hall bathroom seemed to be okay as was my dad's bedroom. Also the living room seemed to be okay, although later we would notice that the light fixtures were all filled with water.

Finally about 3:00 the wind started to die down a bit. It was still raining and the streets were a total wreckage of downed trees, power lines, and other debris, but we ventured out into the yard to survey the neighborhood. A few other people came out of their homes. We were in the eye. I saw a family across the street in their carport and could hear their radio. I walked over and asked what news they could gather. They said the wind and rain would continue like this for about three hours, but the worst was over. The storm would not come back with great strength after the eye had passed. What a relief! But... my dad's house was pretty much destroyed. Three of the trees in the back yard had crashed into his home and parts of the other two as well. His yard was a wreck and we could tell that we would not be able to drive for more than a few yards in any direction without being blocked by trees and power lines. We couldn't really be in the house except for a couple of rooms because the ceilings and trees and bricks might fall some more.

I turned the faucet on but there was no water. The reality of that and how long it might be started to sink in. I don't remember if we ate anything that day. I think we went to bed early - my dad back to his bedroom, and I made a bed on the living room couch. I opened the window to his bedroom thinking that the hall could collapse and the window would be the only way for him to get out. The windows were open because of the heat but there was still a hurricane breeze. I remember lying on the white couch and being sort of wet and filthy and exhausted. I faced the window and as night fell I started hearing some movement. Cars would turn down the street and turn around in my dad's carport over and over because of the trees blocking the road. Where were these cars coming from? I wondered if Buzz and Evan were all right. I thought of my friends and wondered what adventures they had had. The next door neighbors had an RV in their driveway with a generator running. I vaguely knew what a generator was. I listened to it all night. I found out later the neighbors spent the storm inside the RV watching CNN with air conditioning.

I thought of my horse. I pictured her pinned under a huge tree and suffering. I thought about our gun and that my husband could shoot her if he had to. I wondered if my duck had blown away. I don't see how a small animal could keep from being blown several counties over with the winds we had witnessed. I worried that my dogs had gotten out. I worried that my dad would have health problems over this. I wondered again if my husband and son were okay. Finally, I slept. I think. I had no idea of the death and destruction that had occurred on the Gulf Coast and the tragedy that was unfolding in New Orleans. It was surreal. That's the best way I know to explain it. It was like I was watching someone else go through this.

Post-Katrina (Day One)

I woke up early the next morning to the sound of voices outside the window. I got up and went outside to find my father talking with the neighbor's son-in-law. I remember his saying that looters were already becoming a problem and to be careful. He was in the construction business and took a brief tour through my father's house and quickly estimated the structural damage at between seventy and eighty thousand dollars. Since he had access to a TV in the RV I asked if he knew if the roads were clear in the direction of my house. He didn't know but doubted if they were. He loaned us his cell phone since neither or ours would work. We later found out that many of the towers were down, and of course, our home phones didn't work. I was able to get through to my house but no answer. I left a message. I left several messages over the course of the next two days, and none were answered. Sometimes my phone would work plugged into the car and sometimes my dad's would work plugged into the car, and I would leave a message for Buzz that I would call back in two hours. Still no answer.

It began to get hot, and there was no running water. We had some ice and cold drinks including some bottled water, but it would prove to barely last two days. I took some chicken breasts out of the freezer while they were still icy and put them in the cooler to keep until we could cook them for dinner. My dad tried to boil water on his grill. He had three bags of charcoal. He wanted to make coffee and boil the dozen eggs from the carton in the refrigerator before everything had to be thrown out. But the water would not boil. No matter what. The day grew hotter.

People started coming out of their houses and working. Chainsaws started up. Some even did temporary roof repair, but mostly people had to be content with picking up smaller branches and debris and carrying them to the curb. The huge trees on almost every house would need professional tree removers. We sat in the carport and watched everyone. After talking to a few neighbors we realized that my dad's house was the only one on his block within view that was virtually destroyed and unlivable. A neighbor cautioned me that my father should probably not spend another night there. The house was full of water and debris and was starting to smell like mildew from the heat. My dad had thought to fill up the bathtub with water so we had bathroom facilities in the hall bathroom if we could step over the debris and keep more from falling on us. Luckily we could. I started picking up huge pieces of the ceiling off the floor and carrying them to the curb. My father cautioned me about doing anymore and pointed to the chimney which had collapsed and was leaning on the tree in the den. We mostly just sat. When the heat got too bad we got into one of our cars and ran the air-conditioner. We waited.

We finally got one of the radios to work if we placed it on the roof of the car and didn't go anywhere near it (?) and listened to news about the storm. It was all about the Mississippi Gulf Coast and how it had been very bad down there. In hindsight I don't think anyone knew just how bad because no one could get anywhere. We were all pretty much stranded with no communication and it was much worse for the coast. As we would all find out, they were devastated. Devastated became the word of the day. The word from New Orleans was that it had weathered the storm fairly well. Soon that would change as the levees gave way. But mainly we didn't know anything. We were alive and very grateful. No one around us appeared hurt. If I could have heard from Buzz and Evan I would have felt much better. I had remained fairly calm through the worst of the storm. It was almost like being in danger but being so fascinated by it all that fear was not really a factor. Maybe it's like a defense mechanism to be sort of alert but clueless all at the same time. Alert but clueless as to what you should do next except just watch it all.

One memory I have now is of my dad sitting down with his pan-full of eggs (which never did boil but seemed "hard-boiled") and trying to peel them with no water. You know how sometimes when you peel an egg it just won't peel? The shell is clinging to the egg and comes loose in little tiny irritating pieces bringing way too much of the egg with it. Think about that happening with no water to help. We never had any coffee either, and my dad was, years ago, the outdoor cook for a few two-and-three-day-long trail rides so he knew how to do this. Maybe if we could have started a fire with wood everything would have worked better, but you can't have fires inside the city limits and all the wood was wet.

We did charcoal up the grill and have some delicious chicken breasts and canned baked beans for dinner. I think I even fixed a bloody Mary too. It was so hot and we were dirty and tired. We were starting to ration our bottled water - to drink and to brush our teeth. After dinner my dad said he was going to bed even though it was still daylight. He sloshed off down the hallway and I sat there miserable and hot. I decided to go to bed too so that the time would pass more quickly. I remember lying on the sofa again so hot in the daylight, wanting it to be early morning so bad when there is a little coolness to the air. This was the low point for me, looking back on it. I hadn't heard anything from Buzz or Evan, had not seen one official who could maybe help, had not seen anyone clearing any trees so the roads were passable, and wondering what would happen tomorrow when we ran out of water and food. Finally I slept.

Somewhere in the middle of the night I heard my dad's voice. He was sitting outside in the candlelight and wanted to tell me where he was. He had gotten too hot to sleep and had gone outside where it was cooler. I decided to join him, but first I checked the running water. THERE WAS A TRICKLE! A glorious trickle. I called out. "There's water." I let it run and washed my hands and arms and face and felt like I was in Tahiti. It was a glorious moment for both of us. We had water! Maybe things would get better and not worse.

Post Katrina Aftermath

The next morning (after I had gone back to bed) started off with a lot of racket - people hammering and sawing... everywhere. I stumbled off the couch and found my father up and about. There was still a trickle of water, but we were running out of the bottled, drinking kind. Later in the morning help arrived in the form of my brother-in-law and nephew who drove up into the driveway with water, soft drinks, food, Gatorade! and chainsaws. They were going out to my house (twelve miles away) and cut Buzz and Evan out, if possible, and then taking my dad to Jackson where he could stay in an air-conditioned house with power and hot water and home-cooked meals. He could shower and lie down in a clean bed. So he packed his bag, and we waited for David and Thomas to return with Buzz and Evan (we hoped). I told them before they left to be sure and tell Buzz to release the goldfish into the pond, because I was sure without air filters they wouldn't last long in our aquarium. My dad and I emptied out his two refrigerators and freezer and double-bagged the heavy trash bags and hauled all the food out to the curb. It would be many days before it was picked up.

A few hours later my brother-in-law and nephew drove back up. They were able to cut their way in, and Buzz and Evan were fine and were driving into town shortly. What wonderful news! The horse and the duck were okay! The dogs were okay. There was a tree down behind the barn that was blocking the horse's way from getting water so they had left the stall door and the barn door open so she could get through another way. The goldfish had gone to heaven already. Soon Buzz and Evan pulled into the driveway, and we all hugged and told our separate stories. My dad was packed into the van and whisked off to Jackson. We would follow soon after we checked on Buzz's mom.

To speed up this both terrifying and rather boring saga, Buzz's mom was okay but hot (we helped get her a fan hooked up to a generator), we drove to Jackson ourselves over to my nephew's home where we had hot showers and a steak dinner, then we went to Wal-Mart!!! Wal-Mart has never seemed so contemporary, cutting edge, and cold. A mere three days of no AC and it seemed like it was some alien concept. I looked at everything like a hermit who only gets to come to town every few months. Bug-eyed at the fair might explain it. We filled up two shopping carts with non-perishable food ("Oh, look! Let's get this too."), paper towels, batteries, beer, charcoal, soft drinks, Gatorade, and trash bags. I think it all cost about $300. We spent the night with my niece and her family in a gated community and slept on a wonderful bed watching high-definition TV, and it was here that we saw our first pictures of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and heard that New Orleans had not escaped harm after all. My two favorite places in the whole world!

At 3:00 Buzz had to get up and drive to a truck stop that we had heard was getting a shipment of gasoline. It was already almost impossible to find it in Jackson and it was entirely impossible in Hattiesburg, so he drove out to this truck stop which has these huge underground tanks and waited for about three hours, and finally got some gas, paying $3.43 a gallon. Price gouging? He got back about 6:30 AM and slept some more.

The next day we took more hot showers (we knew we were headed back to the land of no electricity and water), ate breakfast and headed out. My dad would remain with our family in Jackson until we got our house back in order with power. So we, of course, didn't have everything we needed and headed back to Wal-Mart for ice. After leaving Wal-Mart Buzz said he sure would like to find a liquor store to buy some wine, and Evan wanted hotdogs so we drove around for about two or three hours looking for these things and using up our gas! Hurricanes muddle your head. We found hotdogs at some grocery store and ended over in the poorer, bad section of town looking for a liquor store, which we found run by two guys in turbans. Buzz went in and started around the counter and was promptly stopped. "You have to point at what you want." Ahhh, so he pointed and came back with three bottles of some strange wine and we were all quite pleased with ourselves. We drove the hundred miles back to our home in the deluge.

When we got to our house in the woods of course the water was off. There were two trees on the roof and several more down in the yard. Buzz had left the dogs in the back yard with water and food, and they were howling wild greetings, but we couldn't see them through all the debris. Our yard looked like a hurricane had hit it! We unpacked the car and gathered supplies together - candles, flashlights, batteries, etc., and iced the coolers with food and drinks. I walked (or rather climbed over and under things) to the pond and there was Oranse Lamont, my precious duck,

who swam up to me a bit muddy but still quacking. He seemed to quack, "You'll never believe what has happened!?" (I've always wondered if animals have any sense of "other" as in "I went through this so *you* must have too." I've also never taken my dogs anywhere in the car but to the vet's, so I wonder if they think that every time I leave them in the yard and drive off to work or wherever they think that I'm going to the vet's without them. Do they envision me at the vet's all day? No? Well, I think about these things.) Anyway my horse was in the yard since the barn door was open, and she nipped at me as I led her into her stall to eat.

Later we had hotdogs on the grill and then just sat in the candlelight. It was so hot; too hot to sleep, but we eventually did. We just sat there as it grew dark. We sat there for a long time. At first the candlelight was sort of romantic. We had candles all over the house and I strategically placed a few in front of mirrors to double the light. Evan would read and draw by a lantern over the next several days and nights. We tuned in public radio which was almost completely about New Orleans. I would become more and more depressed as the reality of what was happening there unfolded. It was strange to think how little we knew about what had happened. Our phones still didn't work. Almost everyone else in the world knew more about it than we did.

To be continued.

I can't seem to finish this. It's too long. I'll shorten the rest of it. We had sixteen days of no power. We bought a generator and like cavemen we figured out something new about it every day. "Oh, we can plug a lamp into it so we don't have to read by a lantern." "I can plug my hairdryer into it!" "The alarm clock!" We watched movies and I even vacuumed. We washed clothes and made a makeshift clothes line in the carport. We cut our own trees off our house and cut all the wood up and piled it into two piles (fireplace wood and bonfire wood). Every day we searched for gasoline and ice (long lines for both). In fact, I would tell anyone that if a disaster hits your area your whole life will revolve around gas and ice. You need ice (especially in close to 100 degree weather) to keep your food fresh and to chill your drinks (Gatorade rules - alcohol is nice, but Gatorade rules). The National Guard was giving away ice if you could drive to where they were (at the Convention Center) about twelve miles from our house. Every day we would go get gas, then ice and bottled water. Finally a few stores started to open but the pickings were few. We ate lots of hotdogs. We watched "Sin City" and "Curse of the Cat People" - I remember those slightly over the roar of the generator. Do you know how loud a generator is? We had heard about people stealing them or stealing the gas that you use to run them. We had no trouble like this but did realize that everyone within about five square miles could hear it. We could hear theirs too.

Everywhere you went it looked like this.

To wrap it up, I burned my hand picking up hot firewood (we had brush fires going all day, every day), Buzz cut a limb off a tree that landed on Evan's head (but he's okay), I wore sandals one day to go feed the duck and horse and stepped on a large copperhead which didn't move (Buzz and my dad killed it), and Buzz was trying to repair our mailbox when superglue flipped into his eye. He was smart enough to pry his eyelid open early and hold it that way while he drove himself to the doctor who scraped the glue off (it had hardened on his cornea!). My dad is living with us while his house is repaired, and we are all living in our damaged house. One day we will have a new roof, new ceilings, and new floors in at least three rooms. My dad's house has to have extensive repairs since the whole roof was bashed in and all the damage the rain and trees did to the inside is extensive.

I read about one woman on the coast who weathered out the storm and couldn't swim so she sat in her living room for twelve hours with a kiddy float ring on complete with a fish tail. I heard of another woman who was protecting her hotel from looters with a gun strapped to her leg and who went for over a month or two without water or power. The looters would stand in the parking lot of the hotel next door (which they "owned") and holler to her that she was next. A man shot his sister over a bag of ice. Construction workers looted our Victoria's Secret and stole all the lingerie.

My two favorite places in the whole world - the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans will never be the same. My heart and prayers go out to those people who lost so much. My losses are very small in comparison. My friend, Patrick Weathers, who lives in the French Quarter emailed me one day in October. He said, "The French Quarter was alive with the sound of music last night. A lone fiddler came out on a balcony on St. Ann Street and played "The Battle of New Orleans." Bless all their hearts.