HURRICANE KATRINA
As a teenager, I remember hearing about World War II and Vietnam and imagining events such as those as being as far away as the Civil War. In fact, the Vietnam War ended four years before I was born, barely a stones-throw away. WW2 was only a generation before that. The point being that we imagined ourselves to be in a modern age, where world-changing events were a thing of the past.
I was 21 years old when the twin towers fell. And with them fell the illusion of safety. The events of September 11th changed the world and affected everyone, but even then… it was on a scale too large for most of us to process. The world was scarier, but it pressed on.
Four years later, on August 29th, 2005, a disaster struck much closer to home.
If you’re not from a place with a hurricane culture, it might be difficult to understand. Most years there are one or two close calls. Businesses and schools may shut down. You might have to evacuate. But often, it’s all for naught. After a day in a hotel hours away, you go back home and get back to life as usual. Maybe you had a bit of a scrape and your power gets knocked out for a few days. In the living hell of a New Orleans Summer, you’d murder a kitten for a cold shower. But still, life goes on.
If a hurricane doesn’t hit for a long period of time, you get cynical and a bit arrogant about it. People quickly become reluctant to pack up and leave, certain that nothing is going to happen.
A couple of days before landfall, we jokingly decided to evacuate to Houston. My friends Josh and Steve, plus Josh’s girlfriend, Melody. Melody greatly disliked me for some reason or another, but we had to tolerate each other. The four of us viewed the days off as a good excuse to go down to the local Six Flags park, Astroworld. We didn’t even bother booking a hotel. After all, no one was taking Katrina seriously. We were just young people looking for a good time and a few laughs.
When we arrived in Houston around ten p.m., we were in for quite a shock. Every hotel was booked. We had no idea what we were going to do.
We used a computer at the local Apple Store to book a hotel online, but when got there, we were informed that the computer systems couldn’t keep up with the demand and our room was already sold. An hour later, as we were running low on gas and confidence, we lucked into finding a single open hotel room for all four of us.
That was our last bit of fortune for a while.
The next morning, we discovered that Josh’s car had broken down. It was something simple, but it took us hours to fix in a Walmart parking lot, despite Josh’s skill with cars. We never made it to Astroworld, but we had bigger problems. Katrina made landfall in Mississippi. New Orleans was devastated by flood waters. There was no going home.
Josh’s family had evacated to the farmhouse of an estranged relative in Lafayette, Louisiana. His mother, brother and sister were there with their three dogs and two family friends. It took them almost a full day to get there; a trip that would normally take two and a half hours.
The woman who owned the farm, an aunt of theirs had agreed to let them stay. I don’t think she’d expected even more of us to show up, but she didn’t complain. To us, anyway. I suspect Josh’s mother was being informed that we were overstaying our welcome. But no one was kicked out.
I had other concerns, though. While I was safe, my family’s status was unknown.
The last I’d heard, my mother, brother and Aunt Jenny had gone fifty miles North to my cousin’s house. They believed this was outside of the danger zone. At the last possible minute, they decided to evacuate further out. That was the last I’d heard from them. My father had chosen to stay home. This was 2005. Cell phones were just barely becoming part of the culture. The cell phone networks couldn’t keep up with the load that an emergency of this magnitude caused. No one used text messages until then.
For the first time in my life, I considered the possibility that my family might be dead.
Several days later, I wept openly when my mother was able to email me from their refuge in Oklahoma. It was another day or so before I could reach my father by phone. He had a generator running, so he was okay. But he pretty much spent most of the previous days holed up in my room with my bowie knife and samurai sword. There was a strong possibility that some looter would spot the generator and kill him for it. He was alive though.
Perhaps the most surreal moment of my life was when the national news broadcast footage of New Orleans. Our hometown became a third world nation overnight. Kanye West— in the most tasteless act I’d seen in my life to that point—- announced to the world that this disaster which affected people of every race, sex and age was about watching black people die. My emotions shifted from sadness to pure rage.
We did our best to not dwell on the horrific circumstances we found ourselves in.
Josh’s car breaking down became a bit of a running gag. Between those of us present, there were about three cars. One had broken down at another relative’s house in Baton Rouge. Every time we got one car running, another one would break down, often in the middle of the road.
Once, one of the vehicles we’d just retrieved broke down a second time, about a quarter mile away from the farmhouse. Three of us pushed it the rest of the way, leaving me on the verge of an asthma attack. I went up to the room I’d been assigned and laid on my back, breathing heavily and wheezing. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to.
At some point, we were given clearance to drive to our homes and collect any necessities. We stopped at my house to get my car. We drove to Josh’s hometown to collect some of his belongings. Unfortunately, the local police had deputized and armed some elderly volunteers to protect the neighborhood. I accidentally drove past a stop sign and was immediately pulled over by one of these volunteers. The old man started screaming at me and threatening to haul me into jail. Bare in mind, he was going to do this because I passed a stop sign… which had been uprooted from the ground by the storm… on a street that was deserted. He “graciously” let me off with a warning and explicitly told me he’d better not see me there again.
After a while, Josh and I got into a huge argument. I don’t remember what it was about. I’m sure some of it was mutual mistakes. And a bit of it was being cooped up. And a lot of it was young men and their hot heads. But I suspect most of it was the strain of our circumstances. We did make up eventually, but I remember that less than the fights.
It wasn’t all dour though. Tragedies have a way of bringing out the best and the worst of humanity.
I found a listing for a local comic book store. Acadiana Comics was a small store owned by an elderly couple, Jerry and Teresa Moran. It catered mainly to students from the University of Louisiana. The store had a nice selection and the kind of homey feel you want in a comic shop, a place where you felt like you belonged.
I was in a fog as I walked into their business. I tried desperately to focus on the newest comics on shelves, like it was any other Wednesday. Spider-man couldn’t compete with the thought that my family might be gone.
Lafayette was a smallish college town, so Ms Teresa rightly assumed that I was a refugee. She asked me for my story. After a few minutes of talking, I tried to purchase my books. She told me there would be no charge. I argued, of course. Not out of pride. I’d always been built to give to charity, but I have never been great at receiving it. And besides, they were just comic books, right? But no. Not really. A handful of comics was the closest thing to home and safety as I had seen in a week. It was a shelter from the storm. Being a comic shop owner, I suspect Ms Teresa knew that. She refused to take a cent from me. It is one of greatest acts of kindness I've ever experienced. I think of her often.
After a week, I was reunited with my oldest friend, Chris. I met him and his baby girl at the local mall. Every reassurance that another loved one had survived was like a personal blessing from God.
We were 90s kids. Generally speaking, that would be a statement about how tough and self-reliant we were made. But we weren’t prepared for anything like this. Who could prepare for sitting out the Apocalypse in a Lafayette Cracker Barrel?
A couple of weeks later, we were finally allowed home… or close to it. My mother lived about half an hour outside of the Greater New Orleans area and we were allowed to stay there, but travel was restricted, especially at night.
Home now looked like something out of a Mad Max movie. I stood with a thousand people in the Summer heat to collect food stamps for the first time in my life.
Understand; I don’t dwell on these things. No one I loved lost their life. Most of our houses were relatively okay. A lot of people got it a lot worse than me. So no, I never dwelled upon Hurricane Katrina.
At least not until 2023, when Jason Lanier asked me to follow him into Six Flags New Orleans and I began my work on the Jazzland Project.
It’s funny. As you get older, things seem so close and so far away at the same time. Sometimes it feels like fifty years ago. Sometimes it feels like ten. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel real, like something I read in a book once.
I’d even be inclined to believe that, if I didn’t have the scars to prove it.
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