Leaving Montgomery
Rosa Parks on the Montgomery, Alabama bus, 1950's:
When last I left you, Devoted Reader, Boopsie was plaguing me. I have given short shrift to the other wonderful people I met. Gina Marie, another young girl from the SF Bay area, had been kind to Boopsie, as she was to everyone. A bright girl who smiled easily and had a strong moral sensibility, she was also a little unworldly, as expected for her age, but charming nonetheless. Crystal, a little older, was the daughter of a Jamaican émigré and held advanced degrees in theater history. We shared our experiences in the opera, she in the costuming department for Santa Fe Opera, me as a “supernumerary”, or extra, for the San Francisco Opera. We both had “survived the Battle”, a bitchy opera phrase for having worked with Kathleen Battle, the pissy diva to end all pissy divas, but that is another story. A group of us went to dinner the night after our arrival in Montgomery, and Crystal and I were discussing “Will in the World”, a fascinating book about Shakespeare we were both reading at the time. Someone asked Crystal what Shakespeare play she liked best, and our waitress answered for her, surprising and delighting us all. She favored Othello – for its depiction of evil, and of society’s outsiders. She gave an erudite explanation as she stacked our plates littered with fried green tomatoes and the remnants of the seafood buffet. (90% of the meal was deep fried – a post about Southern food is forthcoming.) Our waitress was a student at the U of Alabama, the Crimson Tide, in Montgomery. It was a lovely little moment, when I was reminded of how wrong one’s assumptions about people can be, and how those assumptions limit one’s possible relationships with even casual acquaintances.
Diane and Bill were two of my favorite people. A good-looking fifty-something couple from Florida, by way of Texas and Colorado, they had been married for 37 years, or, as Bill said, patting Diane’s hand, “not long enough.” It was as if the disaster was their second honeymoon, they were so in love. He was a former Air Force pilot, then worked as an air-traffic controller. He had great stories about the airport shutdowns of 9/11 and what the controllers had to do to clear the skies as quickly as possible, though he drifted into technical jargon that sounded like the Red Cross acronym salad. “So I was gyro’ing the axle-smasher when the Q-497 started beeping, and I knew the TAC coordinators had screwed the pooch …” Very macho, Right Stuff lingo, but he was a total sweetie, as was Diane. They loved to laugh, a trait that endears anyone to me immediately.
On Sunday, my second full day of waiting, I heard through the grapevine of a very hush-hush opportunity for an assignment. The rumor was that Mobile needed sixty case workers to interview clients and to distribute benefits. This was not a Mass Care (or COS) assignment, and would require transfer to the CLS (client services) department. More Red Cross red tape. I whispered this news to Diane, Bill and Gina Marie. We approached the CLS table, where two harried women were busy writing names on Post-its and sticking them under columns labeled “Mobile,” “Gulfport,” “Pascagoula” and the like, tracking the assignments of hundreds of volunteers. When I explained what I had heard and indicated the other volunteers, one woman, the apparent supervisor, fixed me with a gimlet eye. “No one is supposed to know that yet!” We promised to keep the secret, but it was out, and a small group was already gathering. She sighed in surrender, filled out the transfer forms, and added our names to the pool. Later that afternoon, our names had been added to the “Mobile” column and there was rejoicing. No buses were available for the large transport that day. As she explained, there were not enough vehicles in the South available for rental. This had also been expressed by the Mass Care supervisors the day before. The primary bottleneck for deployment of the swelling tide of volunteers was transportation. All rental cars, trucks and buses were already pressed into service, either by relief workers, insurance adjusters, or for transporting evacuees. Vans were coming from as far afield as Utah. Two buses were scheduled for us for the next day, Monday.
Over seventy shiny-faced volunteers gathered at the HQ curb at 8:00 the next morning. We were called by name to make sure we were all present. This picture shows Sam, one of us, standing on a chair to read the names. 
Several had slept in the HQ Staff shelter, the back area of the huge former Wal-Mart. 200 cots were lined up, shielded from the main HQ by cubicle dividers and yellow caution tape. I heard that the bathroom lines were long, sleep was elusive given the belching, farting, snoring uproar of mass shelter conditions, and the showers in back were rudimentary, but a blessing to have at all. Barbara Bush’s comment regarding the Astrodome shelter evacuees at about that time (to paraphrase, “they aren’t used to much anyway, so they’re doing all right”) infuriated everyone, especially those who experienced shelter conditions firsthand. I felt guilty for my modest, shared motel room. Almost.
We were reminded that next to the word “flexible,” the Red Cross’s number one rule was to take care of the caregiver, because you can’t help anyone if you’re in bad shape. During the two weeks in Alabama, I had moments of terrible guilt anytime my situation was better than the people I was interviewing. I had a roof over my head, I could go back to an intact home and my loving (?) family of cats any time. The mantra helped.
The CLS supervisor announced at about 8:30 that our drive to Mobile was delayed because there was rioting at the Mobile Civic Center, where the benefit center had been set up. They only had about fifteen or twenty caseworkers for thousands of people outside in the heat waiting to be seen. The Red Cross was not about to send us into danger, so we were told to check back at noon. Secure with my assignment and that schedule, I wandered to Walgreens across the street for more necessary supplies. Ten minutes into the store, the PA system announced that all Red Cross volunteers going to Mobile were to return immediately. I huffed and puffed and threw my bags into the luggage compartment of the lead bus. Apparently, the situation in Mobile was resolved, or the Red Cross had changed its mind about our safety. This was par for the course. Inexplicable shuffling of plans and locations were hourly occurrences. The scope of the disaster required fluidity. I started joking that the real name for the Red Cross was IBM, for “I been moved.” Joking eased our frustration with getting jerked around.
Once out of Montgomery highway 65 took a straight shot to Mobile through thick forests of pine. These weren’t Christmas trees, or the majestic redwoods of Northern California that I was used to; these pines were spindly affairs with small brushy green tops. Kudzu blanketed the roadside. Our bus overheated twice, the second time mortally. While we waited for it to cool, I noticed swarms of black, flying insects about an inch or so long attacking the windows, and their remains spattered the windshield. “Love bugs,” someone said. I was to become intimately acquainted with the insects of the South. Eventually, a group of us switched to the second bus and the remainder waited for a pick-up from a bus sent from Mobile. We were all restive and more than ready to get going and work. This was my fourth day and I had yet to do anything useful.
The bus stopped in Bay Minette, a tiny town off the highway, and turned in at McDonald's. We were given half an hour for lunch. I had been eating such crap for the last four days that I ducked instead into a little diner next door and ordered the salad bar. The locals’ conversation stopped when people noticed my Red Cross vest. It was the first time I had seen fried chicken as part of a salad bar. The only raw, non-fried, non-mayonnaised vegetable was the iceberg lettuce. But there were fabulous greens, and velvety butter beans cooked with ham hocks. That was Elvis’s favorite home meal, I remembered. He would talk about his mother’s butter beans, nearly in tears. This one’s for you, King, I thought, and dug in.
By about that time, we were starting to notice slight signs of damage: tarps on roofs, the occasional downed tree. As we came closer to the Gulf Coast, these signs increased. Billboards were blown over, tourist attractions (gator farms!) were closed, more grounded foliage, and pines bent, trunks snapped like toothpicks. Our excited chatter grew quieter, punctuated by occasional “Look, there!” Here’s the one shot of damage I took from the bus. 
There was too much to take in or photograph. A wooden shack with a crude, hand-painted sign reading "Boiled P-Nuts" had a sway-back roof, its signs scattered. It felt rude and invasive to preserve another person’s tragedy on film. Boopsie, on seeing a spectacularly wrecked house, cried gleefully, “Oooh, that’s so cool!” Gina Marie turned to me with a look like thunder. She had reached her breaking point with Boopsie.
We reached the coastal highway. Sand, as white and fine as powdered sugar, was heaped on the sides of the road as if the snowplows had just cleared our path after a blizzard. The beachfront houses were ruined, mere frames showing sand and water through their open walls. Resort hotels were closed. A few miles further, we reached our destination in Orange Beach, the beachfront Hilton. Its signs lay at the sides of the parking lot, tossed there like toys. The hotel was decadently luxurious, even if we would be sleeping four to a room. Married couples got their own room. I regretted not entering into a mock marriage with some agreeable guy. We could have worked out bathroom arrangements much more easily than four women. Gina Marie and I instantly banded together. Boopsie, bouncing around us like a toy terrier, asked if she could be a part of our foursome. “But not if you yell at me,” she said coyly to me. She knew I had had it with her the night before. I said if she could stay quiet, I wouldn’t scold, but I really needed a peaceful environment in the room. “Never mind,” she said, turned on her heel and didn’t speak to me the rest of my stay. I wasn’t deeply concerned. Gina Marie confided her relief as well. We hooked up with Diane (not of Bill and Diane) and Kippy, both from L.A. The room was not meant for four, even if it was seriously plush. I knew I could sleep through anything, though, with half an Ambien.
The Mobile leader, “Big Al” King, would speak to us at 8:00 that night. We were warned to be prompt. A former drill instructor, Big Al brooked no slackers. The beach beckoned. I had not packed a bathing suit or flip-flops. I had not expected to stay at a beach resort. It was obscene, even if the Red Cross was getting an outrageous deal on the rooms – the hotel had just reopened after repairing their roof, and all their booked tourist groups had, understandably, cancelled. It was a win-win for everyone, but I still felt bad. Not so bad that I’d ignore the beauty, though.
A group of women headed up the road to a bathing suit store. I threw money at one of the older women and asked her to pick up anything one-piece in my size, cheap. She returned with a suit that I never would have picked myself, purple and lavender floral, one of those Iron Maiden constructions with hidden panels and bones and cups. I smiled gamely, thanked her profusely, and put it on. Surprisingly, the damn thing was quite flattering. The sand felt different under my toes, even finer and purer than in the Bahamas or the Caribbean. We bobbed in the bathwater-warm Gulf water, colorful fish nibbling our ankles and knees. Gaiety and gallows humor infected us all. A sweet boy of 22 I called “Sleepy Eye,” after his home town in Minnesota (he called me by my home town and I said it sounded like a stripper’s name) made a run across the highway for beer. He, a beautiful girl named Magic (really) from far Northern California, and I sat on the beach chairs and set to work on the Corona 12-pack. I’ve had Corona many times, but never tasted such delicious beer as on that late-afternoon-into-evening, when we watched the sun set behind us and the moon rise over the water. We drank deeply and talked with Don, a Michigan resident returning home the next day after two week’s duty. As Mobile’s staff housing director, had secured the rooms. We would be facing a daily hour-and-a-half drive into Mobile, leaving at about six in the morning and returning after seven at night or so. There was one local restaurant open, and a few fast food franchises, but nearly everything had been devastated. He was a lovely man and had just retired as a teacher.
So many of us were at a crossroads, which seems statistically unlikely, but relief volunteering requires the ability to pick up and go at short notice. Retirees or people at midlife crisis (like me) or recent college graduates not yet entered into careers or grad school have that ability. No direction home, like a rolling stone. Mary, a woman of about my age newly faced with empty-nest syndrome, had just gotten her BA after years of part-time schooling. She was keenly intelligent, great fun to talk to, and from My Little Town. Her educational achievements got me thinking about my next goals, or lack of them.
At 7:45, not quite sober, Magic, Sleepy Eye and I returned to our rooms then raced to meet the fearsome Big Al. He was indeed a former drill instructor, but a fair one. The gist of the meeting was to introduce our supervisors, explain our tasks in overview, and put a little starch in our collective shorts. Cheered by his enthusiasm, I wolfed a take-out burger and turned in. It would be an early morning.
Next: Useful, at last, and stories from the Katrina victims.
(apologies for copyright violation to the left -- I hope this falls within "fair use" parameters) 
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