Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

I am totally discombobulated, disoriented and distracted. And it seems as if, right now, it is going to be my permanent state.

After we got our power back the other day, I thought once I arrived home things would settle in very quickly to our normal, everyday, routine life, just as before.

But, in fact, quite the opposite is true. Not only is there absolutely nothing about my life or Tom’s that is "normal" or "everyday" or "routine" or anything closely resembling any of those features, each day home brings even more challenges and obstacles and heart wrenching stories from all around of even more devastation and destruction and loss.

Even more friends have been found dislocated and displaced and scattered across the states all around us.

Many are surfacing in homes with distant friends and families. Some have already rented spaces to live, enrolled children in far away schools and have taken temporary jobs to try to salvage at least a little of their ruined lives, lost employment, abruptly interrupted careers and college studies and many without homes to come "home" to.

Even for us – for me and Tom – who have our home and have our power, the days are difficult. Since Tuesday, we have had no "landline" telephone service. BellSouth sustained some kind of post-hurricane severe damage in its main office that supplies this area.

They are not guaranteeing restoration of service before December 13!! That’s what I said – December 13 – some three months away.

We each have a cell phone, but service on them is sporadic, at best. And he has a working "landline" at the paper in Picayune. So, I tell people I’m calling to call us back there. That is the only way I have of knowing for sure we will get the needed calls and even then it is only during the day and many are missed.

Then, there’s the simple thing like trying to get gasoline, that necessary commodity in our mobile, far flung society based upon easy transportation and lots of cars. The population of Slidell, as with Picayune, Hattiesburg, Baton Rouge, Covington, North Gulfport, and as many different little towns and places I could sit here and name just outside the totally ruined areas, has more than doubled!!

So, what were before only "sometimes" traffic jams and heavy traffic around town, have now become constant and unceasing masses of people everywhere you turn.

Regular grade gasoline is hard to find. Stations run out of regular first, now that gasoline prices are so high. Long lines of vehicles string down the road waiting, too.

Another thing about what I’ve just said is that because of the masses of people everywhere, traffic backs up and getting anywhere can take hours, not minutes. On my way home from west Texas on Tuesday, traffic was heavy nearly the entire way across I-20 and down I-49 from Shreveport to Lafayette.

From Lafayette to home, across southern Louisiana’s entire span of I-10 and I-12, traffic on the interstates and at all of the exits was impossible. I mean, impossible.

I drug close to Baton Rouge from the west about 5 p.m. in heavy traffic and because of the "new" 200,000 extra people now staying there, added to the original 200,000 people, it took me more than two hours to get across the Mississippi River bridge, through the city to the east side.

On top of that, it was stop and go, bumper to bumper the entire trek, some of which was on roads six lanes wide, and I burned more than 1/4 tank of gas in doing so.

And, that, my friends, was in an "economical" Honda Accord!!

You ought to come with me to the nearest Super Wal-Mart (one of the few stores even open in Slidell) to buy some groceries and staples to stock the fridge and pantry for a few days.

That was an extraordinary challenge in itself, but added to the need for gas and need for a couple of things from Sam’s Club, all of which are located near each other and about three miles out I-12 west from our house, it was quite an ordeal. Not because the stores weren’t close enough to me and to each other, but because they are on the north side of Slidell, where we live, and some of the very few open anywhere around town.

Plus, they are out by the nearest mall and traffic is heavy even in the best of times. This time (Wednesday afternoon), it was unreal.

When I finally made it to Wal-Mart, my last stop, the huge parking lot was overflowing!

And, I mean, it’s a huge parking lot.

Luckily for me, I have my handicapped tag to hang in my car and there was one handicapped parking spot right outside the door.

Well – what I thought was the door.

As I walked over, I realized sherriff’s deputies were everywhere directing all foot traffic around to the side of the building, where hand written cardboard signs on high bales of mulch pointed the single procession way in.

There were mobs of people, but no carts. Not one empty one to be seen anywhere. And, the only way back out to try to retrieve one, hopefully, in the far reaches of the parking lot where some shoppers had most likely left them, was way around the long lines at the checkout counters, following the long strips of yellow police tape around to one side of the front door entrance, where again you had to file one by one past deputies, to get back out.

I quickly scanned my list and decided to pare my shopping down to only what I could carry, although by that point I couldn’t quite get a grip in my mind as to how much "stuff" that would be or what things were most important. But, I trudged ahead.

As I walked the length of the cavernous building from one end (where we all had to come in from all over the parking lot, no matter how far away) to the other – where the food was – I watched for every blue cart I could see, hoping against hope to find an empty one somewhere, but there were none among all of the abandoned carts to be found.

Those all had salvaged goods in them marked way down to clearance price to try to redeem some of their value.

But, God was providential again (at least I like to think that and give God the credit for all the good in my life, however small the blessings may be), and I finally stumbled upon an empty blue cart!! I stood there hovering over it for a minute or two to make sure I wasn’t taking someone else’s treasure who had stepped away to pull an item from the shelf and then I rejoiced in my good fortune and was able to get nearly all the groceries I needed from my list or substitutes, although there were a lot of empty shelves.

Bread was in high demand. Not much was left and none comparable to "our" brand of whole grain bread we eat.

Margarine was another high demand food, it seemed, as were certain kinds of meat, many canned, and vegetables of all kinds.

With so many physical obstacles (as in lots of other shoppers) down each and every aisle, it took me quite a while to get all I needed.

By that time, and much to my surprise, a voice came over the loudspeaker saying that the store was getting ready to close and that all must wrap up shopping and get out. And, I wasn’t in there in the middle of the night. I had arrived there about 3:30 p.m. and it was now near 5 p.m., when they closed!!

It turns out they are only open each day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. because they don’t have enough workers still in town to man the store for any longer than that.

As I was leaving (which took a long time in a long line), I even talked with a couple of employees directing outbound traffic who told me they were both from Illinois and signaled some other workers there too who came with them.

Outside the door, deputies held up more hand lettered cardboard signs saying "CLOSED" in big letters and waved them at streams of cars passing by who had missed out on groceries and supplies at all for that day, I presumed.

I haven’t even mentioned the story next door there at Home Depot. Or across the way where the parking lots of the mall were filled with electric company vehicles and tree cutting vehicles and equipment from everywhere.

There were no shoppers at the mall, for sure, or very few. People with any money at all were spending frugally (as far as I could see) on food and water (which was in great supply) and clothes!

I was tired and depressed after the wearing trip home from Texas upon first seeing our neighborhood and our crater filled yard piled with cut up tree after tree the length of our property at the street. I was even more tired and depressed the next day in having to do all I’ve just described.

But, while I was out, I took the time to talk with people all around me in the stores and at the station and asked each one their "story" and about what they had lost. Many of them had very sad, lost faces lined with cares and worries, just like me.

But, many were not just like me. Many were much worse off and enduring still. I actually brightened considerably and realized how fortunate we were.

Yeah, everything around the house is out of place from being moved up higher before we left. Yeah, I’m tired and fatigued and don’t feel well (particularly today, for some reason). Yeah, our landline phone doesn’t work. Yeah, our "yard" is one big brown cratered, littered catastrophe.

Yeah, lines are long everywhere and everything takes much longer and is a real chore. But, I’m sitting here at home, in air conditioned comfort, drinking a cold drink and typing away here on my computer, which has swift cable access, and I am blessed. At least for the moment.

I don’t expect it to last long, you understand, because it won’t. When I finish this, I will have to spend the rest of the day making endless cell phone calls to endless numbers of insurance people, tree cutting people, creditors awaiting payment on stacks of bills (we just started getting our mail again yesterday for the first time since the hurricane), doctors for appointments (I have a a "new" bacterial infection I’m fighting, on top of everything else) and on and on.

But, for right now, this very moment, I am okay. Not great, but okay. And I thank God greatly for that.