DEAR PEOPLE NOT LIVING ON OR NEAR THE GULF COAST,
by Case Miller
Hurricane Ivan may, or may not, touch down on the Mississippi Coast this Thursday. The projected path puts Ivan’s touchdown as far west Port Charles, LA and as far East as Panama City FL. My girlfriend, a Phd student and heavy smoker at Florida State, has purchased a weeks worth of cat food and a carton of her favorite cigarettes. I’m in Hattiesburg, MS, an hour drive from the Gulf of Mexico.
Here in Mississippi, my roommate, an x-marine from the river delta, made a quick run to the store for a punching bag and two loafs of white bread. The WalMart shelves have been ransacked. They’re out of the canned chicken breast I like to eat. They’re also out of batteries. The scene is reminiscent of the Y2K scare.
The University of Southern Mississippi, where I work, has not cancelled classes since Hurricane Camille in 69’. If you go down to Biloxi, you can visit a ship on a hill that was lifted out of the bay and set there by Camille. For the last two days, all the professors, maintenance personnel, staff and student workers have gathered in the front office to watch the internet. No one was interested when I suggested we create an office pool, winner had to guess where the hurricane would hit first.
In my African American Poetry Seminar, a non-traditional student told me about living through Camille as a little girl. For weeks, rural Mississippi went without power. Her father drove a natural gas truck and they made rounds in the heavy rain making sure people could keep their stoves going.
One of my neighbors is, as I write this, mowing his yard. The other is putting planks of ply wood in his windows. Being from the desert, I’m worried about water. I’ve been instructed by the English Department secretary to stop my bathtub, fill it and add a cap of bleach. Her live in boyfriend works for Stenis, the Naval weather station half an hour north of New Orleans, LA. A week ago, when they first started tracking Ivan, he decided to trench his ninety year old home to protect the soft foundation.
When I finally decided to take the danger seriously, I rushed to the record store to consult the locals.Up at the record store, the guys who sit out front say the last hurricane left the city without power for two days. They said if the power goes out on Thursday, it’s predicted that it will take at least forty eights hours till it’s restored. The kids at the record store are planning a bar-b-que.
They ask, “It will be your first hurricane, won’t it? Don’t have hurricanes in Arizona, do you?”
If nothing else, I've learned that people down here seem to prefer hearsay and conjecture. The weather channel is the jump off point for prediction based on family stories and old tales. Preperations are as arbitrary as everything else.
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Case Miller is a writer from Arizona now living in Hattieburg, Mississppi
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PREVIOUS WORK
"AMERICA'S FAMILY PLAYGROUND" by Jamey Gallagher
"SET FIRE TO YOUR UMBRELLA" by Shane Guy
"THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE IN HOUSES FROM CASTLES" by Lauren Bride
"HOUSEKEEPING FOR A SECOND WIFE" by Martin Brick
"SEA GIFT" by Michelle Garren Flye
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