OK bear with me. My mind is bad now from the stress of Katrina and it's been a while since Eng. 102. LOL
Fri. Aug. 26th, we were intently watching the storm. It looked like it might miss us. They always show a large "cone of doom " as I call it, stating that it could hit anywhere from W. Texas to Fla., so you don't know. You just keep marking the coordinates every few hours-even not sleeping at night to see if it's shifted one way or the other.
Anyway, this night was the Saints last home playoff game. As it turned out, my friend was stuck in horrible traffic and we missed our first game in decades. We decided to just get drunk at the local bar. The next day a group of 30 or so of us went tubing all day. You kinda try to put it out of your mind and we were hoping for good news at the parking lot. We didn't get that. I was pretty drunk from being in a tube for 8 hours and having another tube for beer. (Hey threaten me w/ a good time right??)
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Sun. morning is around when they said to get the crap outta dodge. My friend came over to help board up the windows then we did his. We thought it could be bad, but hoped the levees would hold up to what the 'Corps said they were rated too:headshake:. We took our pictures, most of my art, a bunch of clothes, all the contents of the fridge and left around 1:00pm.
My then fiance's grandmother reserved a block of room in Laplace about 37 miles to the west. I don't remember why we were so close, last time (forgot which storm) we went all the way to Lake Charles a good 3/ 12 hours usually, but THAT took 17hours!!! I think the health of the older family members had something to do with it.
We took river road and airline and pretty much got around the bumper to bumper traffic after about 2 hours and 15 miles. During this time "When the Levee BReaks" came on the radio. I wanted to punch it.
We arrived at the motel around 4:00 or so. It was pouring down rain. Turns out that area was under mandatory evacuation as well,
but we were allowed to stay because her aunt was already checked in from the day before.
There was only about 40 civilians in total. The rest were power co. employees, Troopers and N. Guard. We got some stuff in our rooms and started to settle in. Soon the winds and downpours came. The wind was blowing the rain under the doors!! We were putting towels down to sop it up when my future mother-in-law cam in the room in a panic. The water came in so much upstairs the ceiling started to cave in on the grandparents. I took off and made her grandparents leave so I could get the stuff for them. I had several chunks of wet drywall hit me all over as I removed fragile heirlooms. I wasn't hurt or any thing, but it freaked everyone out pretty good!! The power went out and I ended up making the rounds to the office, restaurant to see who was around.
AS usual I struck up conversations and made new best friends LOL.
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Another fellow and myself spoke to the mgr. who had a lot on his hands and told him not to worry about the kitchen-we had food for all. :thumb:God knows how many steaks I had. I forget the names of those I spent time with, but my new pal was a fisherman from down by me in Chalmette (ST. Bernard Parish-just e. of N.O. and the "9th ward"). He brought his refrigerated truck filled w/ seafood. (I know y'all are gonna ask, but in this area, when you evac., you share and cook for all in the parking lots, drink up and have a fete' , all while the world burns around you-can't do nothin' about it anyway right?? :xeye:
). Any way he must've had 20 hampers of LA blue crabs and hundreds of lbs. of fresh shrimp. We had boil pots and did those suckers up in a breezeway while sharing beers with the civvies and Guard members.(I always carry 3 cases of beer in my BOV!!!):thumb: My mom had bags of rice, someone found a big old kettle, so she made up jambalaya for a few hundred people along with boiled crabs and shrimp bolstered by other fixins by the few families there-potato,corn,sausage,etc. It was a proper boil with everyone trying to have a good time forgetting the 100 mph winds and torrential rains falling. Then the power went out. We still drank and ate by lantern.
Brandy and I went to bed. IT was so hot I cracked the door to the room, placed our 200lb. Mastiff Franklin by it, with his gate against the door. I slept w/ mt .45 Ruger on the nightstand and went do-do.
