HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Sept. 27, 2005 Two best friends, Mike Daigle (aged 52) and Roger Thibodeaux (aged 43) broke through a barricade to see what was left of their home town, Hackberry, Louisiana. The two men are used to working hard, one on a shrimp boat and the other on an off-shore drilling rig, but nothing prepared them for what they were to encounter in the town that normally has a population of 1,700 people. In this tiny town in Southwestern Louisiana that has only one coffee shop, the two friends witnessed for themselves that all 750 homes had been damaged and the sight was more than they could bear. Daigle wandered down Channel Drive, where he and his wife of 32 years lived and raised their two children and he couldn’t believe what he saw. He said that it looked like the storm had picked up the houses and shook the contents out into the streets. He saw a child’s headboard to a bed with stickers reminding the child to brush and floss the teeth. "It used to be a right nice place to live," Daigle said. Everyone in this tiny town knew everyone else. But the two men only saw about 4 houses that their occupants could return to and they wondered how the townspeople could rebuild after Hurricane Rita’s massive hatred on their town. The two men lamented on how Saturday nights, everyone would gather and have crawfish and shrimp cook outs and the town was safe to let kids run around at night. "Why we felt safe enough that it was odd to lock your doors at night," said Thibodeaux. But at least something of Hackberry still remains. To the Southeast of Hackberry, the town of Cameron is completely gone. It’s as if someone took an eraser and totally wiped out that tiny town. Another tiny town that had a population of only 175 that was a fishing town called Holly Beach is no more. No signs of anything of Holly Beach remain. No stop signs, no houses, no café, nothing. Other residents of Hackberry pressed against the roadblock on Highway 27 and the sheriff’s deputy told them all with a heavy heart that the main road in and out of Hackberry has washed out so badly that not even emergency vehicles can get in nor out of the town. Now the residents are realizing that their beloved town will never be the same, even once they start to rebuild. At this point, it is even highly unlikely that this area’s shrimping industry will get back to the way it was before the hurricane hit. For on a good day, a hauler might be able to catch about 2,500 pounds of shrimp, but the infrastructure of the ports and the markets have appeared to have been destroyed. But the good news about this story is that the best friends, Roger Thibodeaux and Mike Daigle have found that their houses are still standing even though there is a good two to three inches of mud inside them. ------------ About the author: Kaycee Nilson has completed her first novel, "Night Falls on Chicago." The first two chapters can be viewed at http://www.KayceeNilson.com. Besides writing columns for Useless-Knowledge, Kaycee is currently working on two more novels, "From the Mind of a Vampire", and "I'll Love You Til You Die." If you have enjoyed what you read, or would like to leave Kaycee a message, please visit her message board at http://www.KayceeNilson.com/Board Email: Kaycee@kayceenilson.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
