As you know, T. Middy spent his weekend wrapping our belongings in plastic and fleeing Gustav by driving to St Louis. I've complained on this blog about the drive to St Louis before. The rest stops alongside the highway in Mississippi are highlights. (There are picnic tables! Sometimes even butterflies!) National Public Radio is good in Mississippi as well, in that you can always get a signal. We try to stop at Lemuria Books, one of the best book shops in the country, in Jackson, but often we can't spare the time.
If we're breaking the journey, we usually stay at Super-8 motels. When we're really splashing out, we stay at a motel in Oxford, MS, where there's another great book store and good restaurants. There's also a Confederate memorial on the square that annoys TM anew every time we visit.
We moan about that hour driving through the boring NE corner of Arkansas. We debate whether to stop at the lackluster mini-outlet mall just across the Missouri state line; TM usually wins that one. (We don't stop.) We never stop at Lambert's, "the only home of throwed rolls," in Sikeston, MO, though I've been to the one in Foley, AL. If we have time, we eat at Cracker Barrel. If we don't have time, we eat at McDonald's or buy a sandwich at Subway: food choices are not great along I-55. The Christmas we got stuck in a winter storm, we ate all the leftover canapes from our party the night before while sitting in stopped traffic in Arkansas.
Here is TM's account of his weekend - Saturday packing and covering, Sunday driving - plus some pictures of our plastic-wrapped stuff. Our landlord only boarded up the other, more exposed side of the house, so TM wanted to protect our things from rain. This is where TM's superior gift-wrapping, packing, and general organizational skills come into play. I would have draped a few sheets, got distracted by my paper doll collection under the bed, then driven off in search of the little cat.
6:30 am Wake
up; try to fall back to sleep and can’t, despite getting only 5–6 hours of
sleep. Work around the house a little bit; finish getting my stuff ready to
pack into suitcases.
8:00 am Go out
to CC’s and find it closed, chairs stacked on tables. Down the street they’re
boarding up Café Luna. There’s a line down the sidewalk at PJ’s. I buy adhesive
tape (which I had forgotten to buy when I bought the plastic at Lowe’s) at
Clement’s Hardware; they seem to be doing a brisk business.
8:30 am Bored,
agitated, depressed by television coverage on WDSU (Margaret Orr—“I don’t want to alarm
anyone”; Dan Milhan to Hurricane Center guy—“Yes, tell me the worst case
scenario for surges.”), I half-heartedly watch the Premier League pre-match
show. Plus: two loads of laundry; carrying things up from basement; covering
everything with plastic, taping.
10:15 am Check
the television coverage: they expect Gustav to reach category 4 in the gulf
before returning to category 3 before landfall; the track hasn’t changed much
at all; now expected to be category 1 AFTER landfall well inland.
West Ham 2—Blackburn 1 at 65:14.
11:00 am Take
garbage out; water plants. See guy next door (who had been putting on new
wooden garage doors yesterday) and he says, “Looks like we’re in for it.” I
say, “It looks like it’s going to happen.” “Something’s going to happen,” he
says. This sort of inane conversation is probably happening all over the Gulf Coast.
West Ham 4—Blackburn 1 final score; now for the
Newcastle—Arsenal match.
12:20 pm City
Hall press conference for set for noon just now gets underway. Twenty-two buses
have evacuated 2,200 so far. Nagin says, “I strongly, strongly urge you to
evacuate. My message to tourists: It’s time to leave our city.” Will make call
regarding mandatory evacuation at tonight’s 7:00 pm press conference. After Nagin speaks, City Councilwoman Jacqui Clarkson speaks, praises organization; then a priest delivers a
message in Vietnamese; then someone speaks in Spanish.
Arsenal 2—Newcastle 0 at half; I’ve seen none of the match.
1:23 pm Still
carrying things up from downstairs.
Arsenal 3—Newcastle 0 final score; maybe this still won’t be
Newcastle’s year.
2:55 pm Call
Moody family [in St Louis] to tell them I’ll see them sometime tomorrow.
Continue bringing everything up from basement; covering with
plastic, taping; work all afternoon into the evening; have crab cake for
dinner; clear out refrigerator and freezer; fill cooler and freezer bag with
stuff to bring to St. Louis.
6:07 pm Get a
call from Chris Powers, just checking up on us. Watch a little bit of
Missouri—Illinois football game; looks like it will be high scoring.
11:00 pm Bring
plants and plant stands inside. Everything—except for the sofa I’ll be sleeping
on for a few hours—is covered with plastic. It looks like a profoundly
untalented and possibly demented Christo has been let loose with plastic and
the cheapest tape available for purchase. Despite the fact that I’m wired I’m
sure I’ll be able to sleep for a little while—I’m exhausted, sweaty, and dirty.
I set my alarm for 3:00 am.
Sunday, August 31
2:00 am Wake up and can’t get back to sleep, so I decide to shave and shower, finish
putting things away here, and take off.
3:40 am Time to
leave. The neighborhood is completely quiet, but I see cars streaming along on
Claiborne Avenue. Only a few parked cars are in our neighborhood; I don’t know
if the owners are still here (there are a few porch lights on here and there)
or if they’ve just abandoned their cars, hoping that the worst won’t happen.
5:18 am I’ve
driven about eight miles in 1.5 hours. Stop and go traffic, mostly stop. One
bottleneck on I-10, it turns out, was caused by five cars in a row stopped for
some reason, forcing everyone in the left lane (me included) to drive around on
median. Contraflow began a few miles ago, at 4:00 am. Traffic headed to Baton Rouge is directed onto
(normally) eastbound lanes, and seems to be moving along a bit better than we
are.
6:51 am Have
turned onto I-55; over three hours since I’ve set out.
9:07 am Enter
Mississippi. I’m traveling in what would normally be the southbound lanes. We
seem to be moving better than those in the northbound lanes; I don’t know where
that traffic has come from.
9:19 am Receive
text message from [colleague] Sarah Lockwood [who’s in Texas], checking on
Trina [Beck, another colleague] and me.
10:01 am I must
revise my statement about our lanes moving better than the northbound lanes.
10:40 am
Contraflow ends; we’re fed back over into northbound lanes. Jackson 62 miles.
11:13 am
Bathroom break in Brookhaven; incredibly, I see James [McLaren, the dean of Tulane's undergraduate college] and one of his daughters in the shop while waiting on
the amazingly long line for the rest room. Because of even longer lines at the
pumps, I decide to not get gas now; Otto [our VW Jetta] still has plenty, despite the
fact that it’s the worst kind of driving for fuel efficiency and I’ve had the
A/C blasting the whole time.
12:45 pm I pass
Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson; nine hours since departure. Because everyone
always drives like an asshole here, it’s hard to tell whether they’re fleeing
the apocalypse, or simply driving as usual.
3:02 pm In
Grenada. Ate filet-o-fish and fries; the crispy chicken wraps aren’t available
for purchase in Grenada, apparently. I text P, asking her if there’s a
Starbucks in Mississippi.
3:07 pm I get a
text message from P; no Starbucks until Missouri.
3:40 pm I’ve
been on the road for 12 hours and I’m in Sardis, MS; Memphis 42 miles
4:17 pm Trina [who’s
in Alabama] leaves voicemail message while I’m on a bathroom break; I return
Trina’s voicemail; I think I’m in Batesville. I see a caravan of Humvees
(National Guard, I guess) and a caravan of utility trucks, heading south.
4:59 pm I get a
text message from Tulane saying that the reopening is delayed.
5:48 pm
Missouri state line. I’ve driven more than 459 miles; I don’t know exactly how
many miles because I didn’t reset the odometer when I set out and I can’t quite
remember when I did. Another caravan of utility trucks passes, heading south.
A Starbucks sign around Cape Girardeau says Treat Yourself.
And I do.
9:15 pm I’m
sitting in my parent’s driveway. I’ve driven more than 679 miles and have been
in the car, minus a few short breaks, for 17 hours and 35 minutes. During that
time I’ve eaten two energy bars; a bag of nutty, spicy mix; a filet-o-fish and
fries. I’ve drunk five bottles of water, a Red Bull; a small cup of McDonald’s
coffee; a venti iced skim latte from Starbucks.
I’ve listened to the Allman Brothers Eat a Peach; one of the discs of the Led Zeppelin anthology; Acoustic Brazil; Robert Plant and
Allison Krauss Raising Sand;
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; the Clash London
Calling; the Beatles Rubber Soul
and Let It Be…Naked; the Rolling
Stones Exile on Main Street; Bob
Dylan Blonde on Blonde; Snow Patrol Eyes Open; lots of local radio (where I
heard more than I needed to know about pet and human shelters being set up in
the area); unavoidably, and by accident, Christian radio; and once I got close
to St. Louis, KSHE-95, which I listened to obsessively when I was younger; I
was reminded that you really can’t go home again.


By the way, if I'd been in the car, the evacuation soundtrack would have been quite different: Marcio Faraco and Bebel Gilberto on high rotation, with TM rebelling against one of my many "women/car" compilations some time around hour thirteen.