I barely watch TV at all and didn’t know what he was talking about. “You’re talking about that little hurricane that hit Florida?” I asked him.
    For a long moment, he just looked at me. Then he headed off to pre-trip his tractor, calling back over his shoulder, “Salaam, you need to start watching TV.”

I went to the dispatch office and asked the supervisor if she’d heard anything about a hurricane coming our way.
    “Yeah,” she told me. “A big one.”
    She clicked over to Weather.com and pointed to the screen. I saw a huge, angry ball of red, yellow and orange sitting right in the middle of the Gulf. I couldn’t believe it.
    The day before, while I was driving, I had heard reports about a small hurricane that hit the East Coast of Florida and caused relatively minor damage. The forecasters were saying that the little hurricane would cross Florida, then turn 90 degrees North and make a second landfall somewhere along the Florida panhandle. At the time, I was completely unconcerned. Now I was looking at a monstrous storm that looked like it could easily be heading for Louisiana.
    “What are we supposed to do?” I asked her.
    She shrugged. “Business as usual,” she said. “I guess.”

By 9 o’clock, things had changed. Dispatch called all of the drivers back to the yard and put us on standby. The big wigs at the Folgers plant and the Dupré management team scheduled a joint conference call for 12 Noon to decide what to do about the hurricane. While waiting for the results of the conference call, we drivers ate lunch in front of the television, watching the ominous advance of Katrina. We ate our red beans and rice, fried chicken, roast beef sandwiches and catfish po-boys and made up doomsday scenarios, all of which involved lots and lots of water and none of which we actually believed. New Orleans people have a contradictory attitude of, on the one hand, fatalistic acceptance of ‘the big one’ hitting one day, and on the other hand, an unrealistic belief that ‘the big one’ will never hit us (not because of any meteorological or geographical evidence, but simply because we don’t want it to).

Around 11 o’clock, the low-lying parishes of Plaquemines and St. Bernard were calling for evacuations. St. Bernard Parish lies to the immediate Southeast of Orleans Parish. (The city of New Orleans and Orleans Parish, although politically differentiated, are geographically one in the same.) St. Bernard abuts the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the lowest lying and poorest areas of New Orleans. (I was born and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward, by the way.) Geographically, there isn’t much to separate the Lower Ninth Ward from Chalmette, the biggest city in St. Bernard Parish. The only things marking the ‘border’ between the two is a small levee and a set of train tracks. Socio-politically, the two areas are world’s apart. The Lower Nine is almost 100% Black and almost 100% poor or lower working class. Chalmette is probably about 80% white (although it seems like more when you’re Black) and is a mix economically, comprised of everything from the outright impoverished to upper middle class. I don’t know much about Plaquemines except that it is mostly marsh and swampland and is made up of largely working-class and poor white folks. There is a large shrimping and fishing community there. Once on CNN I heard Plaquemines described as a ‘suburb’ of New Orleans. That’s pretty funny. Plaquemines is a place where most people live off of the land (or the water, in this case) either directly or tangentially. Most of the houses are built on rickety stilts and probably about 1% of the people commute to New Orleans everyday. It’s a fishing community, not a suburb. The people there are tough and hard—they’re survivors. But they do have televisions and I’m sure they know a big one when they see it.

The moment we heard the St. Bernard Parish President call for an evacuation, we started teasing the day spotter, George Johnson. (A spotter is a truck driver who moves trailers around the yard instead of going out on the road. It’s a dusty, hot and largely thankless job.) George is a sixty-something year-old white dude from Chalmette. He’s also a Vietnam vet with a colostomy bag to prove it. He is chronically, though not seriously (I think/hope), ill and when he’s not spotting trailers in the hot New Orleans sun, he cares for his homebound wife, who is also chronically (and seriously, I’m afraid) ill. When I asked George if he was going to evacuate, he laughed.
    “I made it through Betsy right there at my house,” he said proudly. “Only got about a foot of water inside. If I made it through Betsy, I can make it through anything.” (New Orleans people love to brag about how their house is the highest point in their neighborhood. That’s pretty funny to me—everybody’s house can’t be the highest point, can it?)
    George told us, if the water got too deep he’d go to the biggest shelter in St. Bernard Parish, Chalmette High School, which happens to be right across the street from George’s house. Days later, one of the national networks would report that the water was 10-feet deep inside of Chalmette High. Ten feet deep on the second floor. If George had indeed gone to Chalmette High, I had to assume he was dead.

At one o’clock, our dispatcher was still on the conference call. Some of the nightshift drivers were calling in, asking if they were going to have to come in that night. People were starting to get worried.
    An hour later, dispatch was still on the conference call. Every television station was doing weather. Jerry Springer, Guiding Light and Judge Judy were on hold—it was all Katrina all the time. Every weatherperson agreed: Katrina was going to hit us and hit us hard. The driver’s lounge went quiet. Nobody felt like joking anymore.

Finally, dispatch hung up. “Full lockdown,” she said. “No night shift tonight.”
    ‘Full lockdown’ means, prepare for the worst. That means we had to move all 100-some-odd trailers on the yard as closely together as possible to stop the wind from being able to lift them individually. We would also have to pull every trailer from the docks at the plant and bring them over to the yard.
    We’re not supposed to make phone calls while behind the wheel, but all of the drivers spent the rest of the workday with cells pressed to their ears, planning their escape route. Only one driver, Joe Hooker, a forty-something year-old Gulf War vet, was claiming that he was going to stay. Joe was saying that he had a storage shed full of MREs (a military acronym for Meals Ready to Eat) and enough water to last months. Joe said his family was already out of town, so he was going to get drunk and watch the storm. I heard later that Joe was just talking. He ended up evacuating along with everybody else.

When I got off of work, I went to see my seven-year-old son, Jahi, at his grandmother’s house. Before the hurricane, I was scheduled to be off on Sunday and Monday, so Jahi was supposed to be with me. On the way to Verne’s house (that’s Jahi’s grandmother, my ex mother-in-law), I decided to ask Denise (my ex) if Jahi could evacuate with me, although I knew the chances of her saying ‘yes’ were slim and none. My brother, Tuta, gave me tips on how to bring it up without starting a fight. (‘Just ask,’ he was telling me; “Don’t act like it’s your right—let her make the decision.”) I followed his advice and to my complete shock, Denise said, ‘Yes.’

That night, my sister, and my Mom said they wanted to evacuate with me. That meant I would have a (relatively) small amount of trunk space for my own stuff. I mentally planned to bring nothing but the essentials: pictures of Jahi, my computer and extra hard drive and three changes of clothes. By about ten o’clock Saturday night, Katrina was a powerful Category 3 hurricane that appeared to be heading straight for New Orleans. I went to bed, half-hoping that I’d wake up in the morning to see that Katrina had turned to the East, New Orleans had been spared yet again, and Jahi and I could spend Sunday just hanging out and doing nothing.

Sunday morning, I woke up at about seven o’clock and turned on the TV. The news was exactly the opposite of what I had hoped for. Katrina had gone from a 3 to an unbelievably massive and perfectly formed 5. Not only did the projected path of the eye put New Orleans directly in grievous harm’s way, Katrina had gotten so big that it really didn’t matter if the eye missed us or not. We were going to get slammed. Then they showed a live shot of I-10 West. It was a literal parking lot. For the first time, I felt a real sense of urgency.

I live on the second floor of an apartment complex in New Orleans East, only about a mile or so from Lake Ponchatrain. Despite the East’s less-than-stellar reputation in the local press, the East is actually a good place to live. It is almost all Black and upper working to upper middle class, aside from small pockets of whites here and there and a large, if isolated, Vietnamese population in the Michoud area (the furthest East neighborhood of the city). The East is not the kind of neighborhood that evacuates for every little storm, so I took it as a sign of Katrina’s severity that everywhere I went in New Orleans East that morning, I saw obvious signs of people getting ready to get out. People were taking Katrina seriously.

I spent the next four hours driving around the rapidly emptying city, gassing up my car, airing up the tires, picking up my Mom and my sister and waiting for my brother, his wife and four kids to get ready to roll.

My Mom rents a beautiful apartment from a friend of hers in an historic Westbank neighborhood called Algier’s Point. Altough Algier’s Point is separated from the French Quarter by the massive Mississippi River, the houses there have the unmistakable panache of Old New Orleans. The house my Mom’s apartment is in looks like a postcard of New Orleans architecture. Like most major cities in America, inner-city and downtown New Orleans is being gentrified rapidly. Young, upwardly mobile Whites used to flee to the suburbs. Now that they’ve grown tired of the rising real estate prices and the inconvenience of commuting, they’ve begun ‘reclaiming’ urban neighborhoods. That process is at work in not only Algier’s Point but also in the Mid-City neighborhood where my sister lives. In both areas, you see the curious mix of dead-broke Blacks and upwardly-mobile Whites, often living on the same block. The Blacks pay $500 per month to live eight and nine to a house in slum-like conditions while, right down the street, Whites pay $1100 per month to live in newly renovated showpieces. Eventually, the slummy house will be either sold or renovated, at which point the poor Blacks will be unceremoniously shown the door and another yuppie will move in. It’s a slow and strange process.

I picked up my Mom and my sister, then headed to my brother’s house on Spain Street in Gentilly, a largely middle-class and racially mixed neighborhood which sits fairly close to Lake Ponchatrain. Today, most locals think of Gentilly as part of the heart of New Orleans, geographically. Originally though, it was a suburb. The houses there were built many decades after the original New Orleans neighborhoods were built. While the houses in Gentilly do have the comforting, sturdy look of old American architecture (Gentilly isn’t a cookie-cutter, ‘suburb’-looking area like New Orleans East) it doesn’t have the ‘classic’ style of Mid-City or the Garden District or Algier’s Point. There aren’t many of the archetypal shotgun doubles in Gentilly.

When my Mom, my son, my sister and I arrived at my brother’s house, it looked like any other Sunday morning. My brother and his wife, Keisha, were eating breakfast in the kitchen, my nieces and nephew were playing on the computer or watching videos. Despite the heavy traffic and borderline hysteria rapidly building in the city, no one on Spain St. seemed to be in a hurry. At the time, Tuta and Keisha’s lack of urgency aggravated me. I was ready to go and go now. In retrospect, I think they might have known, even subconsciously, that they were seeing their house and sitting in their kitchen for the last time. It took a lot of time and work for my brother and his wife to grow from a poor unmarried couple with a child renting a one-room apartment to middle-class, married parents of four with a beautiful house in an enviable neighborhood. I’m not saying they’re rich—they live check-to-check like the rest of middle-class America—but they do have a lot to lose. By comparison, being recently divorced, I’ve already lost a three-bedroom, two-bath house, my family and my middle-class respectability. Jahi was with me. I didn’t have much else to leave behind. Eventually, and reluctantly, Tuta and Keisha packed the kids, some snacks and the family photos into their minivan and car and we were ready to go.

That was the morning of Sunday, September 28th—as of this writing, almost two weeks ago. For me, the last 13 days have been a long, slow blur.

Yesterday, I was flipping through a magazine and saw a comment from John Leguizamo about being the father of a toddler. “The days are long,” he said, “But the years are short.” With that description in mind, I’d describe evacuating as one endless day. When you’re running from a hurricane, everything takes a long time.

I’m writing this from the bedroom floor of an oversized apartment in the Miracle Mile section of Los Angeles. The use of the apartment is but one of the many, many small and large acts of kindness we’ve been the recipients of since leaving New Orleans. Next to me, my son Jahi is eating Honey Nut Cheerios out of the box while watching some goofball show on Cartoon Network. My sister Asante just woke up having gotten too hot because we forgot to open the windows. My ex-wife Denise (who we hooked up with a few days after evacuating) is offering me some grocery store sushi, which, while not being anywhere near as good as restaurant sushi, is significantly better than no sushi at all.

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. I say, evacuating from killer hurricanes does the same thing. Since leaving our city, we four have slept together in hotel rooms, on sofas, on floors, in my car and now, in this huge L.A. bedroom. We’ve fought and made up more times than I care to remember and we know the hardest part of our journey is still to come.

(The three adults do, at least. Jahi is oblivious. The other day at the Red Cross shelter on Wilshire, a reporter asked him if this was the worst thing that ever happened to him. “No,” he answered cheerfully. “I like it. No school!”)

I don’t feel sorry for myself for even a second. I have so many options, opportunities and resources that I almost feel guilty. I’m a Class A truck driver with a clean record and four years’ experience. I can get a job anywhere. Denise (my ex) is a bilingual, degreed social worker. Asante (my sister) is a graphic designer, artist, and production coordinator with a degree. We’re all very employable. Jahi is an intelligent, well-behaved seven-year-old whose already been offered enrollment at everything from the local public school to exclusive charter and private schools. I spend hours at a time frozen in indecision and overwhelmed by the suddenness and enormity of the changes in my life, but I know this will pass. But for the poor people of New Orleans, this is the latest and probably toughest disaster in a life that is comprised largely of barely making it from one disaster to the next.

I’m not in the appropriate state of mind to clearly state my feelings on the politics of the evacuation of New Orleans. Suffice it to say that 99% of those who had the opportunity to leave New Orleans did leave. If you have a TV, you saw who was left. That pretty much says it all.

Opportunity is a scarce commodity. Those who have it guard it jealously. Those who don’t have it suffer and die for the want of it. Is this just? Is it fair? Is it equal? Is it right?

To all the evacuees, don’t quit and you’ll be alright.
To all those who are helping the evacuees, thank you.
And to those who were left, God Bless.

As for my friend and co-worker, George from Chalmette, I don’t know how he got out, but he did get out. The last I heard, he was back at work. Although, obviously, not in New Orleans.

* * *

Everyone listed below has helped us and although none of them will probably see this, I want to take this opportunity to thank them publicly. Many others, who aren’t listed, have offered to help us and whether because of circumstance or timing, we have been unable to accept. Thanks to them too.

Thank you, Aileen Argentini (Los Angeles, CA)
Thank you, April & John Richmond (Los Angeles, CA)
Thank you, Cynthia True & Erik Wiese (Los Feliz, CA)
Thank you, Dawn Tartar-Brewton and her son Tariq (Mesa, AZ)
Thank you, Deborah & Marshall Lowe (Inglewood, CA)
Thank you, Dee Dee Chambers (Hayward, CA)
Thank you, Reggie Dupré, DeWayne Ikner & Chris Husser of Dupré Transport (Lafayette, LA)
Thank you, Eastwood Pentacostal Church (Lake Charles, LA)
Thank you, Edythe Vassall (Hometown unknown)
Thank you, Elissa Blount-Moorehead & Jomo Moorehead (Brooklyn, NY)
Thank you, Elissa’s Mom (Washington D.C.)
Thank you, Fariah Chideya (Los Angeles, CA)
Thank you, Frieda Smith (Los Angeles, CA)
Thank you, Greg Pinelo & Susan Smith-Pinelo (Culver City, CA)
Thank you, Heather Elayne Davis (Los Angeles, CA)
Thank you, Jamyla & Pierre Bennu (Long Island, NY)
Thank you, Jillian Santillanez (Chula Vista, CA)
Thank you, Mrs. DeVille and her daughters, Michelle & Chanelle (Mamou, LA)
Thank you, Paula Puhak (Los Angeles, CA)
Thank you, René Gunter (Los Angeles, CA)
Thank you, Rhea Combs (Harlem, NY)
Thank you, S. Shange Amani & friends (Santa Monica, CA)
Thank you, Shawn Rhea (Detroit, MI)
Thank you, the staff at the Hampton Inn especially the over-worked lady who kept the free breakfast going every morning way past the scheduled end-time of 10 o’clock (Pell City, AL)
Thank you, the volunteers at the Red Cross Shelter at Wilshire & Rampart (Lost Angeles, CA)
Thank you, the waiter who gave us free drinks at IHOP (Austin, TX)
Thank you, Vanjia Franks, Elaine Priestley & Vanus Priestely, Jr. (Austin, TX)
Thank you, Vanjia’s friends, co-workers and church members (Austin, TX)