casino coast

i can't upload pictures, but couldn't resist getting on aunt philly's computer.
and i guess i'm living up to the 'pictures being worth a thousand words' thing cause my fingers just kept going and i couldn't control it. you may wish i'd just shown pictures...

spent last night in biloxi, mississippi at a casino with my grandmother.
she had a complimentary hotel room so i took her and while she gambled today i drove around the gulf coast.

but first, last night, i followed her down to the casino.
she can play slot machines--penny slots-- for days without stopping if you'd let her.
and i never got slots, so i asked her to show me.
and-yep-she doesn't get it any more than i do. i guess you're not supposed to. she couldn't tell me what won or why, she just kne wthe colored lights went off and the credit number rolled up.

pretty soon after we got on the casino floor the power went out-everything went black and the whole room gasped in unison. it came back on after aminute, but i can only imagine how odd that has to be for these huge money machines.
and it reminded me of nicaragua, where the power went out every night. there they were used to inconsistencies in power, but here we take it for granted that we have power (more on this issue later)

so i couldn't help but kind of look at everyone in the casino in awe. they have these umbilical chord things to the machines--their ID cards so they earn points (and are kept track of by the casinos) and people just sit there pushin that button like zombies.
but-it keeps my grandmother entertained.
and its kept mississippi's kids educated (kind of)
they are really dependent on the income from casino's and almost all of them were destroyed.
there are only a couple opening up, a year later.

the whole coast was just completely demolished.
at first driving around i didn't see the damage. it didn't feel so bad. there were a few deserted shopping centers
but when i talked to my mom and mentioned that it didn't seem so bad she was like "What are you taling about!? it's gone!"
and as i went a little further, i realized (see, i havn't spent much time there so i didn't really know what was there before)
but amongst all these empty lots there'd be an airbrush t-shirt shop sign,
or the 2 waffle house remnants in a matter of blocks,
and gradually i realized that this was a total beach resort. the street was packed with tourist stuff- hotels and souvenier shops,
a put put golf place you could still make out,
but other than a handfull of signs and slabs, there is absolutely nothing.
just nothing.
gone. wiped out.
my mom pointed out that there were all these antebellum homes,
that are just gone. i passed a sign in front of a feild...just an empty feild now, said "built 1886"
not even sure what it was. its just gone now.

and then i wondered back towards louisiana, but through back roads (and it becomes quite a detour cause all the major bridges are out...and this is like marshy wetrlands we're talking about, so just to get from town to town along the coast i had to go all the way up and back around. huge chunkcs of interstate are just gone. not a trace.

a lot of it just looks like country. and you can tell by the homes that are left that its a lot of camps and vacation type homes, and there are a coupl eslabs and a couple risers (like just the risers left that were at one time under a house) but otherwisre the only real sign of damage is all these plastic tarps and bags still stuck in trees 15 or 20 feet in the air.
like, stuff that floated on the top of the water when it came in and got stuck well enough on trees. but its so strange. slip-n-slides and twister games and bright bklue tarp[s,. just...up in trees. all over.

then the thing that really makes you realize how bad it is, you're driving through this nice country landscape. feels like kind of virgin land. the beach and everything feels kind of untouched.
and then you'll come to a big feild, with like 300 trailers.
i swear, i must have passed thousands of trailer homes, and you realize--all those people had homes here at one time. and they are just simply gone.

as the sun started getting to a nice angle i found myself stopping every few minutes to take pictures.
the first thing that pulled me over was these men walking on the water.
see-there are no waves to speak of regularly on the gulf. it's like a bath tub. just kind of lapping at the coast. literally, no waves. so at parts you can walk out a few hundred feet and only be upto your ankles.
so i saw what at first i thought were remnants of a peir, but turned out to be men just kind of walking on the water, looking down, casually, picking stuff up.
and i went up and took some picutres and eventually asked what they were doing.
the coast guard hired them to pick up stuff drifting onto the beach from the gulf. they were picking up all sorts of crap, putting it in a little boat and a lift thingy, to try to clean up the beach so people will come back to it by next summer, i guess.
and they've been doing it every day for 3 months.
craziness.

then i drove around a bunch of backwoods stuff along the coast and found all sorts of pictureque landscapes and was very much enjoying my mobile office,
(except that i had to run for my life (!west nile is REAL!!) from mosquitos every time i stopped.
(wonder if them being so bad right now is a symptom of the 6 weeks of stagnant water??)
anyway, i wondered back to wehre i knew i might lose myself and it was starting to get dark and my mom's warning about filling my gas tank so i didn't have another episode like a year ago was ringing oh too true in my head as the road turned to gravel and my car (jeep, but no 4 wheel drive) started getting stuck.
and i was having moments of glad my mobile office is a mobile home too (i keep a sleeping abg in the abck), just in case i got stuck out there in the night.

see, last year (and this will be the brief version) i drove from north carolina home 3 days after he storm, cause i couldn't stand it any more and i accidently went farther south than i meant to, right down the 59 into the heart of mississippi and there was no power or cell phones and it was dusk and i almost ran out of gas but picked up 2 guys carrying gas tanks and they gave me some to take them to their car and then i waited 3 hours or so with about a hundred people and a gas truck came and i was thankful for my life and i didn't realize how much the experience effected me until i came back this time, and driving through all this again has definitley brought back the reality of that time.
you are just vulnerable. it is a full on reality check to have nothing out there protecting you-no law, or authority or anything. and no one had neough gas to leave or escape ... i'll probably write a lot more about this cause i'm processing stuff about it in my head for some elements--the more personal ones--of this project.


the thing about the gulf coast that is different from new orleans, though,
is that the damage is 100% natural. this is just severe, SEEVERE hurricane damage.
makes you realize just how collosal the hurricane was, when you consider how many hurricanes these places have been through and survived.
but the thing that's different about new orleans is the man-made responsibility.
well, i guess you have to take responsibility building on the coast too,
knowing we have hurricanes.
and the levees in new orleans lasted as long as those buildings did too...
but the damage in new orleans was from flooding. not the hurricane.
i mean, 20 feet of flooding.
that is just...well i'm not sure but tis something. different.
maybe i'll have more intelligent thoughts on the matter one day.
i'll try again later.