•Part 2
No surprise, a significant problem post-Katrina in Washington Parish was the trees. The deep pine forests were largely the lure for many who originally settled this part of the Florida Parishes. But a hundred years later, the trees came tumbling down. Like many parish roads, T.C. Brumfield Road north of Franklinton was littered with logs, and the carnage continued another five miles as Highway 430 wound into town.
Once the wind waned on that fateful day - August 29, 2005 - we took to the porches at the farmhouse to escape the heat. And from there, we surveyed the lay of the land, and the considerable damage. At first glance, it appeared we were prisoners. We saw no way in and no way out.
But then the people came together - neighbors Greg Seal, Byron Brumfield, Clay Sumrall, Russell Nelson, and other members of their entourage. These guys, living in close proximity, were the real deal. And they had the wherewithal, in the form of some pretty powerful equipment --- tractors with front end loaders and professional chainsaws.
Greg and Clay cut the downed trees. Byron and Russell used their tractors with front end loaders to move them. All were acts of goodwill and bravery during a perilous time. Power lines lay across the roadway like silly string; surely, given the widespread power outages across South Louisiana, one might think they were not hot, but one can never be certain.
Greg, Byron, Clay, and Russell toiled into the night, and by ten o'clock that Monday evening - the same day of the storm - they had cleared from T.C. Brumfield Road down Highway 430 all the way to the old Columbia Road, where they met up with the highway department coming the other way.
I liken it to Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. Thanks to these great guys, neighbors who cut a swath to town, we were able to journey home to Mandeville at daylight on Tuesday -- we took two vehicles west to Amite where we turned south and then east toward St. Tammany --- saving our home from further damage. We remain beholden to Greg, Byron, Clay, Russell, and their comrades.
With the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway closed, our only source of news of what was unfolding due south of us was the newspaper, together with a few rumors which were circulating --- talk of Armageddon.
That first Times-Picayune, tossed on our lawn the Saturday after the storm, told the story, for my mother and me --- "1,000 National Guard troops arrive." They came from fifteen states, including Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Ohio. My family understood the significance of the activation of the National Guard: mayhem. My father, the late Col. (ret) Cecil Ellzey, had commanded the 139th Armored Calvary and the 205th Engineer Battalion. He left with local troops during Hurricane Betsy, for which the entire Guard unit was activated, deployed to Plaquemines Parish for seven days in 1965. Then, again some personnel and equipment from Headquarters and Company B were sent during Hurricane Camille, which devastated the Gulf Coast, in 1969.
Back to Katrina, before we realized how bad things really were, I made a beeline north on I-55 on the Thursday following the vicious storm. A round-trip almost to Memphis, if you will. This journey offered a bird's eye view of scores of desperate motorists stranded without fuel alongside the interstate. It was under cover of darkness just south of Memphis, that I met my first cousin and her husband, who hailed from Germantown, Tennessee. Offering a barrage of support, Carole filled my vehicle with ice chests teeming with perishables and the real luxury: ice.
Loaded for bear, I thought I spied a bottle of wine. Upon further scrutiny at home, it turned out to be non-alcoholic. They are better Baptists than I. For if ever there had been a time for a drink, Katrina was it.
By Monday, September 5, the headlines in The Times-Picayune read "7th Day of Hell." And it was hotter than hades. But throwing caution to the wind, Carole's husband Bill had generously loaded into our Tahoe --- never mind the danger --- gallons and gallons of impossible-to-get fuel which, needing it for the generator, I refused to use on the journey home. Tanking up near Memphis, I drove back down I-55 in the dead of night, pulling my husband's SUV into Mandeville on fumes. In it was a massive generator which my cousins retrieved from storage in Arkansas to cool my eighty-year-old mother who adamantly refused their offer to temporarily move to Tennessee. A far cry from the whole house generator we have today, it was the greatest gift imaginable twenty years ago.
But truth be told, Momma could have made it without it. Her equanimity derived from Washington Parish where she grew up. She was perfectly content in the days post-Katrina rocking on the front porch, whether at our house or her farmhouse, where she always claimed to feel a cool breeze. And it's a good thing because power wasn't restored for weeks. And only then because our carpenter posed as an electrician, telling Cleco to return the power - coming hot - to the main house. The first switch I flipped was to the air conditioning, all three central units. That air was welcome cold.
Still, Momma kept her seat on the porch. She said it was where family and neighbors converged in her youth. And it was where we gathered post-Katrina, where we witnessed the power of the people - our people.
As a postscript, Katrina was preparation for Ida, sixteen years to the day later --- for Rodney and me. Empty nesters, and with my mother gone, it was just the two of us the second time around. A disaster in the making, a story for another day.
