Pink
12-14-05
A number of people not here on our trip have emailed or phoned me asking "Who are you helping there in Biloxi? Why can't they do the work themselves? Are they just lazy?" That one requires a bit of a response and explanation.
This morning, 46 of us drove an hour west toward New Orleans down Interstate 10, the eerily shattered trees and twisted billboards serving as our mangled sentinels along the way. Forty miles from Biloxi, we pulled off the highway and drove five miles toward the coast to Bay St. Louis, a city of 5,000 located directly to the right of the eye of Katrina, placing it within the most destructive path of the storm. As we drive down route 603, we turn down Three Dog Night to gape at the trailers and pick-ups, dumped upside down, or, in one instance, twenty feet above the ground in the nook of a tree. Stagnant water, algae layered like some grim sci-fi back drop, skirts both sides of the roads, absorbing the centuries-old live oaks and spanish mosses, those weeping monsters that flank the way.
As we pull in to Disaster Central - a small satellite operation of Hands On that has been established in the heart of Bay St. Louis - we are welcomed by a black woman in cargo pants and a white polo shirt. Lori has us sign wavers and then divides us into trees, mold and interior teams. We've brought all of our own tools and gear - sledge hammers, bad mommas, crow bars, skill saws, generators, helmets, MREs (meals ready to eat, the same food that the frontline soliders in Iraq consume), and boxes of face masks - so Lori hands out job orders and sends us off with skeletal instructions scribbled on the back of photocopied insurance claims and meal tickets.
My crew is on interiors. For those of you who have never ripped out the guts of a house before, pounding and slamming away until the building is naked, it is an experience in and of itself. You arrive at a home in the morning, reeking of decaying wood, mold, and rot, piles of soggy and moldy clothing, china, dressers, books and nick-knacks - so many nick-knacks - waiting silently inside darkened and damp rooms. By the time the crew leaves at the end of the day, the house has been reduced to a skeleton of 2x4's and shingles, a veritable mountian of memories and crumbled dry-wall piled on the front lawn.
We pull into the driveway of 799 Washington Street, home of Gerri Bryant, aka Gerri Kay, the pin-up girl, comedian and performer of 1950s acclaim. Gerri is inside her FEMA trailer - she's one of the few who's been lucky enough to find a new place to live. Because she had access to a phone, which many people don't have, she was able to obtain information and place an order for a trailer, which she received four weeks ago. Many people's trailer orders were filed improperly or lost by FEMA. Those unlucky people are still living in tents or crashing on friends and family's couches, nearly four months after the storm. Gerri spent the ten weeks in between living with distant relatives in Houston, who literally kicked her out by the end of her stay. After we knock and open the door, Gerri appears with tears in her eyes. She invites a girl named Suzanne and me inside, shuffling about in a pink velour nightgown, cradling a mini-poodle in her arms as she sniffs and coos to us. "Oh, Nick, I just can't go on. I just can't do it, sweetheart." As she launches into a tear-filled abreviated version of her show-biz career and life history, the rest of our work crew carries soggy couches and moldy carpets out of her house, visible through the windows on the side of her trailer.
She sits with us and shows us the few scraps from newspapers and magazines that she has left, the only mementos of an illustrious career. When Katrina hit, Gerri wanted to stay in her house. Many of her neighbors did. The woman next door died. Gerri had fifteen minutes to pack-up before a concerned stranger forced her into his vehicle in a hasty exodus. She managed to save her Bible, a veritable tomb that would put the Gideons to shame. Inisde, she had stored a dozen clippings and articles. Those and one framed fading photo of her, a buxom beauty sprawled across a plush velvet couch - Gerri the Platinum Blonde, the caption proclaims - are all that she has to remember.
She collected East Asian art and porcelain, and managed to save some items - a Buddha head and some Tibetan prayer wheels - which she cleaned and placed around her crowded trailer. Our crew was given specific instructions to use their own discretion when demoing the house, to save anything that might be of value - jewlery, porcelain, fancy nick-knacks. Usually we just go to town on the rig, sledge-hammering vases, toilets and mirrors with detached empathy. Here we had a special request.
"My only son, he's not a good... I mean, when I was in the hospital with cervical cancer three years ago, he only came once, for ten minutes, and he didn't even bring flowers. It's probably my fault, but he's self-centered and doesn't care about me. Nick," she sobs and wraps her frail pink arms around my shoulders, "he's just waiting for me to die so he can get my house."
So, to answer the question in a roundabout way, we are here because we're needed. Because without our help, people like Gerri have to pay upwards of $10,000 to have their houses gutted and demolded. We spent the afternoon at a black woman named Paula's house. She's a single, uninsured mother, parent of three, one of whom suffers from alopicia and requires biweekly trips to Jackson for treatment. As we danced with her to the Rolling Stones while tearing our her bathroom - I broke a water valve on the toilet, and ended up getting an unexpected and unsanitary shower - she kept on clapping her hands and hugging me, thundering "Nick, y'all are such a blessing. God is GOOD, Nick, God is good." Paula got word last night that she had been selected to have her house redrywalled pro bono thanks to the benificence of a Washington state based group of Mennonites. The only catch was that she had to have her housed demoed down to the studs by tomorrow morning. She called Disaster Central - again, she had access to a phone - and we were able to help. She has absolutely zero financial wiggle room, and our free demolition service allowed her to rebuild her house wihout going into crippling, depressing, life-ending debt.
It feels good to be here. The satisfaction I get from one full day of dusty, moldy, back breaking work is greater than what I've gotten from writing any paper or taking any test in four years of college. Seeing people's faces, hearing their stories, hugging them, crying with them throughout a day - that's why we're needed here. Only when that element of human compassion breaks down will these people truly have nothing. So, as you sit on your computers reading this, thinking about lunch meetings, getting the kids to school, what's for dinner - take a minute and remember that just because Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christien are no longer in the news, doesn't mean that things have gotten better. The need here is still great. You can do your part by continuing to seek out the issues and keep them vocal within your community. Your compassion and thoughts are what these people need more than anything else.
A number of people not here on our trip have emailed or phoned me asking "Who are you helping there in Biloxi? Why can't they do the work themselves? Are they just lazy?" That one requires a bit of a response and explanation.
This morning, 46 of us drove an hour west toward New Orleans down Interstate 10, the eerily shattered trees and twisted billboards serving as our mangled sentinels along the way. Forty miles from Biloxi, we pulled off the highway and drove five miles toward the coast to Bay St. Louis, a city of 5,000 located directly to the right of the eye of Katrina, placing it within the most destructive path of the storm. As we drive down route 603, we turn down Three Dog Night to gape at the trailers and pick-ups, dumped upside down, or, in one instance, twenty feet above the ground in the nook of a tree. Stagnant water, algae layered like some grim sci-fi back drop, skirts both sides of the roads, absorbing the centuries-old live oaks and spanish mosses, those weeping monsters that flank the way.
As we pull in to Disaster Central - a small satellite operation of Hands On that has been established in the heart of Bay St. Louis - we are welcomed by a black woman in cargo pants and a white polo shirt. Lori has us sign wavers and then divides us into trees, mold and interior teams. We've brought all of our own tools and gear - sledge hammers, bad mommas, crow bars, skill saws, generators, helmets, MREs (meals ready to eat, the same food that the frontline soliders in Iraq consume), and boxes of face masks - so Lori hands out job orders and sends us off with skeletal instructions scribbled on the back of photocopied insurance claims and meal tickets.
My crew is on interiors. For those of you who have never ripped out the guts of a house before, pounding and slamming away until the building is naked, it is an experience in and of itself. You arrive at a home in the morning, reeking of decaying wood, mold, and rot, piles of soggy and moldy clothing, china, dressers, books and nick-knacks - so many nick-knacks - waiting silently inside darkened and damp rooms. By the time the crew leaves at the end of the day, the house has been reduced to a skeleton of 2x4's and shingles, a veritable mountian of memories and crumbled dry-wall piled on the front lawn.
We pull into the driveway of 799 Washington Street, home of Gerri Bryant, aka Gerri Kay, the pin-up girl, comedian and performer of 1950s acclaim. Gerri is inside her FEMA trailer - she's one of the few who's been lucky enough to find a new place to live. Because she had access to a phone, which many people don't have, she was able to obtain information and place an order for a trailer, which she received four weeks ago. Many people's trailer orders were filed improperly or lost by FEMA. Those unlucky people are still living in tents or crashing on friends and family's couches, nearly four months after the storm. Gerri spent the ten weeks in between living with distant relatives in Houston, who literally kicked her out by the end of her stay. After we knock and open the door, Gerri appears with tears in her eyes. She invites a girl named Suzanne and me inside, shuffling about in a pink velour nightgown, cradling a mini-poodle in her arms as she sniffs and coos to us. "Oh, Nick, I just can't go on. I just can't do it, sweetheart." As she launches into a tear-filled abreviated version of her show-biz career and life history, the rest of our work crew carries soggy couches and moldy carpets out of her house, visible through the windows on the side of her trailer.
She sits with us and shows us the few scraps from newspapers and magazines that she has left, the only mementos of an illustrious career. When Katrina hit, Gerri wanted to stay in her house. Many of her neighbors did. The woman next door died. Gerri had fifteen minutes to pack-up before a concerned stranger forced her into his vehicle in a hasty exodus. She managed to save her Bible, a veritable tomb that would put the Gideons to shame. Inisde, she had stored a dozen clippings and articles. Those and one framed fading photo of her, a buxom beauty sprawled across a plush velvet couch - Gerri the Platinum Blonde, the caption proclaims - are all that she has to remember.
She collected East Asian art and porcelain, and managed to save some items - a Buddha head and some Tibetan prayer wheels - which she cleaned and placed around her crowded trailer. Our crew was given specific instructions to use their own discretion when demoing the house, to save anything that might be of value - jewlery, porcelain, fancy nick-knacks. Usually we just go to town on the rig, sledge-hammering vases, toilets and mirrors with detached empathy. Here we had a special request.
"My only son, he's not a good... I mean, when I was in the hospital with cervical cancer three years ago, he only came once, for ten minutes, and he didn't even bring flowers. It's probably my fault, but he's self-centered and doesn't care about me. Nick," she sobs and wraps her frail pink arms around my shoulders, "he's just waiting for me to die so he can get my house."
So, to answer the question in a roundabout way, we are here because we're needed. Because without our help, people like Gerri have to pay upwards of $10,000 to have their houses gutted and demolded. We spent the afternoon at a black woman named Paula's house. She's a single, uninsured mother, parent of three, one of whom suffers from alopicia and requires biweekly trips to Jackson for treatment. As we danced with her to the Rolling Stones while tearing our her bathroom - I broke a water valve on the toilet, and ended up getting an unexpected and unsanitary shower - she kept on clapping her hands and hugging me, thundering "Nick, y'all are such a blessing. God is GOOD, Nick, God is good." Paula got word last night that she had been selected to have her house redrywalled pro bono thanks to the benificence of a Washington state based group of Mennonites. The only catch was that she had to have her housed demoed down to the studs by tomorrow morning. She called Disaster Central - again, she had access to a phone - and we were able to help. She has absolutely zero financial wiggle room, and our free demolition service allowed her to rebuild her house wihout going into crippling, depressing, life-ending debt.
It feels good to be here. The satisfaction I get from one full day of dusty, moldy, back breaking work is greater than what I've gotten from writing any paper or taking any test in four years of college. Seeing people's faces, hearing their stories, hugging them, crying with them throughout a day - that's why we're needed here. Only when that element of human compassion breaks down will these people truly have nothing. So, as you sit on your computers reading this, thinking about lunch meetings, getting the kids to school, what's for dinner - take a minute and remember that just because Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christien are no longer in the news, doesn't mean that things have gotten better. The need here is still great. You can do your part by continuing to seek out the issues and keep them vocal within your community. Your compassion and thoughts are what these people need more than anything else.
posted by Dartmouth in Biloxi at 7:03 AM
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