Welcome to my Neighborhood

Before Hurricane Katrina
I borrowed a friend's digital camera one day to take some pictures of our neighborhood. She took the first two, of me and my car. (I think she likes the car!) The weather was very rainy and dark, so perhaps it doesn't look as much like a happy place as it is. There seemed to be a smudge or fingerprint on the camera lens, so some of the pictures have a slight blur in the center, which I didn't notice on the tiny digital display. You can click on the little image to see a big one.
This is me and my midlife crisis toy in front of historic Merrywood, where my friend lives. I am a distant relative of Manfred von Richtofen, the German "Red Baron" of World War I fame. In Mississippi we can have a custom license or registration tag. Mine is "BARON."

I once heard a geneticist who said that natural blondes would be extinct in 200 years because of the mixing of human genes. I thought that was terrible, so I put the "SAVE OUR BLONDES" sign on my rear window. My friend (who is not blond) thinks it's strange, or perhaps funny.
The left picture is Highway 90, aka Beach Boulevard, looking eastward along the beach. The cars are crossing the intersection of Markham Drive, where I live.

This is my driveway with my three vehicles. The registration tag on the big van is "FRODO," and on the little one is "ARAGORN." I guess you can tell I am a big "Lord of the Rings" fan. You can see the top of my travel trailer behind the fence and FRODO. The fence is actually a rolling gate, so I could take the travel trailer out if I ever wanted to (or put the vehicles in).
This is my house, taken from my neighbor's driveway across the street. The small bushes in front of the house aren't doing well, in spite of my son David's best efforts. The big crepe myrtle bushes are thriving, but there are only three of them.

Markham Drive goes south, toward the beach. When I took the picture it was trash pickup day. All I had were the plastic bottles for recycling.
This is the Long Beach business district. The left picture looks south. Long Beach is a typical quiet little southern Mississippi town. Most of us like it that way. The sign in the picture advertises a gift shop (with the fence around it) called "The Mallorn Tree" (More "Lord of the Rings" stuff).

Looking north from almost the same spot, the city library and city hall are behind the trees in the middle of the picture. The tree and the street and sidewalk on the left are struggling for control of the soil!
Most of these boats in the Long Beach harbor are pleasure boats; the fishing and working boats are out fishing and working. On the weekends, the parking lot would be full of cars but today it just has a few cars and some rain puddles.

To the right is the beach, looking eastward from the same spot. The little building near the center of the picture sells bait, beer, soft drinks, and snacks. The four people drinking beer are highway workers taking a break. They tend to do that a lot in southern Mississippi.
After Hurricane Katrina

All the following photos except the aerial view were taken by Chief Master Sergeant Edward J. Williams, USAF, who rode back with me from Maxwell AFB after the hurricane and who happened to have a digital camera handy. I evacuated to Montgomery ahead of the storm and stayed in a hotel there for three days. When Maxwell AFB opened up for hurricane evacuees, I stayed there for the next six weeks until Mississippi Power turned the electricity back on at my house and the City of Long Beach hooked up a temporary sewer.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration took what I believe is a series of satellite photos after Hurricane Katrina. A layout of all the missions can be found on the Hurricane Katrina Base Map Index Page, Those along the Mississippi Gulf Coast are indexed at the page marked Gulfport, Mississippi. I think the satellite took multiple photos as the earth turned underneath it, so they are in a sequence of photos from east to west. If you have a stereo viewer, you can look at adjacent photos in 3D. The terrain really jumps out at you. The one taken right over my house is at http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/storms/katrina/24331001.jpg. North is to the right.

To the left is a picture of my yard, at the edge of the debris field left by the storm surge. North is at the top. The little red dot in the center of the photo is my beautiful newly-painted Corvette, the Red Baron, that was totally under water (sniff!). To the right is a picture of the debris left in my yard by the storm surge. The cars belong to my neighbors, and floated there during the storm. The debris consists of pieces of my neighbors' houses, all but one of which to the south were totally destroyed. My house is on a concrete block wall that was high enough that the water only got into the foundation a little, and never wet my floors at all!
The photo on the left is from my driveway toward my neighbor's house to the north, while the one on the right is from about the same position looking west toward my back yard. The storm broke the gate on my fence off, leaked about six inches of water into my travel trailer, and floated it into the side of the house. My boat, that was between the two, picked up its trailer and floated into the back yard. The wind ripped the cover off, but the boat is designed to be occasionally submerged, so it wasn't damaged too much.
These are photos from a few feet farther south, showing the torn-up fence and broken gate. I thought that the wind would have blown the vinyl panels away and slammed the wooden boards into my windows, but not a window was broken, and most of the vinyl panels were found in my yard. I think most of the damage to the vinyl fence was caused by debris slamming into it, but most of the wooden parts of the fence were blown down. You wouldn't believe all the junk that accumulated in my yard.
These are photos of some of it. The big blue van is FRODO; the Red Baron is almost completely hidden by debris. My neighbor down the street apologized to me because his chimney was on my front porch, but I knew it wasn't his fault. Most of his furniture was there, too. I had brought a wrecking bar, ax, shovel, and construction maul to remove the trash, but it was just too big a problem. I finally had to wait until the city sent a bulldozer to move the trash into a humongous pile that a FEMA contractor eventually hauled away.
These cars belonged to the neighbors down the street. I heard that the city attorney suggested that the city might be liable for damage if they tried to move them, but I was pretty sure that if they were on the mayor's yard nobody would worry about liability. I finally walked into the interim city hall annex with a case of Coors on my shoulder and announced that I would give it to whoever moved the cars. Sure enough, the next day a guy came with a big wrecker and hauled them away. It's amazing what a little beer can do!
These are pictures from my neighbor's driveway to the north. As you can see, the debris field stopped at my house, and there was little trash north of there. The stuff blown around by the wind was nothing compared to what was left by the storm surge. This is why everyone around here needs flood insurance, regardless of what anyone else says. (NOW we know!) Of course, the wind blew down my fence, and some of the pine trees. The rest were all killed by the salt water. I had to have all of them cut down. My yard looks really naked without the tall evergreens.
These are a couple more photos from almost the same spot. The Red Baron was totally ruined. It had water sloshing around in it even after a couple of weeks, and everything except the fiberglass body was rusted tight. FRODO fared a little better. The water didn't get up to the floor, so both I and Steve Kohl at Kohl Motors think it can be repaired for what the insurance company will give me. They towed both vehicles away, and I had to work quickly to get FRODO back. I suppose the Red Baron will be smushed; an ignominious end to my lifelong dream car!
Here are some pictures of me.

Thanks for stopping by. Y'all come back again now, y'hear?

John Lindorfer