I want to state again that although I made entries in my journal each day, some of the entries go back and address things I had forgotten to write down on previous days. So if this blog seems to skip around, I am sorry. It really just reflects the chaos that was going on in my mind as well as in my hometown.Sept 3- I finally got the roof patched today! It was worth staying down here just to get that one thing taken care of. Although Brad and Calvin did a good job patching the roof right after the storm, they did not have enough material to cover all of the holes, and the house was left exposed. Today Tessi and I made the rounds to look for food and supplies. We checked the distribution center but the lines were still several hours long so we passed that by. As we made our way around town, we saw a little corner store with a big handwritten sign saying OPEN. We squealed into the parking lot and jumped out of the car to go see what they had. The store actually looked like it had been looted. They had sold out of almost everything the minute they opened. We looked around and I finally picked up a can of cherries that was sitting on the shelf. I just felt like I needed to buy something, anything. When they rang up the can of cherries it cost $4.00. I was speechless at the high cost, but paid for them anyway. When I got home with my prize, I decided not to eat the cherries, but to keep the can as a reminder of the desperation I felt at this time.I forgot to write it down the other day, but on Sept 1st, I saw the first hummingbird of the season. I ran around looking for my feeders and found two that had blown down in the yard. I filled them up and the hummers just flocked to them. All of their food supply was destroyed during the storm and they are starving. I had to refill the feeders almost daily and the birds fought over them the entire time.I also had forgot to write about this incident that happened right after the storm passed. Brad and I had both always heard that after Camille passed through in 1969, that there were no birds in the area for a long time. The assumption was that they had all been killed or just left the area. Well, as soon as the winds had died down, we heard the most beautiful music we had ever heard. There were hundreds of birds that were just singing as if to celebrate life itself. It was amazing. I guess birds from all around had all taken shelter in the many evergreens that we have planted in our yard. Before Brad left for Chicago, he had asked me to remember to keep feeding the birds.Many of the neighbors are getting antsy and want to leave. There is still no place to get gas and a lot of people have used all the gas in their vehicles driving around trying to find food and water every day. I had used most of the gas in my van and switched to driving Calvin's little Toyota which had a full tank and got better mileage. Not only did I have that gas, but Brad's car was still in the garage with a full tank. Several of the neighbors wanted some of the gas that I had and I agreed to let one of them siphon some gas out of Calvin's car. You can't siphon gas from newer cars, but they thought they could get it from Calvin's car because it was an older model. They tried to siphon it, but Calvin's vehicle was siphon protected like the newer cars. The neighbors asked a guy who was staying in the neighborhood with someone else if he could help. He could not siphon the gas either, but started trying to open the hood so he could "punch the fuel line out" to get to the gas. I said no. My neighbor who needed the gas to evacuate was in tears and the guy who I did not know, walked into my garage and pulled up the cover on Brad's car to look at it. He started looking at it to see how he could get the gas. I was now very upset and told them to leave. I felt threatened by the stranger and did not want him to damage our cars. I felt horrible for my neighbor, but she did have another car that was full of gas. She just wanted to evacuate in their truck and they could not siphon from their car since it was new. I explained to her that if they wanted to "punch the fuel lines" in my car, they could just as easily do it to her car.I went to bed that night feeling guilty and selfish over the gas. ( I wanted to add in that my nieghbors were able to get someone to bring them some gas from Mobile and they got out of town. She is did not blame me for what happened, she was just stressed out over everything, as was I) There had already been a lot of reports of people stealing gas from other peoples cars. One guy even caught his car and the car he was stealing from on fire. He did this because he was stealing the gas at night using a candle for light. True story.Things had also gotten to the point where people who had no other choice, were having to break into empty houses to get the food and water inside. I do not blame anyone for doing this. I was fortunate to be able to hold out for awhile even if it was not easy. There was others who simply did not have any supplies and they did what they had to do. If I would have gotten to that point where it was a choice between breaking into a neighbors house or going hungry, I would have broken into the house and left a note for the neighbor. Having said that, it was also another one of the reasons that I did not feel like I could leave to go to Chicago. It seemed like we were on the verge of society falling apart. I had my group of trusted neighbors to rely on, but there were a lot of people driving through the neighborhood each night that did not belong there. There was nothing open and a curfew in effect, so they were not driving around at 2AM just for entertainment. They were looking for empty houses. There again, I am not making judgement on what anyone else had to do to survive, but I was worried about leaving my house empty and I was starting to worry about being there alone. It seems like once you take one step past the normal boundries and constraints of society, it gets easier to take the second step....and then the third. I know that many people were horrified to see looters taking more than just food and water, but once they took the food they needed, then how easy was it to justify taking the clothes they needed, and then perhaps a few comforts in life like cigarettes?I am certainly not going to be the one to throw the first stone.
I have dozens of pictures of boats that washed up onto the shore and are now stuck. One of the boats in this photo belongs to a Vietnamese fisherman and his wife. They are living under the bridge because they want to keep an eye on their boat. The wife is 5 months pregnant and many have tried to get her to a shelter. She will not leave her husband and he will not leave the boat.
