Not-so-bright, but very, very early, Jill and her step-dad Dave swing by to pick me up for our trip to Louisiana. After 10 years of traveling all over the world with Frank, packing is a no-brainer. I travel light with only one small rolling suitcase that is mostly full of PAMP hats to give to people we meet. A quick detour to Starbucks, and we're on our way!
We're flying United to Denver, Denver to New Orleans. Last night, my husband said, "Did you know there's a big snowstorm in Denver? They're talking early ski season." Hmmm. I shrugged it off. What can you do?
At the airport, we zip through the auto-check-in kiosk. The flight is leaving on time and we have plenty of time for breakfast. We manage to get seats together and we're off! The flight is pleasant and uneventful. At some point, the pilot says, "There's snow in Denver," but we don't see it until we start to descend. The plane is suddenly enveloped in a thick, bright, white so
up. We can't see anything and don't know that we've landed until we feel a "bump" as the tires hit the runway. We look out and there is a vast field of snow. It looks like the Arctic. I half expected a polar bear to wander by. We taxi in and the monitors all say that our flight is scheduled to leave on time. That's good news, because I really don't want to drive around New Orleans in the dark after curfew.
We get to the gate, and they announce a delay...only a half hour while they push back the plane that is there. Jill goes to get food, and she meets a couple who sat on the tarmac for 5 hours that morning and they are NOT HAPPY. Our gate attendant keeps saying, "Just a little bit longer folks!" An hour later, we board.
We sit at the gate for another hour, in our seats, not moving. Some people who previously thought they were going to miss the flight were able to board, since we're not going anywhere anytime soon. As we're waiting, Jill says, "Let's call Carlos!" Carlos is the truck driver who is bringing our truckload of donated goods to Louisiana. She tries him, and gets nothing but static. She has a message from John at Relocation Project that Carlos called from Texas. We're not sure what that means, since Texas is, well, as big as Texas. I reassure her that it will be fine. Jill is annoyed because Carlos told her he was going with another driver, but it turns out that he is driving all by himself. He's making a 33 hour trek from Mountain View, California to Slidell, Louisiana with no back-up. He was supposed to leave Saturday, but didn't leave until Sunday. She's worried he won't make it. My dad drove a truck for 30 years, so I know that trucking is not an exact science. I figure he'll make it...eventually. Just like we'll make it...eventually.
The plane finally starts to move and we go about 20 feet from the gate and turn around. The pilot says, "The first officer has noticed there is a bolt sticking up on the wing. We need to go back have maintenance look at it." The people on the plane give out a collective groan. The flight attendant puts on a movie, aptly titled "Kicking and Screaming," which causes a collective laugh when she announces it. The plane has a somber mood. It's full of relief workers, contractors, and people going home for the first time or going back to see what they can find in what is left of their homes. The man next to us works for a contractor that has trucks with mobile shower units for relief workers. At this rate, Carlos will be sitting there waiting for us when we arrive.
After a couple more hours of waiting, de-icing, and worrying, we finally take off. In flight, we watch the movie "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." Ironcally, Jill and I are forming a "traveling pants" sisterhood ourselves--we're traveling halfway across the counry to meet a truckload of pants (and backpacks).
Six and a half hours late, we finally arrive in New Orleans. It's 10:30 pm and we were supposed to arrive at 4:00 pm. We could have flown to London in the amount of time we've been on this plane. There is a family sitting across the aisle from me with an adorable 15 month old baby. He slept most of the time, and is cute and playful the rest of the time. People in adjoining rows compliment the parents on what a good baby he is. They look relieved. The baby has smiles for everyone.
The airport is dark and quiet. The only people there are the ones who are waiting to board our plane to go back to Denver, a few security guards, and some police. I kept thinking of the pictures on the news of the Louis Armstrong International Airport being turned into a medical triage center and a make-shift morgue. There is no sign of any of that, but it's still not the same as when I visited New Orleans in previous years. People are worn out and frazzled. As we exit security, a teenager on our flight runs into the arms of her dad and starts sobbing, loud, convulsive sobs. What this girl has been through, I can only imagine. The six hour delay was probably the least of it.
We left blue skies and 70 degrees in California to snowy conditions in Denver to tropical heat in New Orleans. It's balmy and muggy even at night, and there is no air conditioning in the terminal. We proceed to the rental car counter, which has a sign telling us to take a shuttle to the Hertz lot. We don't see any shuttles going around, and the signs are hard to see in the dim lighting. An Alamo driver pulls up and I go to ask him where the Hertz stop is. He says,"Hertz closed at 7:00 because of curfew. If you'd like a car, ma'am, we're the only ones open, and you might want to tell those people across the street that Avis, Budget and all the rest are closed too." I wave for Jill to join me and yell at the people standing at the curb to come to the Alamo bus. The driver explains this to all of them. He is polite and earnest, and without him, we'd be sleeping in the airport.
We get to the Alamo counter and rent a champagne-colored Grand Am and a GPS system. Enoch had warned us that roads might be closed, so a GPS would come in handy in case we needed to detour or got lost. We headed out into the dark of night, and took a few wrong turns. It was dark and the streetlights gave off an anemic yellow glow, and many street signs were down. There were not many cars on the road, and absolutely no people walking on the streets. A few neon lights flickered on businesses, but many more were broken or not illuminated. We finally found the overpass leading to I-10 and were relieved to see a little more traffic. The overpass looked vaguely familiar, and I don't know if it was because it was shown on the news as a place where people were spending the night right after the storm, or because I'd been there before. We found the Causeway entrance without incidence.
We had planned to go the long-way around Lake Pontchartrain, but some Louisiana natives at the airport in Denver heard us talking and told us that the Causeway was now open and that was a better route. The twin-span bridge connecting Slidell to New Orleans was blown out by the hurricane. The Causeway over Lake Pontchartrain is the longest bridge in the world passing over water, at a little over 23 miles. In the middle of the night, it feels like we are driving to Europe. Jill makes a few calls home and tells our friend Pamela that "this bridge has no end." We keep driving until Jill thinks she sees land. I tell her she's hallucinating, but eventually, we hit land.
We make it to the home of Karen and John, two very kind-hearted people who agreed to take us in during our stay. I called half a dozen hotels in St. Tammany prior to leaving, and got recorded messages that said, "We are closed due to hurricane damage" or "We have no rooms available through March." I finally got a desk clerk on the line who told me that all the hotels in the area were full of FEMA employees, relief workers, evacuees, and others and that there was not a hotel room to be had for 200 miles. Jill asked one of our club members with ties to Louisiana for help, and a friend of hers set us up with Karen and John. I am reminded of Blanche DuBois in "A Street Car Named Desire," who said, "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers." We're in the same boat as Blanche right now, and once again, strangers have come through for us.
Under the deceptive cloak of darkness, Karen and John's neighborhood did not look that bad. There were big piles of tree debris on every front lawn, waiting to be picked up, but the houses looked to be intact. It looked like everyone had a big backyard clean-up party and were setting out neatly piled mounds of yard trimmings for composting.
We finally meet our hosts, after John comes out side and waives down our car. Karen and John were former teachers in New Orleans. Karen had retired, but John had just been recently laid off, since schools in New Orleans will not be open for a while. They ran a teen pregnancy prevention program in high schools in New Orleans, and Karen previously taught Special Ed. They now work with a coalition of churches around the country who are helping displaced people to relocate to new areas. The churches, some in Ohio, Iowa, and California, offer housing, job training, and counseling to people. There is a young man sleeping on the couch that is one of the people relocating to California. They tell us that he was kicked out of the Red Cross shelter because he took too many anti-anxiety meds and had to be taken to the hospital. He is someone who struggled with mental illness, and the Fresno group has a group home for him to live in while he gets his GED and job training.
They tell us that their Hurricane story. The left with a small TV, clothes, and some photos. They did not know if they would have a home when they returned, but "God is merciful," said Karen, "and we were spared." Karen had the foresight to stuff the chimney with pillows and blankets, so that even though their chimney was damaged during the storms, they came home and had no water in their house. Everything was intact except for some 100 foot pine-trees in the backyard (now cut up and sitting out front to be removed). They said they felt lucky that when the trees fell, they didn't fall on their house. Their lovely home was sprinkled with religious icons--Virgin Mary statuary, images of Jesus, books on faith. It's clear that faith has brought them to the work they are doing now, and taking in total strangers who need refuge is not an anomaly, it's a calling.
