11/12/07
When I emailed Jim, a fellow Couchsurfer, and asked if I could stay with him for the night, he told me he wouldn’t be home but I could stay at his house anyway. He said he’d leave the key under the mat and told me to make myself at home.
“Eat whatever you want. Even if it’s unopened, have it if you want it.”
Above: Jim’s living room
Sure enough, when I got to Jim’s house, the key was there and I let myself in. Jim, a doctor in the local E.R., has a nice three bedroom house two blocks from the house he grew up in, the house his parents still live in today. I spent the night eating (I couldn’t bring myself to take Jim up on his offer and instead cooked my own food), showering, doing laundry, writing, and watching TV. The flat screen TV in Jim’s living room is so large that cop shows are scary, travel shows leave you reaching for you camera, and sports games make you yell and scream.
I finally met Jim the following afternoon after he returned from New Orleans. Jim and I have the same build, but he’s much stronger than I am. He goes to the gym four to five times a week. Within moments of returning home, he asked me if I’d be up for a workout at Red’s, the local gym. Feeling a bit like a sloth after almost 24 hours of lounging on the couch and doing errands, I jumped at the offer.
After we finished up at the gym, we drove two minutes past Jim’s house to his parent’s place for Sunday dinner. I wish I got a picture of the meal because it was a royal spread. I chatted with his folks, his grandfather, and his visiting aunt and cousin, but I particularly liked Jim’s dad. He looks at you as if he thinks you’re always up to no good, but he’s witty and interesting to talk to. He randomly quotes T.S. Elliot in conversation and waits for people to correctly guess what poem he’s referring to. No one ever gets it. At some point in the meal, he started talking about the family’s vacation house near Biloxi, Mississippi that they lost to The Storm.
“Nothing was left when we went back afterwards. Imagine a huge fist coming out of the sky and just smashing down on a house. Then, picture someone doing this.” He quickly swiped his hand across the table as if he were brushing bread crumbs onto the floor.
He continued. “And you know somethin, I remember sitting on the deck of that house with my friend, sitting 25 feet above that Gulf with the water smooth as glass, and saying to him, ‘There ain’t no way water from down there could ever make it up here’. It just didn’t seem possible. I couldn’t picture it.” He looked down at the table and chewed on the memory.
I broke the silence that was building and making everyone at the table feel uncomfortable. “What do you think brought the house down—the water or the wind?”
Jim’s dad looked up and smiled.
“Well that depends on which insurance agency I’m talkin to!”
After over two years, the family still hasn’t received insurance money for the property. They’re waiting until they get paid to decide whether or not they’ll rebuild. If or when they do get paid, however, they’ll have to send a bunch of money right back to the insurance company year after year if they wish to live right on the water again—a year’s coverage that once cost $4,000 now goes for $16,000.
Above: Before and after The Storm, photos of Jim’s family’s place on the Gulf.
