Katrina @ 10

Home is a small yet critically important four-letter word.

Home is also where the heart is.

It’s not always the street address where we lay our heads down at night or in my case, mid-morning just as it has been for the past three years. The strangest thing about calling a place home is finding it – and realizing that one day my daughter will eventually leave the loving nest she is growing up in for a new abode of her own tastes, desires, and liking. For some, home is in suburbia; on a few acres of heir property in the country; or the stoop in the decaying urban jungles unaffected (yet) by gentrification.

Ten years ago Saturday, we knew where we were.

While south Mississippians and the majority of the Greater New Orleans Metro were packing US Highway 49, Interstates 10, 55, and 59 heading out of town to destinations unknown and familiar, most of us stared at news reports on all channels at the utter destruction of homes and lives forever upended by Hurricane Katrina as she walloped a punch not even Floyd Mayweather could take. How could this happen in the US? or How can there be refugees in this land of opportunity? many inquired to themselves. The damage looked like it was from somewhere else, surely not here. This seemed to comes straight from a Hollywood movie, all of the widespread casualties as remaining citizens scrambled to higher ground or the very least, away from the flooding. Many people went to the Superdome deeming it a makeshift home, yet numerous people waved desperately to helicopters for help.

August 29, 2005 was the day the party stopped in New Orleans.

Several years have passed and what have we learned from the experiences? Beyond the obvious misconceptions the news media (all are guilty) portrayed white families trying to survive versus black families looting stores, the Louisiana political network was exposed as the corrupt organization we all believed it to be. It’s hard to say if Governor Bobby Jindal has made real inroads as it seems from my native Arkansas eyes he squandered any capital he may have had five years ago through worshipping at the not the Catholic churches that dot the Pelican State but to Koch Industries as he pledged fealty to Grover Norquist and his plutocratic pledges.

The mishandling of Hurricane Katrina by so many levels, particularly the federal government, stoked by an ever-judgmental right-wing base lacking any human compassion led to my departure from the Republican Party. Playing a zero-sum game with lives of a different class and color reeked of a dirty air of superiority that chokes the life out of chickens headed to the slaughterhouse.

I digress. Let’s go back home.

Fortunately, most people have been able to rebuild their lives on the Coast, in the Crescent City or elsewhere. Those who stayed in New Orleans, Slidell, Bay St. Louis, Pascagoula or any city large or small are now history’s gatekeepers; members who were forced away to locales such as Maumelle, Benton, Jacksonville or Las Vegas for a season get to add their patches to the tapestry of American history.

To Kevan:  thanks for the friendship and introducing me to Barbara. Glad you’re home, brother. Keep coaching the younger generation to be good ball players and better men.

To Barbara:  thank you for taking a few hours from your work day to commute from North Las Vegas to visit with me on my vacation about the schools.

To Wanda:  I don’t know where to start, but thanks for your professional relationship despite the fact I am no longer teaching. Glad you stayed in central Arkansas.

To Sis. Dale, the Hunter-Hampton crew:  thanks for sticking around Saline County for this long and showing the way to acclimate if not assimilate into the community. See y’all one Sunday soon.

To Emmanuel:  It’s been a few years since those fun days in Star Academy AND I know Lafayette is a couple of hours away from NOLA, but you’re still NO. Get somewhere, man; you’re grown now.

To Pleasant’s BBQ:  the best barbecue joint on the Coast bar none, even better than that famous spot three miles up Interstate 10. Keep smoking those soul-sticking ribs! Everyone needs to visit downtown Ocean Springs – it’s where my wife and I plan on moving come retirement day.

Home is where the heart is.

After Katrina, home is also rebuilt into glitzier casinos along US 90 in Biloxi, nicer beach towns, and a different gumbo in New Orleans. The X’s that marked flood-ravished homes are still there as an outward reminder; not so visible are the class and racial friction that linger in policy and laws.

No matter where our travels may take us, there is no place like home.