October 16, 2005 \r\nGrowing up in the Midwest where tornadoes ravaged my neighborhood from time to time did nothing to prepare me for Hurricane Katrina. I heard about Katrina after the Saints game on Friday night. The bartender at Cooter Brown’s helped lead me from my obliviousness of the situation. A friend and I ate dozens of raw oysters and debated the age old hurricane season question: to evacuate or not to evacuate. I chose to evacuate. \r\n My telephone was exploding with phone calls. The major task at hand was getting my New Orleans family organized. The indecisiveness of everyone was stunning. It was in my opinion that if we rendezvoused somewhere for a few days, we could save money, car pool, bring more people, and help foster an environment that would be comfortable for everyone. By the time all was said and done, mass chaos had infected the city and we disbanded. I had spent so much time trying to organize my group of friends that no back up plan had been designed. \r\n My friend Cameo decided after bitter words with me, to leave on Saturday. We had evacuated to Austin last year during Hurricane Ivan, mostly because we were already going to Austin City Limits Music Festival. Cameo ended up driving her 1980 AMC Eagle with out air conditioning with her boyfriend, his mother, who hates Cameo, and six animals. Her car was overheating so badly that they had to actually turn on the heater to draw heat away from the engine. Plus, no one in her party had a cell phone. It was 105 degree Texas heat and to top things off, she got food poisoning at a sushi restaurant that I picked and was not too happy that I was calling the shots again. \r\n I wanted to wait until Sunday afternoon, but she said “if we wait until Sunday, we might as well stay here and die.” Saturday turned into a confusing mess. I tried to pack wisely. I thought I would be gone for two or three days. I did laundry. I cleaned house; as I despise coming home to a dirty one. Photo albums and clothing were first. I packed important documents like my birth certificate, car title, and passport. The only thing in the back of my mind was the thought of standing in line to replace them if they were lost. My school books were thrown in. My Spanish teacher had threatened a quiz on Tuesday. I had to be prepared. Movie rentals were thrown in. I didn’t want them to be on my case. Everything else that was important was put in my closet. I thought it would be safe there if the windows broke. \r\nWe didn’t know if we were going to camp somewhere or find a hotel, so I journeyed to the Sav-A-Center. Traveling through the store was like running through and obstacle course with bumper cars. The aisle containing water was reduced to the flavored variety. Canned tuna was a hot commodity and people were openly stealing it out each other’s shopping carts. Two adult males were fighting over a loaf of French bread. My shopping list was mostly perishable items anyways, as we had a travel cooler.\r\nAnother task was to secure the home of a friend who was traveling in Italy. She didn’t even know anything was brewing in the gulf. Her backyard is full of objects that could be swept up and tossed around in the wind. All I had to hold things down were zip ties. A lot of things were brought inside. I took all her pictures off the walls and moved them to the bathroom. It’s Midwestern tornado instinct to move things to the basement or the bathroom. After one final round, I headed back to my apartment.\r\nCameo called to let me know she was ready. I drove to her apartment in the Garden District and parked my car. She was standing on her balcony arguing with her seventy-six year old neighbor to evacuate. Leroy is nearly blind and deaf, but won’t admit it. He used to be the porter at the restaurant where I work. For thirty years, he washed dishes at the Saint Charles Tavern. Orphaned as a child in Saint Louis, he decided to walk to New Orleans when he was sixteen. He has never been married and has no children. He collects movies and enjoys his daily trip to Walgreen’s to buy doughnuts. Cameo was about to explode. Screaming and crying and pleading all at the same time, she begged him to come with us. When I joined in, he went into his apartment and locked the door. We left food and water on his doorstep and left. \r\nWe drove back to my house, and went upstairs to grab my suitcases and my dog. Cameo’s dog, Bella, was with us as well. After loading my things and seeing my house in order for what would be the last time, we headed out of town, stopping at the Kingpin Bar to say goodbye to a few die hard friends. Michelle Bell greeted us as we got out of my little old car. I gave her my house keys, we talked, spread hugs around, and left. \r\nCameo screamed at me when I said we had one more stop. My roommate, Meg, was working at the Cheesecake Bistro on Saint Charles. I wanted another hug. They were busy when I ran in, she dropped what she was doing, ran around the counter and we hugged again. She handed me a cake box from Antoine’s. Someone had brought in a doberge for them and they didn’t want it. We didn’t have any room left in the car after that. It had reached maximum capacity. We finally got on the highway.\r\nMy phone rang. It was my old roommate. She was staying in Jackson with her new boyfriend and had a place for us to stay. Sleep accommodations were settled. It only took about four hours to get to there in the traffic. We reached the house around two o’clock in the morning. The house was a museum. I asked my old roommate Maggie if this was her boyfriend’s house. “No, it’s Brant’s grandparents. She’s the mayor of Richland. They’re on a cruise in Norway.” Okay then. This was a long way from camping or sleeping in the car somewhere. We settled in one of the guest rooms, and fell asleep. Around six the next morning, my main focus became the Weather Channel. Brant and Maggie offered the home to any of our friends. We called, but everyone was staying or heading opposite directions. No one really wanted to be in Jackson, either. The storm was scheduled to pass through there on Monday night. \r\nWe thought we’d go home until we heard that some of the levees were breached. My boss called and said I should head home to Missouri. I wasn’t financially prepared for that trip, and hoped that the money I did have would pay for the rising price of gasoline. The Thursday before the storm, I had paid all of my bills. Not only that, but I was afraid that my twenty year old car wouldn’t make the trip and the thought of eight hundred more miles in a packed car with no air conditioning and two dogs was not helping the stress. We forged ahead to Kansas City, making very few stops, except to buy very expensive gasoline and let our dogs out. \r\nMy mother welcomed us with a barbecue dinner. The next day, another friend zipped through town and scooped up Cameo and headed up to New York. I found out that the Red Cross in Kansas City had set up camp in the historic jazz district. I rode the bus downtown and after standing in line, was issued a debit card with about three hundred dollars for clothing, food, and toiletries and given a voucher from the Salvation Army. I wanted to go back and help with the relief effort. The counselors told me that I was too emotional to help anyone else right now. After the initial shock, I just cried all the time. I turned to the internet to start finding people. Finally, I found Leroy. After posting his name on at least fifty different missing person websites, someone called. It was a social worker who had befriended him and was helping him search the internet for his friends. She told me that he was wondering up and down St. Charles when he was rescued. He is doing alright and is in a nursing home in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was excited because they gave him cataract surgery. Cameo got her first good night’s sleep after finding this out. \r\nA few weeks after settling in Kansas City, a few members of my New Orleans tribe and I drove down during Hurricane Rita to assess the damage done to our homes. We stayed in Kenner with relatives of a good friend until we were allowed in. None of us had ever met the people we stayed with. They were relatives of a friend. Even though they had experienced five inches of water in their home, they invited us in and shared their M.R.E.’s.\r\n We tried many times at all the checkpoints, but they were only allowing businessmen and residents of Algiers. The first night, we decided to check out the nightlife on Vet’s, and found an open bar called Sidelines. They were serving food and drinks. Expecting everyone to be war torn and haggard, it was shocking that the women were dressed up, with straightened hair (which is an arduous effort), full make up, and fresh manicures. It seemed like a normal night in Metairie, but I’m just guessing.\r\n On our second day, my friend Sarah Jane and I were dead set to get in. We were told that I-10 East was free and clear by a contractor, so we tried that path first. It was still flooded and we were diverted to 610. It was so eerie and strange. We were on a deserted highway traveling through New Orleans, but not officially in the city. At least fifty boats were beached on the side of the highway where water had once been. Peeking off the side of the road, all you could see was brown sludge covering every house and car from top to bottom. There were no leaves on the trees. A policeman from Texas told us we were about to enter the still highly flooded area and turned us around. We headed back to I-10 West to exit onto Causeway Boulevard. \r\nThis time we tried the Metairie Road entrance. As we crept up through a line of contractors, we didn’t know what we were going to say. They still were not allowing civilians from our zip code to enter. The guard rejected us. We decided to try again. We entered the Metairie Road entrance once more. Rolling down the window, a mouthful of lies flowed out as I told the national guardsman that I was the manager of some business. I showed him my responsible vendor’s card. It was hardly substantial identification; it’s a yellow piece of paper filled out in pen by myself. He persuaded us not to go in with out a male escort. We laughed at him and he waved us through the entrance. Either he bought the bogus story or simply didn’t care. It was high fives after that and my heart would not stop racing. I kept thinking about lying down on my comfortable bed and wondered if the toxic mold had found its way into my refrigerator. It didn’t matter; home was just around the corner. It was so exciting. \r\n Our mission was to visit five homes and gather one car that was left behind. Karen Ducat, a friend and an emergency room nurse, was one of the many stuck at Charity Hospital. We went to the parking garage near Charity and traded the guard her car keys for a chicken and noodle M.R.E. After acquiring her car, we drove to my house. My front door had been kicked in. Walking up the stairs, we found that all of the ceilings had collapsed and mold was growing over everything. Rita had dumped another two inches of standing water as well. I collapsed and began to sob. We tried to salvage as much as possible, but we couldn’t stand to stay long. My landlord was constantly patching that old roof. I should have known better. In any case, it was extremely emotional. \r\nAfter my house, we went to Sarah Jane’s. Thankfully, there was minimal damage done to her home. A few tiles were missing from the roof, and “operation tarp a roof without a ladder” began. She grabbed a few important items and we headed to Karen’s house. Her townhouse had taken in two feet of water, but she provided us a list of important items to grab from the second story. We shuffled through two other homes that had minimal damage to grab important papers. The presence of the National Guard rolling around in armored cars was so surreal during our mission. Even though everything was well covered on the news about the devastation, seeing it first hand was difficult. Cars were all over the neutral ground. Telephone lines and trees were splayed all over the streets like pick up sticks. We left after dark and after curfew. On our way out, a man was grilling on his front lawn in front of his mansion and waved to us. The spirit of the city was still there. That night, we went to Lager’s, another open bar on Veterans. The L.S.U. game was on and the maximum capacity had well been exceeded. I left Kenner the next morning with a hangover and headed back to Kansas City. \r\nBack in Missouri, I have been trying to work and earn money to come back to New Orleans and find a new home. I cannot describe all the emotions that I have felt over the past seven weeks. Guilt and depression have been the most prevalent. I felt guilt that I got out safely and others suffered. I started a relief effort at the bar I was working at and we donated the money to displaced Katrina survivors staying in Kansas City. I was depressed because I miss my house, my friends, and my life in New Orleans. I even miss the bugs. Driving in the city one morning, I saw a poster that the Radiators would be playing at the Grand Emporium Theater. I raced to the box office and bought two tickets. The night of the show, I got dressed up eclectic New Orleans style: black bob wig, fishnets, “I Gave Katrina” t-shirt, black swing skirt, false eyelashes, and a fleur-de-lis necklace. It felt good. So good in fact that I broke two of my ribs while swing dancing. I cannot wait to come home.