New Orleans, 2005, After. Episode XII: Making It
New Orleans, 2005, After. Episode XII: Making It
Gone: water, electricity, gas, phone, ATM's, recharging, friends, showers, hot coffee, cold beer, TV. Gone: what we'd come to consider as the essentials of social living. It was down to jumping into swimming pools for baths. We knew that couldn't last as they turned soapy, full of leaves and organisms that didn't bear contemplation. We'd also explored the limits of our island, stood in front of a favorite building massively collapsed into the street. We'd walked through water that left our shoes splotched and discolored. We'd seen the elderly barricaded with shotguns, neighbors organizing trash collection, neighbors sharing water and food. We'd also seen signs pleading for help, mocking fate, counting losses. It was time to go.
I'd secured two vehicles - a modern 4-door jeep and a vintage red pickup. The first turned out to be irretrievable behind a twisted and downed gate of metal and heavy lumber, but with a full tank of gas. The second had very little gas and flat tires but was garaged, accessible and repairable - our Great Escape. And so began two incompetents' quest to transfer gasoline from one to the other, inflate tires and generally act a part we were not born to play.
2 days. Yes, readers, it took us 2 days to accomplish what others could undoubtedly do in 2 hours. We were at first blindly determined to free the Jeep. We attacked the downed gate with ruthless energy and what we thought was creativity. We hacked, sawed, chained and tried to tow the gate. We tried everything short of dynamiting the thing and it remained immovable. A glaring pile of metal and malevolence. Our wonderful new air conditioned and reliable Jeep would offer us only the contents of its tank. But that offering required almost 4 hours of perseverance to complete. We reached new levels of ineptitude. And to top this farce, we later found that the helicopter hovering above for hours on end was not FEMA, was not aid or assistance but CNN, televising for reality TV. Oof.
The simplest things are often the most difficult. I do believe I'm not the first to discover this. Tubes, containers, the accoutrement of withdrawing gasoline were surprisingly devious little devils. Instructions for the process were difficult to come by as well. Neither of us wanted to initiate the transfer - the taste and smell of gasoline is very, very low on the gastronomic scale. But finally, at the end of day 2, it was done. The red truck was running, the tires inflated.
To be continued . . .
Gone: water, electricity, gas, phone, ATM's, recharging, friends, showers, hot coffee, cold beer, TV. Gone: what we'd come to consider as the essentials of social living. It was down to jumping into swimming pools for baths. We knew that couldn't last as they turned soapy, full of leaves and organisms that didn't bear contemplation. We'd also explored the limits of our island, stood in front of a favorite building massively collapsed into the street. We'd walked through water that left our shoes splotched and discolored. We'd seen the elderly barricaded with shotguns, neighbors organizing trash collection, neighbors sharing water and food. We'd also seen signs pleading for help, mocking fate, counting losses. It was time to go.
I'd secured two vehicles - a modern 4-door jeep and a vintage red pickup. The first turned out to be irretrievable behind a twisted and downed gate of metal and heavy lumber, but with a full tank of gas. The second had very little gas and flat tires but was garaged, accessible and repairable - our Great Escape. And so began two incompetents' quest to transfer gasoline from one to the other, inflate tires and generally act a part we were not born to play.
2 days. Yes, readers, it took us 2 days to accomplish what others could undoubtedly do in 2 hours. We were at first blindly determined to free the Jeep. We attacked the downed gate with ruthless energy and what we thought was creativity. We hacked, sawed, chained and tried to tow the gate. We tried everything short of dynamiting the thing and it remained immovable. A glaring pile of metal and malevolence. Our wonderful new air conditioned and reliable Jeep would offer us only the contents of its tank. But that offering required almost 4 hours of perseverance to complete. We reached new levels of ineptitude. And to top this farce, we later found that the helicopter hovering above for hours on end was not FEMA, was not aid or assistance but CNN, televising for reality TV. Oof.
The simplest things are often the most difficult. I do believe I'm not the first to discover this. Tubes, containers, the accoutrement of withdrawing gasoline were surprisingly devious little devils. Instructions for the process were difficult to come by as well. Neither of us wanted to initiate the transfer - the taste and smell of gasoline is very, very low on the gastronomic scale. But finally, at the end of day 2, it was done. The red truck was running, the tires inflated.
To be continued . . .
posted by Piety Research at 1:27 PM
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