In Our Face- Part II: One Happy Ending

My friend Siege of the photoblog the Daily Siege, had not heard from his mother, a resident of New Orleans, for over a week. We were keeping our fingers crossed while he went nuts with anxiety, trying to trace her down at various shelters. I'm sure a lot of us were getting pessimistic. He was getting ready to go down there himself.

Finally, last night she called him.

Hello?
Clayton James!
Mom you're ok!
Yeah, baby, we OK. We're at Tom's abandoned house in Slidell.
Where were you when the storm hit?
We went to a shelter in Kiln. Awwwbaby it was bad, the roof got torn off, we had no food, no medicine, no tampons, 400 of us. I worked myself ragged taking care of old people, we had to get out and check on the trailer.
How is it? Did it survive?
No, it was under 28 feet of water. Me and Dalton been trying to clean up as best we can, but there's four feet of muck on the floor, even shrimp and Mississippi carp in it (crying) and even mold's started to grow, it's totally wrecked.
We're coming down Wednesday or Thursday.
No, baby, save your money, everything's totally destroyed down here. The Gulf Coast is totally destroyed. There's Guardsman with rifles and bullet-proof vests, there's a 7pm curfew, we had to sneak in the back roads to get to the trailer, Winn Dixie's open again, but there's two hour lines for food and water, another two hour line to get gas from the Guardsman. It's bad. So bad. (crying) They so desperate everywhere, New Orleans is hell.
I know I know we're coming down.
Call everybody you can and tell them I'm OK and where I'm at.
I will I will
Baby I got to go these people are leaving now.
Wait give me directions to where you're at!
They're leaving, I got to go, I love you
I love you too..



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