I had been looking for, but unable to find work for the last
9 months, when the storms hit. Suddenly
there were jobs in Sabine Parish. I
called to inquire about them, but was told I had to be a Katrina evacuee to
apply.
My firsthand accounts of some of those people, you may not
like, but it is true. I was working at
the Many United Methodist Church’s relief center. I was helping to serve food, donating clothes
and blankets, and doing what I could. I
watched these people be more concerned with doing their hair then keeping their
little areas clean. I was serving dinner
one day, and a little boy comes up, he must have been about 8 or 10. I ask him which dish he would like. He tells me. I say “what do you say?” I was waiting for a please or a thank
you. He says, “give it to me now.” No one in line corrected or admonished him
for his bad behavior. I quit the next
day. I would not put up with such
rudeness.
Jay came home and told us about evacuees stealing from his
Family Dollar in Shreveport. How they
would just load up buggies and run out the back door before they could catch
them. This happened twice. They didn’t need to steal, everything was
provided for them. Some of them coming
in and just reaching out their arms to knock any and everything off the
shelves, rows and rows of things. It did
not help that corporate came in to evaluate them at this time. These people’s actions caused Jay and his
manager and BFF, Kenny to get in a lot of trouble. Can I prove it was Katrina evacuees that did
this? No, but I can tell you while the emergency shelters were open, this is
the only time these things ever happened at the store.
I remember driving past one of the big emergency
shelters. I had stopped at a red light
near there. I noticed there were all
these people standing in the street.
When we stopped for the light these evacuees began banging on the cars
demanding money. When the light turned
green I floored it, and got the hell out of there.
I know that many of the evacuees that came here were good,
kind and grateful people. Many of them
stayed and add their richness to our community.
I am sure someone will write and tell me that I should not be so hard on
them. They had lost everything and
explain their behavior away. To put
myself in their shoes and I have. What I
saw, what I experienced was a bunch of ungrateful, hateful people who could not
careless about what was being done for them.
How others were sacrificing for them.
If I had just been thru, what they had, I would be immensely grateful
for what I had been given. I would have
been helpful.
Millions were poured out for Katrina. Entertainment stars got on planes and pulled
people out of New Orleans. Many of them
remain active in helping to rebuild New Orleans today. Benefits and telethons were held for those affected
by Katrina. When Rita hit a month later,
no body carried. No stars came to our
rescue. Those of us caught in the storm
just hunkered down and soldiered on. As
in the case of most hurricanes around here, we took care of our own. People who had escaped to Lake Charles,
Shreveport and Sabine Parish got hit again.
Rita made landfall September 24, 2005. She was a Category 3 when she hit. She had
been downgraded from a Category 5. It
took a few days for her to reach my house on Peach Tree Hill. She was Category 1 when she came over the
house. I will never forget the sound of
her coming over the house. The 70 mile
an hour winds sounded like God rolling out pizza dough on my roof. It rained, and rained, and rained, the sky
turned green, but no thunder, no lightning.
I sat in a rocking chair and rocked Prince for 5 hours while he freaked
out, as the major part of the storm blew over.
Jay just slept it off. For
several days I had been bottling water.
The night before the storm hit I put the sheets in the freezer to
cool. I knew when the power went off it
was going to get hot, fast. When the
power did go off I covered Jay with the frozen sheet and fanned him all night
long while he bitched about how hot it was.
We made it three days, in hundred degree heat, with no
power. Thank god we had gas and bottles
of water. But everything in our
refrigerator was ruined, except the mustard and the chow-chow. I don’t think anything can kill either of
those. We were lucky in that the state
issued disaster food stamps for everyone affected by the storm. Jay was staying in Shreveport with family
working. After three days I packed up
the kids and went to my mom’s. I think
we stayed about a week before we came back home.
Momma Muriel saw that we were struggling. She was not in the best of health at this
time. Since I had met her she had gone
into congestive heart failure and was now on dialysis three times a week. She had also fallen several times. She’d fall in the middle of the night, press
her life alert and they would call us. There
was not much we could do since we lived so far away. At the time Momma Muriel and I were
discussing her going into an assisted living facility, something which she
really did not want to do. She called me
after Rita hit and said, “Look Jay can’t keep driving back and forth to
Shreveport for work. I don’t want to go
into a nursing home. Why don’t I pay to
move y’all up here, in back of my place?
I’ll live my life, you live yours and we will meet in the middle. How does that sound?” We jumped at the chance.
Ilsa
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