| Sep. 1st, 2005 @ 05:18 pm Sigh |
|---|
Cars are wrapped around gas stations for a quarter of a mile here with people trying to get gas. It saddens me that so many people around me care only about powering up their gas-guzzling vehicle for another trip to the mall. I would guess that half the people in line probably don't actually need it and probably have at least half a tank...they just want it. And I guess I understand that they just want to comfort themselves. Everything will be okay if we can just fill up our gas tank. Mississippi and Louisiana can move on if only we have gas and electricity.
I don't have electricity, but I am in a motel with electricity. I have a quarter of a tank of gas in my car and a full tank of gas in my grandmother's car. I took my grandmother north to stay with her niece who lives outside of Memphis, so she doesn't have to worry about heat-related health issues. I had a large steak lunch at Up the Creek with my mother...our first real meal since Monday that didn't involve some sort of fast-food bag. I guess I am okay then. I have attempted to maintain normalcy and I have, for the most part.
But still I wake up every morning and think, oh god, New Orleans is gone. The coast is gone. And I just want to go back to sleep. I know I didn't lose a home and I didn't lose a loved one. I didn't lose anything corporeal. But I feel like I lost my childhood, which heavily featured the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A few times a year my dad, his friend, and I would go down there to see his friend's mother and stepfather, his sister and her children. This was largely before the casinos, when the Mississippi Gulf Coast wasn't all that fashionable. You could play putt-putt golf, ride go-carts, go to the amusement park, and go to the water park. For a kid it was the greatest place in the world. Then the casinos came and things changed, but it was still fun. We'd eat at the buffets and the adults would gamble while I played video games. One time we went to eat at the buffet and as we were leaving, my dad's friend dropped one quarter in a slot machine and won $2,000. It seemed like all your dreams could come true...and all of Mississippi's dreams were coming true. Half a million dollars a day in tax revenue...14,000 jobs...it was a dream for us. And we became so dependent on it that the state is certainly in trouble financially. Even with casinos we didn't have enough money to provide properly for the population...and now we've lost so much money for an indeterminable amount of time. Another thing about the coast was the beachfront houses...many of them were over a hundred years old and just beautiful. The former home of Jefferson Davis, Beauvoir, was the crowning jewel of that beachfront. We would ride down Beach Boulevard from Biloxi to Pass Christian and I would think, this is where I want to live...I want one of these beautiful houses. I'll never have the opportunity and those people will never be able to replace those houses. They were irreplaceable. Beauvoir is all but gone. That beachfront and Beauvoir survived Hurricane Camille and everyone thought this beachfront is indestructible...I guess we were wrong.
New Orleans is another city that was special to me and I think to most people in this area. It was a way to escape the dull, puritannical monotony of Jackson. I had been there with nearly all of my friends who were truly important to me. I went there with my dad and his friend in 3rd grade and we went to the Aquarium and saw the penguins and piranhas (housed separately). I went there on a school trip in 5th grade with Raymond and we had a great time (though we did lose Jeremy B. and Ashley E. did drop her drink four floors down the escalator). I went there twice with Stephanie and once with Matt. Jason and I spent a happy weekend there. And I think I would have gone there with Raha and Audrey at some point. And I think one day we will have that opportunity, but I'm just sorry I won't be able to share with them the city of New Orleans as I knew it with my childhood friends. |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
gypsyjoon's journal
