ABOVE: News photo of Biloxi Bay Bridge on U.S. 90
following Hurricane Katrina -- the bridge was still out 19 months later
BELOW: Post-Katrina T-shirt design
In the early ‘90s I went to graduate school at the University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, where USM is located, is called the “Hub City” because roads radiate out from there like spokes of a wheel. In college we used to joke that the place was “two hours from civilization in any direction”. While I could have easily gone to Jackson or Natchez or Mobile, during my summers at USM there were two main places I’d spend my weekends. On Saturdays I almost always headed down to Gulfport and spent the day lounging on one of Mississippi’s beautiful white sand beaches. Sundays I’d invariably head into New Orleans (“Gomorrah” in the parlance of conservative Mississippians), where I’d park at the zoo, go to church on the campus of Loyola University, take the streetcar downtown, and spend the day bumming around the French Quarter.
My grad school experience gave me more of a connection to the Gulf Coast area than the bulk of people in Iowa (most of whom don’t even know how to say “New OR-luns” or “buh-LUX-ee” correctly), so when Hurricane Katrina hit back in 2005 I took it much more personally than most people up here. I felt literally numb as I watched in stunned silence while the TV reporters stood in front of places I knew well that literally didn’t exist anymore. It really drove home just how strong the storm was when I saw a picture of the high rise dorm where I lived in with all its windows knocked out. Hattiesburg is 90 miles inland; it’s where the people in New Orleans and Biloxi are supposed to evacuate to in case of a hurricane. Yet Katrina bashed Hattiesburg with 100+ mph winds for over an hour, and when the storm passed it looked as if a tornado had gone through. Power was out there for nearly two weeks, and schools in the area were closed for over a month. In the end, though, the people in Hattiesburg considered themselves lucky—and compared to those further south they were.
Like many Americans (and people from around the world, for that matter), I contributed everything I could to a variety of charities after Katrina. Unlike most, I’ve kept in touch with the news down South by going daily to the websites of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Biloxi Sun-Herald, and the Hattiesburg American. The more I read, though, the more I wondered whether the Coast would ever be the same. As months became years and the suffering still continued, I must say I was scared as to what the answer to that question might be.
The idea for this trip came last September when the NFL re-opened the Superdome. While I rarely watch Monday night football, I was glued to the TV when the Saints got a Hollywood-style victory that marked the rebirth of the huge arena that had been the hurricane “shelter of last resort” for the Big Easy’s poorest residents. Throughout that game they’d cut away to “man on the street” interviews with people in New Orleans. The reporters clearly expected people to say that rebuilding the Superdome was a tremendous waste of money that should have been spent on salvaging homes or businesses. No one took the reporters’ bait, though. Without exception they said that re-opening the Superdome was an important symbol. Not only did it exorcise the demons of all the suffering that had taken place there, but it also was a small sign that some things were returning to normal.
The reporters asked all those people one other question. They asked what people around the country could do to help. The response was again nearly universal. “Y’all come down here,” they said. They weren’t asking for relief workers (though no one would object to their services), but for tourists. “Hospitality” has always been one of the biggest industries on the coast, and to even have a chance of getting the economy back on track, tourism had to be part of the picture. I decided right that very night that it was just as important that I travel back down to the Coast as it was to give to charity. After taking with my sister, the two of us arranged a trip for Easter 2007.
Our timing was good. Until quite recently it was very difficult to be a tourist in the area ravaged by Katrina. Literally hundreds of hotels and restaurants were destroyed, and with the mass exodus form the area following the hurricane, those tourist facilities that were open found it hard to locate sufficient staff to operate. In fact, after I’d bought plane tickets, I found it difficult to book hotel rooms. Most of the hotels that were open showed had blocked out their rooms for use by relief workers, military, and local residents displaced from their homes.
In 2007 things started to change, though. There was a big push both in New Orleans and South Mississippi to get the tourist industry up and running by Mardi Gras 2007. Lots of hotels were built, re-built, or renovated, and as the area has gradually re-populated (both by local residents returning from the diaspora and by immigrants who see opportunity in the devastation), more people are available to work in service jobs. Things still weren’t “normal” or “easy” for tourists at Easter, but it was possible for us to have a very enjoyable visit and contribute to the local economy.
… And contribute we did. This could have been a cheap trip, but it wasn’t. I think both Margaret and I spent more than we might have otherwise because of the special circumstances. We bought better meals and more souvenirs, tipped better, and avoided taking advantage of some discounts on admissions that were available. It was so obvious that our money was going to good use that spending a few more bucks just seemed the right thing to do.
I’ll say up front that I returned from this trip with some anxiety for the future of the Gulf Coast. I don’t have any question that New Orleans and South Mississippi will continue to exist (though some have implied it might be better if they didn’t). The real questions are exactly what form the places will take, how many people they will support, and whether the lifestyle for which they are known will change. The Gulf Coast is very much still in flux, and it is nowhere near recovery or normalcy.
Today was the day I grew up calling Maundy Thursday—though, like most kids, I never really knew what “Maundy” meant and always called it “Monday Thursday”. Catholics just call it “Holy Thursday”, and we have a long tradition at Garrigan of marking the day with a morning of reflection for the kids instead of actual classes. This year’s Holy Thursday retreat involved watching the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ, which I must say I really don’t care for much. It’s the second time I’ve seen it (the first was also for a school retreat), and my reaction was pretty much the same both times. It’s filled with gratuitous violence and a bit hard to follow, since the actors are speaking ancient languages and there’s strange mystic symbolism throughout. Most importantly, though, the film is just the crucifixion. It totally ignores the resurrection, which to me is the whole point of Christianity. No one asked my opinion, though, and from a teacher’s standpoint this was easier than some retreats we’ve done. At least we didn’t have to do stupid activities with the kids.
The morning went fairly quickly, and I left Garrigan around noon. As I drove northward I listened to a CD of the music from Jesus Christ, Superstar, a tradition I have done during Holy Week for pretty much my whole adult life. I personally think JC,S does a much better job of portraying Christ’s death (and afterlife) than The Passion. To this day I remember the first time I saw Jesus Christ, Superstar on stage. I was in college, and a group from Wesley Foundation went down to the Old Creamery Theatre to see the show. The entire stage performance was augmented by a slide show (today it would probably be done as a PowerPoint presentation, but in those days I’m sure it was actual slides) of eclectic pictures from the modern day world that echoed the events being portrayed. It was really a very moving show. I’ve since seen JC,S on stage three other times, and I’ve seen two different movie versions and heard several versions of the famous music. Each is different, but they’ve all had a definite impact.
The CD finished just as I reached Blue Earth. This was convenient, because I stopped at a Kwik Trip there to buy gas. At $2.559 per gallon this was 4¢ cheaper than the price in Algona and would turn out to be the cheapest gas I’d see on this trip. I also got some coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich. Kwik Trip has taken to packaging so-called “comfort foods”. Here they took, a dime’s worth of bread, butter, and Velveeta, placed it in a paper envelope, and slapped a “99¢” pricetag on it. It can’t say it was worth what they charged (what convenience food is?), but it was quite tasty.
I often sing when I drive, and I sang Easter hymns as I headed eastward along I-90. Those resurrection carols were certainly most appropriate for this trip, since we’d be seeing the process of rebirth in action down on the Gulf Coast.
The trip to Rochester was quicker than I had imagined. Even stopping for gas and a restroom break at an interstate rest area, it wasn’t much more than two hours. That 70 mph speed limit really does push things along. I reached the Sleep Inn—Rochester before their official check-in time, but they had plenty of rooms available and were able to check me in. I was paying with gift cards from the scrip program, and that made a bit of a challenge for ... the desk clerk. He managed to figure it out, though, and before long I made my way to Room 114. The room was small, but adequate. This is a very new hotel. All Sleep Inns are new, but this one is no more than a couple years old. It’s designed differently than its earlier brothers, too. Most Sleep Inns feature a large shower that sticks out into the bedroom to form a little alcove. Here they have full bathrooms with tubs. What they didn’t have was good lighting. Even with every light in the room on, things were still rather dim.
Margaret and I had arranged to meet here in the mid-afternoon. I tried to call her on her cell phone, but she was apparently in a low reception area, and the call didn’t go through. She eventually called back, and I was able to let her know the room number. Then I relaxed for a while until she arrived. She showed up around 4:00, and we visited a bit. Around 5:00 we went out to dinner.
* * * * *
We went to bed around 11pm. The bed was overly soft, though, and I can’t say I slept particularly well.
We were up at 6:00 this morning, which in addition to Good Friday happened to be my brother Steve’s birthday. We thought of Steve as we packed and went down to breakfast.
The breakfast at the Sleep Inn certainly wasn’t anything special. They billed it as “deluxe”, and what appeared to make it so was the addition of do-it-yourself waffles in addition to frozen muffins and toast. They had illustrations above the breakfast bar that showed all kinds of fruit, but the only fruit they actually had was a bowl of red apples. Margaret and I had little more than coffee, and we checked out quickly.
It was extremely windy out today, something I hoped wouldn’t affect flying conditions. We drove about half a mile west to the grounds of Rochester International Airport. (I suppose this dinky airport is “international” because they have patients from abroad who come here on private planes to go to the Mayo Clinic.) We parked in their “remote” lot, which is only steps away from the terminal, and made our way inside.
Security at RST went very quickly. The main change from the last time I’d flown is the liquid rule. The only liquids you’re allowed to take into the “sterile” side of the airport are toiletries in packages of 3oz or less. You have to put those in a small, clear zipper bag so they can be separately inspected at the X-ray facility. Any other liquids must be checked. (It used to be they didn’t want you to check any liquids, but the airlines have had to change their rules as the government regulations have changed.) I always travel with lots of zipper bags, so it was no problem having one for my mouthwash, shampoo, and deodorant. I forgot to take it out of my main bag, though, which invited a minor scolding from the clerk.
I’ve learned to take off anything that might set off airport metal detectors—watches, belts, and the like. I’d purposely not even put on a belt this morning, assuming I’d put it on right after I’d cleared security. When I searched through my bag to find the belt, though, I couldn’t. I found out later it had fallen out back at home before I’d even left. I pretty much always wear a belt, and I must say I felt rather naked without one.
Something that surprised me in light of all the enhanced airport security was one change that to me seemed to make things less secure. Since the 2001 attacks only ticketed passengers have been able to go on through security. They’ve always checked for IDs and boarding passes before you could even enter the X-ray line. Apparently that’s recently changed, though. They frequently made PA announcements at the Rochester airport inviting non-ticketed guests to get “gate passes” from any airline desk so they could go through security and patronize the businesses on the other side.
There wasn’t a lot for those people to patronize. The shopping at RST is limited to a single newsstand, and the food consists of a café called “The Wright Stuff” and a couple of vending machines. Since we had a bit of time to kill, I had a real breakfast (scrambled eggs, underdone hashbrowns, wheat toast, and coffee) at the café. Oddly the stuff was served on a stoneware plate, but with a plastic knife and fork.
There are two levels of gates at RST. Most airlines use the lower level, where small planes like those that serve Mason City arrive. The two gates on the upper level are used exclusively by Northwest, which mostly sends DC-9s (aging workhorse jets) on the short hop from Minneapolis to Rochester. We made our way upstairs around 8:00, shortly before we were scheduled to board. Unfortunately we were told there was some sort of mechanical problem that would delay our departure. This was confirmed by a series of people in reflective vests who kept going in and out of the emergency exit. We finally boarded around 9am. The pilot told us that on a routine inspection of the plane, the first officer had noticed an equipment door was hanging open. When that was fixed, they noticed there was also a problem with the wing flaps. They apparently got everything working, and we were in the air about 9:15, about 40 minutes late.
As much for fun as anything else, I’d booked the exact same seats on all six of the flights we were taking on this trip. Our seats were 16-A and 16-B. These were actually quite good seats. In the 2—3 configuration of a DC-9, “A” and “B” are the window and aisle on the left side of the plane. Row 16 is right behind the wings, which lent good stability and allowed me to confirm the flaps were indeed working correctly.
It’s a very short flight from Rochester to Minneapolis. Northbound the trip is about half an hour, and southbound it’s only 20 minutes. We spent nearly as much time taxiing on the ground as we did in the air. The pilot announced we had reached our cruising altitude. Then, literally just a minute later, he told the flight attendants to prepare for landing.
* * * * *
It’s pretty much a straight shot from RST up to MSP, and we didn’t deviate from the course at all. When we reached Bloomington we flew right past Mall of America and a Fairfield Inn I had stayed at just last weekend when I was up in the Twin Cities to see a play and tour the new Guthrie Theatre building. I remember seeing plane after plane fly just outside the hotel when I stayed there and being amazed at how insulated the place was. I never heard a single plane the whole time.
Because our departure from Rochester had been delayed, we had a fairly tight connection in Minneapolis. We raced across Northstar Crossing, the shopping mall that is hidden behind the ticket counters, to get to the “G” concourse from which our next plane would depart. Fortunately they’d delayed boarding it, so it turned out we weren’t late. They began boarding shortly after we arrived, loaded the plane quickly, and we left the gate right on schedule at 10:20am. As we made our way to the taxiway we passed another DC-9 with smoke billowing out of it. I have no idea what was up, and I certainly hope it wasn’t anything too serious.
The flight down to Memphis was quick (about an hour and a half) and uneventful. The pilot told us we could expect some turbulence from the strong winds, but it was really quite a smooth trip. The weather was mostly clear, and we could see the farmland give way to forest as we made our way further south.
We passed downtown Memphis, made a 180o turn over the south end of the city, and then landed to the north. We had a long taxi past numerous absolutely empty gates. I remembered from when I was in MEM before that the air traffic here goes in waves. The morning wave had already departed, and now the airport looked almost deserted.
We had lunch at the airport at a sort-of “local color” place, the Sun Studios Café. Memphis is proud to be the birthplace of the blues, and this place serves up the sort of food that blues artists might have eaten. Whether the restaurant has anything at all to do with its namesake record company I have no clue, but they did serve good food. I had a hearty bowl of soup, a pulled pork barbecue sandwich, and a dish of cheesy mashed potatoes. I can’t say it was the healthiest fare, but it was very tasty. One strange thing about this place was that while the staff was entirely black and the food tended toward “soul food”, the customers were all white.
The layover in Memphis was fairly lengthy, so we still had some time to kill after lunch. I went to “$10 Boutique” and picked up a belt—not very well made, but sufficient for the trip. I also read through the Memphis Commercial Appeal, which was mostly a journal of the numerous break-ins, drug busts, and murders of this rather scary little city. I also read through the Memphis Flyer, a freebie paper that confirmed that not much besides crime happens here.
Our flight left on time around 2:30. Unfortunately we had to wait to be pushed back from the gate. Then we waited forever for take-off. As I said, air traffic at MEM moves in waves, and we were now right in the middle of the afternoon wave. We crawled forward in a line of Northwest and Federal Express jets for twenty-five minutes before we finally got clearance to take off.
We took off to the north (apparently it’s standard to take off and land into the wind) and made a U-turn over downtown Memphis. That stood out because the main feature of the place is “The Pyramid”, a giant sports arena built in a shape that honors the city’s much older namesake. Since Margaret had just returned from Egypt, it seemed appropriate that we should be flying over a pyramid.
There were puffy clouds below us as we made our way southward over the state of Mississippi. We began our descent into Gulfport shortly before 4pm and flew out far over the Gulf of Mexico before turning to land toward the north. The clouds had broken near the coast, and the unique approach gave us a clear view of all that had changed since the hurricane. The Biloxi peninsula still featured high rise casinos and the banana port in Gulfport had been rebuilt, but otherwise the beach area looked stark and empty. About half a mile inland from the banana port was an enormous mass of white RVs, one of many “Katrina villages” established by the Federal Emergency Management Administration to house former renters whose apartments had been destroyed. We’d see many of these throughout the Gulf Coast region. Homeowners who lost their homes can park their FEMA trailers on their land, but former tenants have nowhere to go but these refugee camps.
A lot of the parents of my students built these trailers. Winnebago went into high gear to meet FEMA’s demand, and their workers racked up lots of overtime churning them out. Back in Forest City everyone assumed all these RVs would be temporary housing for the hurricane victims, but they’ve become semi-permanent affairs. They’re all hooked up to local utilities, and their waste drains right into the city sewers. Whole families (often quite large ones) have been living in FEMA trailers for over a year, and it certainly seems as if there are more RVs than actual houses on the Gulf Coast today.
We landed at Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport about twenty minutes late, right at 4pm. We made our way through the jetway and entered what appeared to be a Third World airport. Apparently GPT was planning renovations before Katrina hit. Damage from the hurricane has forced them to combine those renovations with basically rebuilding the main terminal. At the moment the place has bare concrete floors and no real ceiling, just bare metal with insulation that falls down in chunks from time to time. Parts of the glass façade were blown out by the storm and are still boarded up a year and a half later. We weren’t at the airport for its beauty, though. For us GPT was just a convenient destination, and it served our needs perfectly well.
We made our way through a series of boarded up hallways to the car rental area. The woman at the Hertz desk pointed out that they didn’t have any cars in the “economy” class I had reserved and asked if a Chevy Malibu would be all right. The silver four-door turned out to be one of the nicest cars I’ve rented anywhere. It was comfortable and easy to drive, and it was one of the few rental cars I’ve had that actually afforded good visibility. Except for the pathetic mileage it got (low 20s), I liked the car a lot.
Something unique about this car was that it was actually licensed locally. Almost every other rental car I’ve had came from somewhere else, most often Illinois or Ohio. This car, though, had plates ... from Harrison County, Mississippi. I know from my graduate school days that for “normal” people to license a car in Mississippi is extremely expensive. ... Some people in Hattiesburg even maintained post office boxes in nearby Bogalusa, Louisiana so they could license their vehicles there where the cost was literally one-tenth of what it was in the Magnolia State. Even with the cost of maintaining an address of convenience, they came out way ahead. I wondered if the rental company paid the same sort of user fees private citizens do.
Taxes are high in general in Mississippi, even though the local politicians will tell you this is a “low-tax” Southern state. Like a lot of Republican strongholds, the taxes are also very regressive—forcing the poor to part with a much larger share of their money than the rich. Like most places with a big tourist trade, they also soak the visitors. Our rental car cost about $80 before taxes. By the time they slapped on five different taxes (including an airport user fee), the total price was over $115. That’s more than 40% tax. Even with that, the price was lower than it would have been at other nearby airports like New Orleans or Mobile, which is why I’d decided to fly into Gulfport to begin with.
When I asked her how to leave the airport, the woman at the Hertz desk said “oh, that’s simple” and proceeded to give a rather complicated set of instructions. It turned out that there was really only one way out of the airport, but the route involved several odd turns that seemed to be there for no good reason. Eventually, though, we made it to U.S. 49, the main north/south route through Gulfport.
The north end of Gulfport looks much the same as it always has. It’s basically a big tacky suburban strip, and I recognized numerous landmarks as we made our way southward. The main difference is that perennially packed highway 49 is now six lanes wide (plus turn lanes) instead of the four lanes I remembered.
Things started looking different when we crossed Pass Road, the only east/west through street north of the beach. I’d heard that they had storm surge damage as far north as Pass Road (which is a mile and a half in from the coast, but only about 15 feet above sea level), and things south of there confirmed that. Gulfport never had much of a downtown, but today it basically doesn’t have any downtown at all. Even the blood donation centers and homeless shelters are boarded up. All that’s left are some very substantial government buildings (and even they seem badly damaged) and some liquor stores and pawn shops operating out of temporary quarters that look much like the FEMA trailers.
West of downtown is the FEMA village we’d seen from the air, and at the south end are the abandoned shells of some of the region’s largest banks. Beyond there is the re-built banana port and U.S. 90, the four lane road that used to run along the beach all the way from New Orleans to Mobile. I say highway 90 used to run that route because today it’s not a through highway. There are apparently four different bridges out along the route—one each in Louisiana and Alabama and two enormous structures in Mississippi. The bridges between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian and between Biloxi and Ocean Springs were completely destroyed when Katrina hit, and while the highway department has been working around the clock, it will be at least six more months before the replacement bridges are opened. In the meantime, if you want to get from one of the beach towns to another, you have to drive five miles north to I-10 and then five miles back south to your destination.
We drove west on Beach Boulevard toward the Bay St. Louis bridge. I’m used to highway 90 being a busy road full of tourists gawking at the beach to the south and locals trying to turn into the numerous businesses to the north. With that in my head, it was absolutely surreal to drive along a nearly empty stretch of road with no traffic and absolutely nothing at the side. If you didn’t know what used to be here, you might think the Gulf Coast was a pleasant rural area with a lovely view of the water. Throughout west Gulfport and Long Beach there’s basically nothing left at all. We passed countless empty parking lots (one of which was the hotel where Margaret and I stayed a few Christmases ago) and the slabs where houses used to stand. There were also giant signs (some of them entirely intact) that touted businesses that aren’t there anymore. The wreckage has largely been cleared away, but that makes it almost more eerier. There are a few FEMA trailers parked by some of the slabs, but in many cases people who own land right on the coast can’t get insurance even if they have the money to rebuild. That leaves the place completely deserted.
Only a single company has rebuilt on the beach here. That company is the southern institution Waffle House. There used to be a Waffle House about every mile along Beach Boulevard, and every one of them was completely obliterated by Katrina. Just days after the storm Waffle House announced their plans to rebuild, and they’ve been true to their word. They’ve already opened two new locations in Gulfport, and there are many more built and about to open. I’d read an article in the Sun-Herald that touted the first Waffle House re-opening as the first true sign that things were returning to normal on the Coast.
The new Waffle Houses look quite a bit nicer than the restaurants they replaced. Old Waffle Houses are notoriously shabby little huts. They bear a striking resemblance to FEMA trailers, and it’s no surprise that they were no match for a hurricane. The new ones are red brick buildings. They’re still small, but they look much more substantial than their predecessors. They definitely stand out, too—particularly with absolutely nothing else around them.
The one bright spot on the drive west was Pass Christian. (Margaret recalled judging reporters during Katrina by whether they could correctly pronounce the name of the place, which has its accent on the last syllable: kris-chee-ANN.) Beach Boulevard in “The Pass” (as locals call it) is lined with enormous Victorian mansions that served as “summer cottages” for families like the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. I’d heard many of these were destroyed, and indeed many were. A lot, though, were located on just slightly higher land than the middle class homes in Long Beach and Gulfport. That small bit of elevation meant they were badly damaged, but still standing.
Margaret noticed the trees all along Beach Boulevard. The area was lined with countless live oaks, which we remembered being decorated when we were here for the holidays. While some of the oaks are dead, most are still there. They are mangled and stunted, though, and their beards of Spanish moss were blown away and the branches still look ratty two years later. More importantly, the lots beyond the beach look nearly empty because the pine trees that once filled the yards are almost all completely gone. They had to have lost hundreds of thousands of trees along the coast, and I can’t imagine what a chore it was just to haul them all away.
Pretty much all the beaches in Gulfport, Long Beach, and Pass Christian are officially closed, though local people still seem to use them. They look a bit unkempt, but they’re still there and still in pretty good shape. There used to be tourist facilities (piers, boardwalks, and a variety of concessions) all along the beach, and pretty much all of those are in ruins. It’s only sensible that the local government worries about critical infrastructure before they worry about taking care of the beach.
We drove back east past highway 49 toward Biloxi. East of the banana port things look quite a bit different than they do to the west—both better and worst. There’s lots of rebuilding going on here: casinos, motels, and high-rise condos. There are even quite a few private homes going up, many on stilts to elevate them from possible flood waters. You can tell where people plan to rebuild because they’ll have a FEMA trailer parked on the lot while they build the “real” house. What makes the drive east look worse than it does to the west is that a lot of the stuff that isn’t being rebuilt hasn’t yet been cleared away. We saw businesses and apartment complexes that were little more than piles of rubble, little changed from those TV pictures right after the storm.
We had dinner at the Waffle House ... that was first ... to re-open on the Coast. It struck me at the time that there weren’t many people in the place, but I figured out later why that probably was. This was Good Friday, and we were in the one part of the South that is mostly Catholic rather than Baptist. There’s no seafood whatsoever on the Waffle House menu, so the locals probably went to someplace a bit friendlier to their Lenten “sacrifice”. As a Protestant, I had no trouble eating sirloin steak on Good Friday, and Waffle House served up a tasty one. Margaret had pork chops. Both came with salad, Texas toast, and hash browns, and as combo meals they were more affordable than many of the lesser items on the Waffle House menu. It was a good meal, and it seemed fitting to eat our first meal in the South at this particular restaurant.
Just a little ways east of Waffle House is the Edgewater Mall, which is just east of the border between Gulfport and Biloxi. Edgewater is the largest shopping center on the Gulf Coast, though I must confess that when I was in grad school I didn’t think much of the place. I’d heard Edgewater had managed to re-open by Christmas 2005, just four months after the hurricane—making them the first major mall in the whole area that was back in business. I was skeptical of that, because I knew the name “Edgewater” was very descriptive, and I’d purposely bought a scrip card from Dillard’s (the leading department store in the South) so I could check the place out.
Seeing Edgewater was definitely an experience. It is definitely open, and it’s very busy. Like the old Victorians in Pass Christian, Edgewater is on slightly higher ground. That kept it from being wiped off the map like most of the businesses on Beach Boulevard. On Friday night the place was crawling with shoppers, mostly teenagers trying to hook up with one another. Almost all the space at Edgewater is filled, and the level of stores seemed nicer than it did when I was here before.
So, it’s a normal mall—right? Well, not exactly. While the stores are open, the public areas are still very much under construction. It’s a lot like the Gulfport airport—with no real floor or ceiling, boards on the windows, and yellow construction tape all over the place. It will probably be quite nice when they’re all done, but they’re definitely not there yet.
Then there’s the perimeter, the space around the outside that’s not exactly part of the mall proper. There used to be tons of different “out-businesses”, but now there’s a single restaurant. They’re apparently re-building a Wendy’s here, too, but it isn’t open yet. Also not open was the one place where I was planning to spend money, Dillard’s. They have three other department stores (Sears, Penney’s, and Belk’s—formerly McRae’s), but Dillard’s (which was the part of the mall closest to the actual beach) will apparently be closed until 2009. All that’s there now is a boarded up shell.
Something I couldn’t help but notice in the mall was how multi-racial the shoppers were. Mississippi has always been a very black and white state, but at Edgewater tonight there were also Hispanics and Asians in the mix. There have always been a few Vietnamese people on the Coast (mostly shrimp harvesters), but Hispanics are something very new. Apparently a lot of the construction workers who have been doing the rebuilding work are Mexican. Not everyone likes that, but they are available and willing to get the job done. There are lots of signs in Spanish on the Coast these days, which is a major change from the past.
Not far from the mall is Beauvoir, the final home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. “Beauvoir” means “nice view” in French, and most likely the view of the water from the home is still quite nice. Unfortunately the reverse is no longer true. You could technically say the home is still standing, but you’d be stretching things to say that. All the out-buildings (the kitchen, the servant’s quarters, etc.) were washed away, as was the grand veranda that was the main feature of the front. The main structure is basically just a shell. They have a sign out front asking for money to help them rebuild. It’s sad, but understandable that historic sites haven’t been a priority in the reconstruction process.
We saw a couple of other classic landmarks in Biloxi. One was the S.S. Camille, a tugboat that washed ashore after Hurricane Camille and has stood in the same place it landed ever since. We read in the paper later that they’re apparently going to finally remove it, even though it made it through Katrina largely unscathed. That’s more than can be said for the Sharkhead, a famous gift shop with an enormous fiberglass fish on its roof. The Sharkhead is one of the many piles of rubble that dot the east end of Biloxi.
We went back to the Biloxi Loop, an awkward interchange that encircles an old lighthouse that has survived every hurricane for more than a century. We turned onto I-110 and made our way past Keesler Air Force Base (which, surprisingly, we never heard about in all the reports during the hurricane) and on up to I-10. Interstate 10 is also now six lanes through Biloxi and Gulfport, and that makes traffic on the always clogged freeway move somewhat better. I-10 is coping with a lot more traffic than normal, since it’s basically the only road on the Coast that through traffic can use.
We drove back west to U.S. 49 and exited northward to a new retail strip that didn’t exist when I was in college. Gulfport is sort of re-inventing itself five miles inland from where it used to be, with I-10 as the new center of town. I-10 used to mark the very edge of town, but now it’s smack dab in the middle of things. The area to the north is officially unincorporated, but it’s basically it’s suburban Gulfport. We stopped at a Winn-Dixie supermarket here, where both Margaret and I picked up some Community Coffee, the chicory blend that is the everyday brew throughout the Gulf Coast. Margaret thought it was expensive (and it is more than Folger’s), but it was half the price they charge either in New Orleans or up north. I also bought a half gallon of grapefruit juice to avoid buying beverages at hotel vending machines.
We headed south on highway 49 just past I-10 and pulled into the Comfort Inn. The Choice Hotels website says this particular hotel is still reserved exclusively for relief workers. When I checked availability, though, a room came up and I booked it. There may still be some relief workers here, but it appeared the bulk of the guests were from the general public. It took the woman at the desk quite a while to check me in, mostly because she entered each of the scrip cards by hand rather than scanning them like credit cards (which the guy in Rochester did). She got the job done, though, and we ended up in a very pleasant room. The place was an older hotel, but it had been kept up reasonably well. Our room was large and comfortable, with a shower massage, a refrigerator, a microwave, and an enormous TV. It probably wasn’t worth the $85 they charged, but supply and demand rule in post-Katrina Mississippi (which lost thousands of beachside motel rooms in the storm); even the Motel 6 next door was charging $69 a night.
There was a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in the no man’s land between the Comfort Inn and the Motel 6. Margaret and I decided to go over there to have a bit of dessert. It was chilly outside (upper 30s), so we put on out jackets even though we were just crossing the parking lot. We also ordered hot chocolate in addition to the doughnuts, and a warm beverage was good on the nippy evening.
Back at the hotel I spent much of the night thumbing through the Gulf Coast phone book. I came across some names I recognized and was pleased that some of the people I knew from college were still living on the Coast. (I might be less thrilled to learn their exact fate; at least one with whom I exchange Christmas cards had her family ... still ... living in one of those FEMA camps last December.) Other parts of the phone book provided more clues into what life is like post-Katrina. The public service pages at the front have always had a hurricane preparedness section, but that has greatly expanded. Now they give detailed instructions on exactly what people should bring with them when they evacuate (like a thirty day supply of prescription drugs, something no one would have imagined would be necessary before 2005) and a long section on how to talk to children about hurricanes (kids apparently expect every hurricane will have the same damage as Katrina, when of course most cause very little damage). The yellow pages are full of businesses that are proud to have just re-opened or boast their new locations. (Even many churches had to re-locate following the storm.) There are pages and pages of ads for construction supplies and a whole section for “hurricane shutters”. Then there’s the lawyers. Instead of going after accidents and workers’ compensation claims, the lawyers who advertise in south Mississippi boast their ability to get property insurance settlements. There are still numerous unsettled lawsuits with insurance companies disputing whether damage was caused by wind or water. (Depending on the policy one will be covered, but not the other.) The problem, of course, is that damage was caused by both of those factors. That they’re still sorting that out all these months later is one of the main reasons people are still in those FEMA trailers.
We watched the 10:00 news on WWL-TV, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans. There, too, there was no escaping the fact that Katrina is still a part of everyday life—and that it will continue to be so well into the future. The lead story on the news was about illegal dumping of storm rubble in the swamps east of New Orleans. Most of the dumped stuff was fairly benign (like student desks from a flooded school), but some of it constituted toxic waste. It’s no surprise at all that there would be illegally dumped and potentially hazardous stuff lurking in the woods of Louisiana (or any of the other southern states for that matter). What brought this to the forefront was the dramatic increase in dumping as wreckage has been hauled away.
Even the commercials mostly had a hurricane theme. Lots of home improvement centers, furniture stores, and car dealers promised to “work together with you as you rebuild and go forward”, while professional services and utilities pledged their “solidarity with you in this special time”. Other businesses stressed how long they had been in business and promised to remain open well into the future, and being local (“Louisiana grown; Louisiana proud”) was featured prominently in almost every commercial.
We read a bit after the news and re-organized the stuff in our luggage. Then we settled into bed and slept much better than we had the night before.
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