Posted on 11/21/2006 3:48:40 AM PST by mcg2000
A block away, a guy was riding a bicycle slow, so the front wheel swerved with each crank of the pedals.
The heat, the humidity and the noon hour had everything almost at a standstill.
Olivia looked surprised and a little worried at a stranger approaching when I walked up. I introduced myself and asked how she was doing. She thought for a minute.
"We're doing better," she said.
And so it is in Biloxi. They're doing better, more than a year after deadly Hurricane Katrina came through. But they have a long way to go.
Just a few blocks from Olivia's once-gutted red-brick home, the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino was rocking. Gamblers tossed cash on the tables, guests waited in long lines at the front desk, the buffet line stretched into the lobby. Gaming is back. Most of the area's casinos have reopened, and two new ones are planned, including the Hard Rock, which was days away from opening when Katrina struck Aug. 29.
The tables and slots were lively at major gaming houses in October, even during the day.
At the Grand Biloxi Casino, Hotel and Spa, a Harrah's property, the new casino is open in the former Grand Casino Bayview Hotel. The refurbished hotel rooms are pretty and contemporary, with Sony CD Dream Machines at bedside. In the gym, the latest Nautilus exercise equipment is yours for $10 a day and, in the salon, they were particularly proud of the massage chairs at the shampoo sinks.
The only Starbucks on casino row (the several miles of casinos along Beach Boulevard) is in the Grand's lobby, decked out in dark, sleek furniture beneath a sunlit dome.
Boomtown Casino was just as busy, but the atmosphere was decidedly different. Guests are greeted by "Warren the Longhorn Bull," a stuffed ... well, he's a steer. A placard in front of Warren says in part, "When Boomtown opened on Biloxi's Back Bay, Warren became our very first employee." It continues with a long story about Warren fighting the hurricane. You get the idea.
Up the street at the Beau, golden chrysanthemums and pumpkins lined flowerbeds in the huge lobby. Diamonds and Tag Heuer watches flashed in display windows, waiting for lucky winners. A few steps away, departing gamblers sat forlorn with their suitcases, either sad to leave or sad to leave their money, waiting for spouses or bellhops.
Here, the gym is $15 a day for use of the equipment. Only three people were using it one weekday morning.
But the slots were busy. Len Klein of Orlando, Fla., was there with his wife, who didn't want her name in the paper. She was working a Mr. Cashman machine with money and mojo, rubbing her hand over the screen for luck.
"You have to get rid of your money somehow. You cannot take it with you," said Klein. They came to the Beau before the hurricane and said the hotel and casino seem exactly the same as they were before.
Olivia said she lost hope when she came back on Labor Day to what was left of her home, about five blocks from the waterfront. The water had washed debris to the ceiling of the porch and had left the walls coated with fuzzy green mold. She and her husband, both retired and ailing, had "nothing. I didn't have a dish towel. We didn't have a teaspoon."
Hope and help came in the form of volunteers. All across Biloxi and Gulfport, people who lost homes to the hurricane talked about the volunteers -- and how the need for them hasn't disappeared just because the news accounts of hurricane damage have.
Rebecca Domangue, who works in a hotel gift shop, said in mid-October that her 100-year-old home in Gulfport, which had wind and rain damage, still wasn't fully repaired. "The church group has helped me -- they are a godsend," she said.
Like many of the people who lived through the hurricane, Domangue seems to exist in a battle between hope and aching loss. She said she'd just paid off the house when Katrina struck. But hope won when she mentioned her son in Dallas. "I'm expecting my first granddaughter," she said, smiling wide.
"Biloxi's got a brilliant future," declared Bobby Mahoney, as he sipped a glass of wine one evening in the restaurant building that his late mother bought in 1962. Mary Mahoney's Old French House Restaurant, 110 Rue Magnolia, was one of the first places to reopen after Katrina. A few other restaurants in the area are open today -- and the Katrina Memorial, a sculpture that includes a glass case full of reminders, is in the area.
Mahoney said he and the family weathered the storm in another home that his mother built after Hurricane Camille, put together with cinder blocks and rebar. Mahoney said the size of Katrina took him by surprise after they decided to wait out the storm in Biloxi. He looked out a window, and as he tells it, "I can see the pelicans swimming by."
The restaurant is filled with pictures and memories of Mary Mahoney, quite a Biloxi character in her day and a highly successful restaurateur at a time when women weren't often business owners. Her son has lived in Biloxi all his life.
What about that future? The casinos will save Biloxi, Mahoney said.
"Casinos are better than counterfeiting machines," he joked. "Nothing God created is sinful."
The irony of people essentially throwing away money less than a mile away from families living in white FEMA trailers is not lost on Mahoney. But the way he sees it, "you can't come back here and build a home without a job," and the casinos provide thousands of jobs.
The trouble is, home will never be the same.
Brandon Boudreaux mentioned that as he steered a Biloxi schooner along the beachfront. Nobody had showed up for a scheduled early-evening cruise, so he and a two-man crew took me out for an hour on the two-masted schooner, a replica of the beautiful boats known a century ago as "White Winged Queens."
It was quiet, once we motored out of the slip and wind took us away. The sun sank below an uncluttered horizon, away from the building skeletons, casino high-rises, cranes. Here, as twilight crept over the water, Boudreaux and his crew talked about regular life -- trying to quit smoking, what people made for dinner the other night.
That's what is so sorely missing in Biloxi. Regular life is hard to find, because it's still being put back together. Boudreaux said his infant son will grow up in a different Biloxi. Some things are "gone, can't be replaced," he said, looking out over the water.
Grand old homes that gave Biloxi its sense of place for a very long time may never be rebuilt. Some homes are just gone, a little rubble the only sign that something was there. In others, plywood covers the windows, but the roof is caved in. Empty slabs sit near pieces of homes left standing or houses that have been rebuilt.
Some of the homes lost are among more than 600 buildings along the Gulf Coast on the National Historic Register. One of the most familiar to tourists, Beauvoir House, Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Libraryon U.S. 90, is being restored by charitable groups.
Southerners began to use Biloxi as a summer resort as early as the 1850s. The Mississippi Sound was dredged a century later to create the long, manmade beach for protection against storms. One of the earliest hurricanes along the Mississippi Gulf Coast was recorded in 1722.
Many people figured Camille, in 1969, had to be the worst. "We thought Camille was the mother of all storms, until we found out storms don't have mothers," Bobby Mahoney said.
Recovery from Camille was hard, but the coast eventually got a shot in the arm when the state Legislature legalized dockside gambling in 1992. The coast was booming when Katrina came -- Biloxi was poised to become a top national destination for gaming.
Leaders believe the city will boom again one day, especially with a change in state law to permit land-based gambling.
The floodwaters, said Mahoney, "got our homes but they didn't get our spirit." A lot of people in Biloxi agree.
Stephen Richer, executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, said that the region's culture and music are still intact, in the form of a Cajun Crawfish Festival and a Mardi Gras celebration.
And, he said, "We are all in one accord to rebuild this place so we don't lose our character."
The beach is closed to swimmers now, while the cleanup continues. I walked there one afternoon, glad for the peace and the water, and found surprising, disturbing things. It was not the usual beach detritus -- cans, bottles, food wrappers. Instead what washed up were pieces of the ordinary life at a home that's gone missing: a detergent bottle, a broken, gray plastic cover that might have fit somewhere inside a car.
Janice Jones of the convention and visitor's bureau said trees, refrigerators and roofs were being pulled out at first, and that the beach will be open for swimming once it's cleaned for four miles out.
The walking's good now. The problem is the view on the other side of U.S. 90, the bones of buildings that are hard to identify, except for bits of color or pieces of signs. From a practical standpoint: Stock up on beverages while you're on another street. Katrina wiped the convenience stores off U.S. 90 in Biloxi.
I wanted to head out, but Olivia persuaded me to stay and wait for the volunteer crew that was putting up Sheetrock in her house. In the meantime, she showed me what used to be. The bathroom she had redonefor her husband, right before the storm. The spot where her kitchen window was.
She looked at the bare concrete floors, talked about the godchildren who were always in the house playing.
The first of the crew, Jeff Heath, came back from lunch and chatted with Olivia. He was here from Wisconsin for 10 days and had joined the volunteer effort through his church. Only one member of the crew knew how to hang Sheetrock when they arrived, he said. But the walls of Olivia's house were nearly done after just a few days.
They've gotten close to one another, the crew and Olivia. She's going to hate to see them go.
"They're making us believe that it can be done," she said.
Hope came after she started to see the rooms taking shape again, as the walls were framed and the Sheetrock went up. As she realized it was possible, even if the insurance didn't pay, even if she and her husband couldn't do the work or afford it.
There's still a long way to go, but now?
Olivia smiled up at Jeff. "Everything is beautiful to me now."
Biloxi and her Republican Mayor are coming back STRONG! Biloxi will be more than it ever was in the past. My home town Gulfport, is dark along her Beaches at night and making little progress South of the Railroad tracks. Our Mayor, although a good man, is an incompetent leader.
LLS
L
I went through Katrina and lost two homes and two businesses. It is exactly as I stated. We are making major progress, but Gulfport is stuck in limbo on Beachfront reconstruction.
LLS
The Harbor Plan HAS NOT been agreed upon. Gulfport's leadership cannot make decisions or agree on what to do. It will be three years before construction begins on the Small Craft Harbor. Biloxi has leaders that decide things and move forward.
LLS
Best of luck to you. A lot of my heart is there along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, even though I spent only months there at Keesler AFB, first in 1956, then again in 1964. I really fell in love with Biloxi and the entire region.
Biloxi will makeit just fine. Eventually, it will become Las Vegas on the beach.
Thank you and GOD Bless Keesler and the Navy Base!
LLS
You are not alone. I spent time there in the 70s and 80s. Quiet pace of life, very laid back.
Super gumbo and BBQ. I suspect much of the laid back attitude is gone now.
Missippy Ping Yall.
Number 2 son and I will be among a contingent from our church here in Columbus who will be working in the area next month. We will be taking part in Eight Days of Hope III, Dec 15-22. There is still plenty of time for you to sign up and join us.
No experience is necessary, just a willingness to take instruction and learn. Heck, I'm a desk jockey, computer geek. I don't know diddly about building houses. But I'm gonna learn next month.
Go to http://www.eightdaysofhope.com/ to learn more and sign up. Then look me up. You'll know me by the FReeper hat, dust and smile I'm wearing. I might even have a pair of gloves for you. WestTexasWend has provided dozens of pairs of gloves over the last year that have been distributed throughout MS to folks working to rebuild our state. Thanks so much Deb.
I love your tag line.
Thank you for coming here and working to help rebuild this beautiful land. I'm a yankee transplant, here for 8 years now. I've said it about 100 times but I'm saying it again. These people are the strongest, kindest, toughest and joyful people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. I'm constantly amazed at the pace at which this state is rebuilding. I remember coming back after the storm ( I lost it all, myself) and thinking that this place would never recover. If you had told me a year ago that I could drive down the street and remember that I had forgotten the devistation that took place here, I'd have thought you crazy.
This is very good, I lived in Long Beach when the storm hit and now live in the country. My SIL works at a casino and makes a very good living. We ARE coming back and will be their soon. Lots of work to do yet, the federal govt, FEMA, and others are not letting us go ahead, lots and lots of work to do with over 76,ooo home having to be rebuilt.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!
and, ONE HECK OF A gOV. TOO.
I was at the base for over four years. It is like a second home to me. Both of my sons were born at KAFB Hospital. Many memories from those days. I have kept Succot/Tabernacles there several times.
I look forward to meeting you folks next month. We have to make time in our schedules to break bread or at least have a cup of coffee together.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to this. And my son won't realize it for years yet, but I have every faith that this 8 days will change his life forever.
I also live in Gulfport. I went to one of the Charettes and the Mayor seemed to be micromanaging.
Have you heard anything about what is going to be done with the section of the VA property which now has 160 FEMA trailers?
It's difficult to find details about anything.
I started using my current tag line about a month before our anniversary. I think one of the other MS FReepers was the one who called my sweetie's attention to it. Not sure how long it would have taken before she noticed otherwise. She's just so accustomed to me having some silly, pithy remark as a tag that she ignores it most of the time.
Please do NOT forget to let me know when you are coming and where you will be staying, I would love to meet you and break that bread..
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