Surreality (New Year's Eve on the Mississippi Gulf Coast)

Over the past two and a half months, I’ve spent one or two nights weekly on the Gulf Coast. On my first trip down I fought back tears from the time I crossed over the Back Bay until Biloxi was in my rear view mirror and I was on my way home. I was surprised when on the next trip down, I didn’t have to fight back any tears. I was more concerned with the work at hand, and easily slipped into what I began to call Blue Roof Reality. That is, a way of looking beyond the destruction and concentrating on being busy and what little good news there was to be found. While checking out of the Palace Casino Hotel one day in early December, I asked George, the overworked and overstressed General Manager, about his plans for the upcoming holidays. To my amazement, he told me that the Palace would have its grand re-opening on the New Year’s weekend. Standing there at the card table they were using as a makeshift check-in desk, with wires dangling from the ceiling and a thin veneer of sheetrock dust covering every flat surface, I glanced back at him with a curious smile, as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Recognizing the look I had given him, he chuckled and replied, “No, really, we’re already taking reservations. We’ll be open.” I gave him a wide grin and said, I wouldn’t think of missing it for anything in the world. For weeks, the Palace had been my oasis of comfort in a rough environment. It was a place where I could sleep comfortably in the midst of crippling devastation. On the way back to Jackson, I called my wife Katharine and sheepishly informed her that I had “kind of committed us to staying on the Coast for New Years” but being the adventurer that she is, my sheepishness was unnecessary and she was genuinely excited about the plans and even suggested we invite another couple. Her friend Christina from Cape Cod who had met my friend Peter at our wedding had expressed an interest in coming back to the South to reconnect with us and her Southern suitor. So, we called George and booked another room.
Each week leading up to the event I relished in seeing the progress. The transformation was incredible. With each return visit I could see the little changes adding up to big renovations. On my last trip before the holiday, they were wheeling in the slot machines, but it still looked like they had a long way to go.

Around noon on the 30th, Katharine and I were packing our bags and deciding what we needed to wear. We packed some fancy clothes for New Year’s Eve and some jeans and rugged shoes for tromping around the devastated areas. We met up with our guests and got on the road around 3:30. By the time we reached the coast it was dark, and hard to see the true character of the landscape. One thing was unmistakable. As we pulled onto Bayview Avenue, the cars were lined up around the block and a crowd was moving slowly toward the Imperial Palace. People were out in force. When we got near the end of Howard Avenue, past the long stretch of demolished houses, tents and FEMA trailers we saw a repeat of Bayview. Cars were parked along the street and the parking lots of the Palace Resort were filled to capacity. We walked along with a group of 15 or so people and entered the building through the sliding glass front door that just a few weeks ago was nothing more than a hole in the wall with a sheet of visqueen keeping the dust in and the chill out. Gone was the cafeteria table with a couple of computers serving as the check-in desk and for the first time I heard the electronic hum and jingle of slot machines instead of the shriek of air tools and power saws. I immediately looked for George the manager and we greeted with a big hug. We checked in, put our bags away, and had a drink in the main lounge before heading out for dinner. The place was packed, the customers were happy and the staff was thrilled to be back at work. For a brief instant, in that small space, it seemed like the Coast was back in full.

Leaving the Palace, we drove by the Isle of Capri and saw the same thing for the third time… cars, crowds and bright lights. But just a couple of blocks to the west, the mood in our car noticeably dropped as we drove past the mangled hulls of Casino Magic and The Grand. The night was dark and there were no street lights yet. Pulling into the lot at Mary Mahoney’s Christina spotted a spray-painted sign that once read “We will be back.” and had been recently changed to “We are back!” our spirits lifted again in what was to be a recurring emotional rollercoaster ride of despair, joy, sadness and elation throughout the weekend. Inside Mahoney’s, the only clue to the condition of the rest of the Coast was the content of the overheard conversations. Everything else felt the same as it had for years. As usual, the drinks were generous, the staff was familial, and the food was delicious. We laughed our way through dinner, marveled about the resiliency of the area and spoke with anticipation about getting out the next day and seeing the sights. Christina told us that she wanted to drive over to New Orleans so that she could see the “real mess.” We told her that the press was way off base and that she would see the “real mess” after we go to Waveland. After dinner we drove to Jazzeppi’s for a night cap and again through the canyons of piled debris went through the drill of awkwardness, leaving one energetic and happy place on the way to another. Just like Mahoney’s, Jazzeppi’s was a thriving hotspot with a great crowd of revelers looking forward to a better year, and not dwelling on the fact that many of them had lost their homes and possessions.

Saturday morning we slept in until about 8:30. We woke in our comfortable bed under a down and ultra-suede duvet. I got up to fix a pot of coffee and opened the heavy hotel curtains. The sight brought reality back in an instant. A thick fog covered most of the Back Bay, but you could still make out the demolished bridges, wrecked boats and the half-sunken, smashed casino barge. Looking out over the Back Bay and surveying the fog shrouded destruction, I heard the talking head on CNN reviewing the top ten stories of 2005. Michael Jackson, the new Pope, Valerie Plame etc. I wasn’t paying much attention until the story mentioned the #1 story of the year, Hurricane Katrina and it’s devastation of New Orleans. The story went on and on about the flood and the delayed help from FEMA and the whole “You’re doing a heck of a job Brownie” quote from W. At the end of the story, almost as an afterthought, they said “… also affected by the storm was the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.” ALSO AFFECTED! I could barely believe my ears. Here I was looking out over unprecedented devastation not experienced in this country since the San Francisco earthquake and it was being mentioned as a tossed off postscript. This set the tone for the rest of the day.

After breakfast, we set out to look for the two homes of my wife’s family in Bay Saint Louis. We drove down 90 as far as we could and then headed north to pick up I-10. For 14 miles we didn’t see a single house on Beach Boulevard that wasn’t severely damaged, and most of them were simply gone. Finally Christina realized that although New Orleans was indeed flooded, the “real mess” stretched from Biloxi to Bay Saint Louis. She was shocked. In Waveland, the fog was thicker and the corner of Waveland Avenue and South Beach Boulevard looked like how I imagined Guernica may have looked in mid-1937 with just the Guernica Oak standing in the midst of rubble and ruins. But everywhere we went, we saw people working. They were sifting through the rubble, shoveling out the mess, repairing the homes that could be habitable, and most of all, they were standing on the dirt of their old neighborhoods visiting with their neighbors. Four months after the eyewall and storm surge had diminished, and three months after most of the nation had moved on to the latest and greatest news items, these neighbors were still giving and receiving the comfort they needed to make it through the next week, day or hour.

We found both of the properties we were looking for. The first one, Princy’s house, consisted of nothing but a concrete slab with some metal beams sticking out of the ground. My wife could no longer hold back her tears. I looked for words but offered just a shoulder and a hug. As quickly as the tears came, they vanished and she said “Let’s go find Aunt Leora’s place.” And just like that, we were pulling away from the slab and the beams and the tears. Aunt Leora’s place was a different scene it was all still right there. The debris wasn’t washed out into the bay. The house had been lifted off its foundation and moved about twenty feet to the north. The roof was ripped off and deposited on top of a white Acura. The blue Volvo was about seventy five yards away but neither the old John Deer or the older International Harvester tractor had moved an inch. The laundry room was upside down and on the wrong side of the house. Trash and debris were literally everywhere. The pine trees looked as if some mad decorator had hung ornaments of random household items in some bizarre Christmas ritual. Dozens of skeins of yarn that were tossed about by the waters left a virtual spider web of red, blue orange and green wool. Dolls were dangling from branches with mud caked in their hair. Little reminders of family (a house dress, refrigerator magnets, TV remotes etc.) were strewn about the lawn along with shrink-wrapped bundles of office forms from the Casino Magic across the bayou. Oddly enough, there were no tears. It just looked to weird to cry over. The mattress in the tree, the wave runner under a dishwasher, the pink bra dangling from a low branch, they all seemed so out of place that they caused a giggle or two.

As you might expect, the ride back to the Palace Resort was quiet, but we did start to smile and even laugh as we passed several lots (with either rubble or no houses) that had large printed signs in the front yard.

Santa, Please add State Farm to your naughty list this year!

All I want for Christmas is drywall.

For sale: Large invisible house on recently cleared lot.

Then we really started to notice the scattered FEMA trailers with wreaths and Christmas lights. The joy stared creeping back in. Back at the hotel, there was a buzz and energy that was palpable. At the lounge, people were dressed up, drinks were flowing and the conversations were shouted out over the omnipresent drone of the slots. Everyone was congratulating the staff and management on getting back on their feet so soon. The Lowe family (who own the Palace) arrived in a stretch SUV and were greeted by the staff as if they were a ruling family returning to reclaim their throne after exile. We ate, drank, and toasted the new year and the old one, and waited for the balloon drop at midnight, but shortly after the balloons fell, we were wiped out. Our ride up and down the emotional spectrum throughout the day had simply worn us down more than we knew. As we made our way to the elevator to head back up to the room, the place was still swinging and packed full of people. According to the staff, the party continued on all night without us.

Leaving to return home, we took note of the license plates in the lot; Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Arkansas, even one from Ohio. That hastily spray painted sign at Mahoney’s was right. “We are Back!” On the drive home I kept thinking about Bobby Mahoney. He stood there on the second floor of his home, above the restaurant, watching the wind and waves angrily rip and bite at the only home he has ever known. He tried to hold a door closed as the storm surge came in and suffered a nasty cut from flying glass. The walls at Mahoney’s were blown out, and to most it may have looked like a total loss. But there had been hurricanes there before and they always came back. A few weeks later, just like clockwork, Bobby was back doing the thing he loves, entertaining the regulars and tourists alike, but now he had some new material. He was now armed with the “glass in his ass” and the “snake in the Jeep” stories, which no doubt will be retold thousands of times until the next “big thing” happens in Biloxi. And it will happen again. The water and wind and waves will return and knock the hell out of the old building and someone, perhaps Bobby, perhaps his progeny, will be there to put it all back together once again, and tell the story to everyone in line waiting to get a bowl of gumbo.