Saturday morning thoughts

I’m doing two things that I haven’t done in far too long: listening to Frampton Comes Alive and updating my blog.

It’s amazing how relative time really is.  Over the holidays, I had a 10 day break that felt very much like 10 days at times.  I’ve been back in Biloxi for 17 days since then, and it hardly feels like a week has gone by.  It is a cold, wet and rainy Saturday down here.  The chill in last night’s air was a bit too much to be really comfortable tucked into my sleeping bag, but since I was able to sleep in past 7 am for the first time since being back, I got over it.  Still, I prefer this weather to the alternative that I could be experiencing back home.  (That statement will become ironic, shortly.)

My flights back down here were uneventful, which, during holiday traveling, is akin to wonderful.  I met back up with my team when they picked me and Ashley up from the airport, and we all went into New Orleans for lunch.  By mid-afternoon the next day, we were back at ULM to find that two nights before they had had a deep-freeze and that some of the PVC pipes in the bathroom had frozen and cracked.  So, work began back up for us immediately after I shut off the water in the bathrooms.  You can add “replacing PVC piping” to the resumes of a few of my teammates now.

The first full week of work, I was assigned to kitchen duty with Becky and Randi.  Our responsibilities were to cook breakfast and dinner for the team and any volunteers staying with us – an easy task because there were no volunteers staying with us, made difficult only because there hadn’t been a delivery of food since before the week of 130 college students, ie. before break.  So, the first three days were improvised breakfasts and dinners that were subsidized with regular trips to the grocery store.  We survived to Thursday morning when the food was finally delivered.  The rest of the week was a cakewalk.  

One of the benefits (sometimes headache) of Kitchen Crew is the afternoon pause.  Since lunches are provided by the Salvation Army, there is little for K.C. to do after breakfast clean-up and before dinner prep aside from tidying up.  The day is fragmented further because we all only work 8 hours a day, but the day starts earlier for breakfast prep and ends later for dinner clean-up.  Sometimes we were able to fit in an afternoon nap with our free-time, but Caitlin doesn’t like us just lounging about during business hours.  So what should be down time turns into a scavenger hunt as we look for things to keep us occupied.  Our should-be siesta is also good for running PT.  Since we had to start work so early, K.C. is unable to do PT with the team at 5:30.  So, we had to do it on our own.  I took the time to go on some long distance runs around the city and explore. 

Biloxi has an interesting history.  It was once the capital of the entire French province of Louisiana, from 1721-1722, just before it was permanently moved to New Orleans.  Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, moved here during his twilight years and owned a beachfront home.  He was not a citizen of the United States at this time, his citizenship having been revoked because of that whole “treason” thing he was involved with.  And, a fact that I discovered on one of my runs during this week, Biloxi is the hometown to Barq’s root beer.  In fact, ULM is only about 100 yards away from the original site of Barq’s bottling company from 1899.  The building still stands and can be seen from the fire pit in our backyard.  It looks as though it was converted into a historic/ tourist site, but seems not to have been touched since Katrina.  A shame. 

Also on my runs during K.C. week, I went through the commercial district/ historic downtown of Biloxi.  It is a three-block stretch of road that is lined with historic buildings, many at least 100 years old, that have been restored since the storm, newly repaired sidewalks with brickwork, and well-maintained landscaping.  It’s a lovely section to the town in contrast to the many run-down homes still dotting the area.  The only thing is, there are no people walking around, no cars driving through, in short, no life to the place, because there are no businesses in these buildings.  Most are empty.  Aside from a few real estate agencies, a used-bookstore, and a branch office for the Church of Scientology, there isn’t much there.  It’s a pretty telling sign of where the city is at for their recovery.  There isn’t much money circulating for small businesses right now; what people earn or save they put toward rebuilding their houses.  But many people are unemployed, because the businesses they worked for before the storm haven’t come back yet.  Or they simply aren’t coming back.  If it wasn’t for the casinos, it is doubtful that there would be any outside money coming into this city.  It leaves a sort of a catch-22, in my view: the businesses won’t start to come back until the people here have money to spend, and the people won’t have money to spend until they can gain regular employment at the businesses.  One way or the other, this is a slow process that won’t improve overnight.  In some ways, these cities on the Gulf coast are still on life support, barely hanging on to existence. 

I have to wrap this entry up here and go find lunch (hooray food!).  Hopefully the rain has stopped for the time being.  Our propane heater has taken some of the chill out of our bunkhouse, but I doubt it’s done the same for the outside world. 

I still have a lot to report: Ashley and my first CAPping event, Bay St. Louis, the Mississippi Sea Wolves hockey game, and oh yeah, the location of Red 1’s next project!  Stay tuned!