Percy, the New Orleans shuttle driver, another "everyday" hero...

...So, to share the end of my story of Mardi Gras (I'm sure at some point, I'll jump back and tell you more, because New Orleans itself already has a wealth of stories, but this is the story of the last day of my trip of Mardi Gras 2008...)

February 8, 2008:  I'm hungover (of course, it's New Orleans, and too many lovely men bought me drinks until 7am this very morning--after all, this was when I met The Scotsman--his story is told in another writing here...ANYTHING could happen in New Orleans, right?;)   The sunshine is punishingly bright to my bloodshot eyes, and I'm waiting for my shuttle to arrive at the Queen & Crescent Hotel on Camp Street, where I spent some of the best hangovers of my life, and had other, unique experiences I won't mention in this blog (some things I won't tell, even with my brutal honesty:)  I had still managed to shake that hangover off daily during my stay, pick myself up, don a Wonder Woman costume, my finest goth, or whatever fit the particular day...to venture out into the Mardi Gras festivities for 2 weeks.

This afternoon, I load up into the shuttle to the Louis Armstrong Airport (this is the same airport many spent their precious time after Hurricane Katrina:  stuck in an over-crowded facility, with nowhere and everywhere they didn't want to go, away from their families & friends, wondering were they dead or alive?--some were left behind the dead at the Superdome, or in their homes, or floating down the river, or in the random city streets, some were covered with the American flag--all of this carnage and death occurred only minutes from my hotel, only 3 years prior to my trip).  I'm thinking: "this shuttle is filled with businessmen/women, who could care less about the stories I'd collected diligently during this trip, about the people who experienced that horrific failure of the American system...they don't want to hear that, they want to hear that America runs as it should."  So, I try to make small talk for a few minutes with people I don't feel I have anything in common with (even though I'm a hypocrite:  I work for Corporate America, too, who generously funded this trip).  About 10 minutes into the trip to the airport, the shuttle driver declares that I-10 is too busy to take at this hour (I-10 is the true artery out of New Orleans, and the very place where many were also standing still during Katrina:  facing men with guns telling to them to go this way, or that way, but basically telling them to stay put on an interstate--with no food, water, or medicine, for FAR too many days at a stretch).  So, according to the wisdom and experience of our driver, we take a detour, through residential neighborhoods that still had the spray-painted "X"s on the boarded-up houses, garishly stating in neon colors, statistics of:  those found dead or alive, the dates homes were checked, etc, etc, STILL there, 3 years later...  If anyone knows New Orleans well enough, that even if one was able to return to their home there, the "average" person doesn't have enough money to paint over such gruesome details, they didn't even have enough money to even get out of New Orleans in the first place, when Nature screamed that it was necessary to do so.  I peek out of the van window...a beautiful little girl, with a winning smile, is playing with an umbrella blazing with the Mardi Gras colors:  purple, green, and yellow-gold.  I smile and wave at her, while one of the businesswomen has the guts to speak up, and ask if anything had been done since Katrina (must have noticed the X's in neon spraypaint colors).  Although I already knew the disheartening answer, our shuttle driver answers, "not much has been done at all".  I immediately jump at my chance to learn more, and finally get his name:  "Percy". 

 

I'm hungry for his story...I've already heard so many in two weeks--might as well place a last-minute addition into my collection.  He tells me about how he worked for the bus company, and when Katrina hit, aid never came to the bus depot where all the employees and the CEO were trapped, because they were in a facility that was deemed "safe" (with no water, food, and contact with the outside world, that is a relative term to the people inside, waiting for help to arrive).  So, along with everyone else in the bus depot, he waded in toxic, waist-deep water, right next to the CEO of the very company he worked for, just to get to "safety".  Percy says something so simply and eloquently, that philosophers have been struggling with for centuries:  "where was his money, when his cell phone didn't work, and he couldn't call that corporate jet?".

I ask him what happened when he reached this elusive, "safe" place?  He finally made it, with his family, to stay with relatives in a neighboring state.  He returned home about a year later, to clean up a hell of a mess, to deal with overtaxed & underpaid contractors, and to reach for that brass ring:  the never-ending quest to return life to some kind of  "normal", that too many of us take for granted.  Percy considers himself to be the luckiest man alive.  A coworker and friend had decided to leave the bus depot, to make sure his family and neighbors had evacuated in the hardest-hit, most dangerously flooded part of the city, The Lower 9th Ward (this was, of course, against the advisement of everyone surrounding him)...Percy never saw that person again, dead or alive.

We finally make it to the airport, and I'm flying Continental, so I'm alone in the vehicle, the last stop on the shuttle (I get opportunities like this thrown at me all the time--just think about the night before, when I sat on the "right" bar stool, to meet The Scotsman).  I chat a little more with my beloved shuttle driver, I hand Percy a $10 tip, give him a hug, tell him to take good care of himself and his family, and thank him for saving me $30 (I would have paid $40 for the "official" tour of the aftermath of Katrina the day before, which wasn't nearly as informative).  I was lucky, because I couldn't begin to match the story he blessed me with, anyway...

Two weeks after I got home, I was fired from that "cushy" job in Corporate America.  In the face of Percy's story alone, what right do I have to complain?  What right do any of us have?  Disasters, like Katrina, hit overwhelmed global economic and political systems daily.  In the face of Percy's story, and the others in my "collection", life doesn't seem so bad, now does it?

Reviews

[[untitled]]

Poetic Voice is Announcing the first Poetic Voice Cash Prize Contest for Poetry. Awards will be given to the writers who submit for consideration the most outstanding poems within the context of Poetry and Word Art.

http://poeticvoice.ning.com/