8-29-05

Today is the four-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina ravaging the Gulf Coast. I thought I'd use this space to recreate that night as I remember it. So crack open an Abita and put your feet up.

If it keeps on rainin', the levee's gonna break.

I couldn't get that damn song out of my head. I paced up and down the house, singing it softly to myself (and anyone within earshot.  I had escaped with some friends and wound up at the childhood home of one of these friends, in Beaumont, Texas. This was not an unfamiliar place; we had fled tropical storms for much of my four years at Tulane and I had come here at least one before. We rushed out the door as if we had just gotten there. In fact, we had. Classes for the semester hadn't even started yet.

Hurricanes are nothing unfamiliar to New Orleans. It seems that about once a year there is some alarming storm bearing down on the city, most of which sits below sea level and is protected by a horribly outdated and overmatched levee system. Everyone knows that a well-placed storm could wipe it off the face of the earth, turning this Southern port into a modern Atlantis. In typical New Orleans fashion, no one seemed to worry. Not that there was nothing to worry about, but there are so many better ways to spend time than worrying.

Us students, though, we're not that hardened. We flee if a newsman whispers "hurricane." Well, most of us do. The locals, like my roommate Clay, don't panic so much. And some of the students try to stay. Most hurricane threats came with mandatory evacuation, but they would skirt the rules and lock themselves in their rooms, surviving on Doritos and Dr. Pepper.

This hurricane threat was different, though. The lines for gas at the local Chevron station went around the block. Everyone who could was getting out. Later stories emerged about the tens of thousands of people left in the city. Very few of them were there by choice. Some had no transportation, some were unfit for travel, and a great many could not afford to. The hurricane struck right before payday and a huge proportion of impoverished New Orleans lives paycheck-to-paycheck. Travel is an expensive luxury.

Besides, there were "catastrophic" storms bearing down on New Orleans all the time.

We stayed up most of the night,  watching, on a television set in Texas, the rain pound New Orleans. Every now and again the camera would show a familiar building, only with the bottom three feet submerged. Or five feet. Or ten feet. The best word to describe that night is "surreal." Not horrifying, although it was that too. Or sad. Those emotions hadn't hit yet. It was simply surreal.

If the levee breaks, we got no place to stay.

Adam narrates his life

Adam felt like he was living the same day over and over again. Not like in Groundhog Day, in part because he knew it was not literally the same day over and over again. Also, he knew it was not like that movie because he believes that, no matter what the circumstances, he could never fall for Andie McDowell. It could be the same miserable day in the same miserable Puxatony with the same miserable things happening at the same miserable time, every time, and he would not fall for her. Also, he knows that, unlike Bill Murray's character, he could not find constructive ways to better himself, like learning piano and poetry. He would likely find funny ways to kill himself, only to wake up the next day, as in the montage in the middle of the film. And that's only if the Internet and cable were out and he became forced to go outside and interact with the world.

Anyway, Adam felt like he was having the same day over and over again. Part of it is the California weather. Ever since he came here, the weather has been constant. It's been pleasant, sure, but unchanging. Every day hits a temperature in the low 80s, every night is a bit chilly, there's always a howling wind, and it never, under any circumstance, rains. He never realized how much he'd missed the seasons. Adam always hated the hundred degree Kansas summers and he'd hated the zero degree winters twice as much. He'd hated how thunderstorms made his dog nervous, hail would put dents in the roof of his car, and his television shows interrupted by newscasters warning him of tornadoes that never came. Now, in the unchanging California weather, he found himself missing all that stuff. Maybe his mild fever is making him delirious.

Today was another boring day in which nothing was accomplished for the out-of-work 20-something with two degrees and no experience. Just like yesterday. And the day before that. At least now he has the excuse of a fever to coop him up in the cozy apartment he shares with his girlfriend, who lately has been working hundred-hour weeks doing some job he doesn't really understand for a large, faceless corporation (the American government). Usually the excuse is the double-digit unemployment rate plaguing the State of California and the fact that all the best civilian jobs in the city go to those with military clearance or dependents of the military. Or another excuse, this one equally valid and just as partially-true, is that the finance world doesn't hire and may not exist anymore in this recession, which makes tough goings for a guy with an MBA in finance (and no experience). However, the biggest truth of it all might just be the crushing world, the weight of expectation, the sense that he is getting older and going nowhere, all combined with his personality traits of awkwardness, lack of confidence, and frequent fatigue. At least he has a sense of humor about it all. He's just not sure why anymore.