Katrina Relief Mission

From New Orleans to Bobby Kennedy and The Stars
Submitted by Josh Tickell on December 2, 2005 - 09:06.The sectional highway “kathumped” like semiautomatic bullets beneath the wheels of the black Cadillac Catera. We were doing over 85 on the way to the New Orleans airport. A cop came up fast behind us. My stepfather pulled over into the right lane and the fuzz blew by us like we were standing still. And from the looks of the surrounding landscape, we might as well have been.
The section of New Orleans that is “dead” begins at the point where the Slidell twin span bridge (affectionately dubbed the “monospan” while it is under reconstruction), ends and New Orleans East begins. Houses, apartment complexes, and businesses sit as lifeless testaments to a society that just didn’t work out. To picture it, bring to mind any strip mall, low-middle income area of your city. Now take away the people. Now turn everything off – the power, the gas, the sewage, the water – everything. Now cover everything in toxic mud. Throw sailboats into people’s yards. Turn cars over. Burn buildings. Take large signs and twist them into contorted shapes. Crush houses and blow their roofs off. If you can picture that – you can get a glimpse of what a section of New Orleans equivalent in size to about half of Long Island now looks like.
In the car, we discussed what to do with it all. Mow it to the ground and plant trees, was about the best solution we could come up with. It’s just so unimaginably large. I’m going to do some research to figure out the process taken to rebuild Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Hamburg after World War II. Because that’s the closest analogy to what has become of the majority of this city.
The airport was a ghost town. I handed the sky cap guy a couple of bucks and wondered if I shouldn’t have given him a five dollar bill. God only knows where these people are living. From the air, our country looks so vast. Mountains, lakes, forest, desert, rivers – it’s all so big and beautiful - and calm. And then finally comes the Grand Canyon, the San Andreas Mountains and then the huge cement world of Los Angeles.
My girlfriend and I arrived at Brad and Colleen Bell’s house in Beverly Hills and I gave the key to the biodiesel Golf to the valet. (Brad is the executive writer and producer of The Bold and the Beautiful). There were a few stars present – Kirsten Dunst, John Cusack and Alicia Silverstone among others. I spoke with Kirsten but not with the others. Mostly, I was there to meet Bobby Kennedy, who gave a stirring talk about the very close relationship between the US Government and certain industries such as the timber, coal and chemical companies. He spent a few minutes chatting to us before the talk and agreed to be in the documentary film I’m making.
I agree with Bobby’s thesis that ultimately, any company that forces some of the cost of its production onto society through pollution, waste and other externalities is being subsidized by the public. Essentially, such entities are operating a preferred market economy, rather than a free market economy. An example of this are the oil companies which operate in South Louisiana where they leave vast areas of land filled with toxic waste, forcing the EPA to classify them as superfund sites and then forcing the public to spend hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up their mess.
My only beef with Bobby’s talk is that he was standing in a room with about 75 of Hollywood’s most influential people and he didn’t ask them to do anything. There was no specific call to action. Yes, these people were presumably well-education, well-heeled social luminaries, but if they were really getting things done for America, perhaps we wouldn’t be heading face first into one of the largest economic crisis in recent history. Everyone seemed pleased with his talk, ate desert, got into their Toyota Priuses and SUVs and went home.
In a room full of people who control much of the content of what we see on TV and in the movies, one of the most interesting points Bobby made was that, in many ways, the destiny of the country lies in the hands of the media. Misinformation creates a domino effect whereby the wrong people are elected for the wrong reasons. He cited a statistic that 85% of the people who voted for George Bush believed that Saddam Hussein had attacked the World Trade Center. Which, if correct, begs the question: Where the heck is America getting its information?

Stealing Back the Veggie Van
Submitted by Josh Tickell on November 29, 2005 - 18:36.
If you watched the film ‘Snatch’ starring Brad Pitt, you know that Pikeys are a group of nomadic gypsies who are renowned for negotiating deals that are extremely lucrative for themselves and extremely unfortunate for those on the other side. For the two days I spent in Welsh, Louisiana getting the Veggie Van out of the muck of a yard where it never should have been, I felt very much like I had thrown myself into a band of Pikeys with no way out. I spent most of my time there praying that my dismembered body wouldn’t be found several weeks later in a swamp.
 
First, some quick back-story so you don’t have to pour through all of my previous blogs… After participating in post-Katrina relief efforts, I was forced to evacuate during the onset of Hurricane Rita. I happened to be in Lake Charles at the time and happened to be driving the Veggie Van – yes, the van that in many ways started this whole biodiesel enterprise I now call a career. During the evacuation, I ran over some debris that had blown off a truck, thereby damaging the back wheel of the van. I was forced to ditch the vehicle and left it in the yard of Billy Eaton, a kindly (but not very literate) young Cajun fellow who assured me he was a mechanic and that he would fix the van and take care of her in exchange for a little cash, which I willingly gave him. The night of the Rita, Billy drove me all the way to Baton Rouge (safely out of the storm’s reach). He also left me three phone numbers. I would soon learn that none of them worked.

After numerous attempts, I made phone contact with Billy about four weeks after the storm. He said there had been some ‘complicashons w’ fixin’ da’ van’ (I think that’s what he said, it was always hard to know exactly what he was saying because of his incredibly thick Cajun accent, or perhaps because he just didn’t want me to know). Anyway, he’d try to have “evertin’ fixed up by Tanksgivin’ time”. I sent him some more parts and twenty dollars. At the time, I wasn’t worried. But I should have been.

About a week later, I received the following email:
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From:         Terry Grice
Date:         Wednesday, November 9, 2005 2:45 PM
Subject:     The Veggie Van in Louisiana

The van you so called said it was damaged is sitting in my yard in Welsh, Louisiana. Nothing is wrong with it. It has been sitting in my yard for more than a month and State Law says that if a unknown vehicle is in a residents yard, it belongs to him after 30 days. If you want it back, I will gladly give it to you, but you owe me for the amount of time it has been sitting there. Grand total $14,000

1SG Terry M. Grice
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Over the next couple of weeks I spoke with Billy on the phone several times and he told me how he and the police had moved the van back into his yard and how he had almost finished repairing the van. Incidentally, the young black man who stole the van would be institutionalized, he said. One minor thing, though, “some of da’ stuff ya’ had in ‘dere was done bin stolen, Mr. Jasha – they got in trew dat lil’ winda and dey stole some ‘tings.” Billy couldn’t tell me exactly what was missing or who had taken it or even when. All I knew was that I was now dealing with a van that had been stolen and looted.

Two days after Thanksgiving, I arrived in Welsh and parked my stepfather’s car at the ExxonMobil gas station. It was just after 1pm. Billy had agreed to meet me, take me to the van and do some minor repairs so that I could get it rolling again. Billy, being Billy, has no cell phone. I knew he was towing a car back from another town nearby, but he had assured me he would be back in time to meet. By 3pm, I had called his grandmother (my only point of contact for Billy) several times. She didn’t know where he was and she was getting worried.

After dinner and an (irrelevant) number of drinks Billy #2 and I were in the middle of a conversation about the potential for America to turn into a totalitarian state when my phone rang. It was Billy #1. Billy #1 explained that his $200 truck had indeed broken down and as a result, it had “burned isself t’ a crisp on da side da highway.” (At least, I think that’s what he said). He said he couldn’t meet me in the morning because of “complicashons.” Tired of the game, I flat out bribed him, offering him forty bucks for his “time” if he could meet me earlier. Surprise. He agreed to meet me at 7:30am. But there was just one thing – the keys to the Veggie Van were under the seat in his truck when it burned to a crisp. We would have to go find his truck and see if we could extract the keys.

When we arrived, several black men were milling around the front of the shack. Billy quickly hopped out of his car and said a few words to them. They jumped into a pickup truck, giving me a cursory wave as they sped off into a cloud of dust.

In his slow, halting speech, Billy explained to me that he thought this was a safer location for the van and that there had been a big miscommunication about the fact that the people who lived here had thought the van had been a gift of some kind. Indeed, they must have, because all of my tools were missing from the van, and just about every other item that wasn’t screwed down was gone from the interior – including personal items like my yoga mat and the jugs of biodiesel I had stored inside. Even more absurd – some of the vinyl letters making up the words “Powered by Vegetable Oil” and “1300 Miles Per Acre” were gone. They had been scraped off. Leaving “wered by egetable il” on one side and “00 iles er cre” on the other. I got the sense that there was much more to the picture of the van’s capture than I would ever know.

When Billy was ready to leave, I gave him his forty bucks and said goodbye. After he drove off, I called the police. Not surprisingly, they were unwilling even to come out.

By the time the first tow truck arrived at 8pm, I was tired, cold and bitten raw by mosquitoes. After loading the van, the driver presented me with a bill for $950, which he expected me to pay him immediately in cash. Using words not fit for this or any other blog and some creative Louisiana phraseology, I explained that I had never agreed to such a deal. He would have to put the van back down and leave immediately. After several telephone-screaming matches with his boss who had sent him all the way from Texas, he did just that.

Tired, cold, hungry, betrayed, bitten, and at my wits end, I called Good Sams Club and organized another tow truck for the morning. During this debacle, Charles Grice Sr. warmed up to me, apologizing for everything that had happened. I explained to him that it was nice he was apologizing, but maybe next time he and his son stole a van they should find a less obvious target. He apologized profusely saying that Billy #1 had told them it was a gift and that there had been a big miscommunication.

Charles asked me if I would take his son to the supermarket. I wanted some face time with “Terry” Grice so I obliged. In the car, he nervously fidgeted with his cell phone. I asked him how old he was.

“Nineteen sir,” he said.

“Are you in school?,” I asked.

“Yes sir, and I’m in the Reserves,” he declared proudly. I parked at the supermarket and he went inside.

As we drove back toward his trailer, the night was silent and dark. The air was full and thick in that way that so many things in Louisiana are. “Did you really think I was going to give you $14,000?” I asked him coldly. The question hung in the air like the abject poverty of his town.

I waited for what seemed like an eternity before speaking again. “You’re a smart young man,” I said into the darkness. The headlights danced along the dirt road. His fear was palpable.  
“But you can’t steal your way out of this place,” I said. “Part of it is a state of mind. You want to lie, you want to cheat. Fine. Keep doing that and you’ll spend the rest of your life in this trash burning, mosquito infested, godforsaken, nightmare of a town. But I believe you’re smarter than that,” I paused for a moment to catch my breath. I was hot. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest like a hammer

“What do you believe Mr. Grice?,” I asked quietly.

We pulled up to his trailer, I turned to look at the young man sitting in the passenger seat and let the motor idle. He said nothing. I unlocked the car. He turned to me, his eyes looking downward, his face illumined by the flicker of the fires and said, “God, sir. I believe in God.”

“Then make peace with him,” I whispered.   
The engine whirred.  

For a second, he looked up at me and I held his troubled gaze.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

Then young Mr. Grice stepped slowly out of the car and into the firelight of burning garbage.

I pulled out of the driveway and drove away from the darkness of Welsh, Louisiana.

The next morning, I received a call from a tow truck driver as he turned onto Texas Highway 17 toward Austin. He was just calling to let me know that everything was OK. 

Doll Houses
Submitted by Josh Tickell on November 26, 2005 - 10:04.
Today, my uncle Jimmy took us on a tour of Slidell and New Orleans. I spent the day between anger and sadness. You can’t see this type of destruction and not feel something.
 We weaved through the areas of Slidell, New Orleans East, Gentilly, Chalmette and Lakeview including the 17th street levee breech. We did not stop at stoplights because they were not working and there were few cars. Among the shocking images were sings proclaiming “looters will be shot,” neighborhoods that had been covered in crude oil and entire towns that were shut down, their houses and businesses swathed in dark mud.

The residue on the ground in Chalmette where the Murphy Oil Refinery let loose over one million gallons of crude oil (which is a conservative estimate since their ruptured tank is reported to have had about 8 million gallons in it when the storm hit) is a hard, cracked oil cake. It looks like a desert riverbed, but instead of that tanned desert sandy color, it is black.

The Lakeview neighborhood where the 17th street canal breech occurred should be preserved as a testament to the ineptitude of engineers and politicians and to the corruption of Louisiana. It is so obvious where people died that the numbers on what is left of the houses serve only as reminders of how low a priority our safety really is.

Perhaps congress could re-appropriate some of the $400 billion we spend in the Pentagon each year and some of the tens of billions of dollars in profits made by the oil companies this year that operate in South Louisiana to insuring the safety of the towns and cities in the po’ south. Oh wait, that would also mean having to invest money into education, healthcare, public transportation and social services. Which could mean, an informed and economically mobile working middle and lower class.

But Congress’ inaction around the national security threat posed by the shrinking barrier islands and the inadequate levee system in New Orleans and its stripping of FEMA’s leadership, already slender federal budget and resources over the past several years to accommodate for Homeland Security, sent a clear message that the federal government would rather deal with real issues of national security on an ad-hoc basis – after disasters have occurred, rather than before.

Well, now’s their chance.

But who will bear the real burden of rebuilding – the congress and companies who ignored numerous warning signs and are at least partially responsible for the destruction, or the people whose lives were shattered because they worked, paid taxes, and as a result believed the lie that they were being protected by their government?

Only time will tell. But using the federal government’s inaction after other natural disasters as a measuring stick, I fear it will be the people.

Thanksgiving in Louisiana
Submitted by Josh Tickell on November 25, 2005 - 09:22.
I spoke to a reporter the other day that said she had read my blog but thought that all that stuff about people suffering in Louisiana was just depressing. Well, I agree. And I think nobody is more aware of that than the people who were hardest hit by the storms in Louisiana and Mississippi.

My family is not overly religious. We are Catholic. We attend church. Some of my cousins and I have attended Catholic schools at different times in our lives. We are not all “models of devout Catholicism,” but we do hold a general belief in God – or a unifying force if you like. And we certainly pray before big family meals. This Thanksgiving was no exception.

About halfway through the prayer that was being rattled off by memory by my uncle Jack, a successful orthodontist and whom I respect greatly, he began to tear up. He started to speak about how, this year more than ever, we really do have much to be thankful for – food, our family, our friends. Images from my run earlier that morning flashed through my head – burned houses, houses without roofs and all that ‘debris,’ that strange word given to the sum total of peoples’ lives that is often piled outside their houses on the sidewalk. It is a surreal feeling running through neighborhoods destroyed by the storms. There’s really nothing like working out to images of death and destruction.

Uncle Jack finished his prayer and we all sat down to eat. An ongoing debate about almost every aspect of who was and is responsible for the disaster area once known as New Orleans raged on through the day and evening, with all parties calling it quits around the same time as the football game. I couldn’t concentrate on all those little images running around on the TV, so I organized a game of spoons for the kids. I suppose the one upswing of the storms is that they have brought some families closer together. It’s not until you almost lose everything that you realize what is really valuable. And it’s not the house or the appliances or even the cars – it’s the people you love. I suppose that is what Thanksgiving is all about.

LEAN Conference in Baton Rouge, LA
Submitted by Josh Tickell on November 12, 2005 - 11:08.
Today I attended the Louisiana Environmental Action Network Conference in Baton Rouge Louisiana. This conference was a great recharge with representatives from the Sierra Club, Oxfam, FEMA the Louisiana State Government, LSU, and Tulane. The focus of the conference was surviving in Louisiana in a post-Katrina world. The insights of the conference were many - from the fact that there were 27 levee breeches to the fact that Louisiana's coastline is the fastest evaporating piece of land in the United States. I'm writing a much longer essay which encompasses the amazing truth of what actualy happened during Katrina incorporating the interviews and research that came out of the conference. Meanwhile, I did a podcast of the entire day. Click on Audio Reports/Podcasts and listen - you'll be fascinated.

Aftermath
Submitted by Josh Tickell on October 4, 2005 - 07:58.
It's been a hard week since I returned from Louisiana. Before I summarize the trip I want to say 'thank you' to everyone who contributed to this effort. We could not have done anything without the support of you - our donors. You make our work possible. I wish I could give each and every one of you a handshake and a hug. Of course, it takes a continued effort to really change the status quo. And in the case of Louisiana, it is going to take a long time to recover that area. I never got to see the oil spills as much of the damaged area is heavily guarded. However, we did learn that the total oil spilled was equal to 80% of what was lost during the Valdez spill. As the media attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding the disaster of Katrina, there is more information every day about how the human devastation was linked directly to the destruction of Louisiana's ecology. It turns out all that whining that environmntalists were doing about erosion and the loss of coastal barrier islands eventuated into a national security threat the likes of which we haven't seen since 9/11. Now people are worried about oil spills? Go figure. I never made it to Atlanta, in fact, I never made it much east of Lake Charles. After Rita inflicted damage on the Veggie Van and destroyed, among other things, the Lake Charles airport I was re-routed from Atlanta to Lake Charles and then finally to Baton Rouge, which is where I flew out of. I am finding it difficult to stay upbeat this week. We did great work, but it was emotionally taxing to see my home state in such a condition of devastation. I hated seeing New Orleans, even the little bit I saw, beaten and downtrodden (I mean more downtrodden). I still can't put words to accurately describe the whole experience. It was surreal. The work there will continue for years and I and the organization will continue to be part of the ongoing efforts to rebuild and rethink the area. For now, we are connecting people donating more supplies to areas affected by both Katrina and Rita. And I am planning on attending a rebuilding Louiisiana conference around Thanksgiving. I am also focusing my intention on a new Veggie Van since, even if we get Veggie Van I running again, it will never again be reliable and now needs to be retired. Please contact us at relief@veggievan.org if you have connections to grants or private foundations that can contribute to the capital needed for a new van. We estimate the total will be $75K and we wil be buying a motor home based on one of the new turbodiesel Mercedes Srinter Vans. Our goal is to put a new van on the road by January 1st, 2006 - a new year and a new beginning. Thanks again for supporting the ongoing work. As always, donation information is available under 'donations' on the side bar of this website. I hope to have all of the memory cards from the photographers back by next week so that we can upload the amazing photos of the journey to the picture gallery.

The Great Escape
Submitted by Josh Tickell on September 27, 2005 - 09:43.
After dropping off Randy Paul and Michael Stahr, who had both been assisting on the trip, at the Lake Charles airport, I checked flights from Lake Charles, Lafayette and Baton Rouge. All full. So, I began preparing to drive back across I-10 toward New Orleans. Hurricane Rita was getting bigger and angrier. I had little time to waste. I decided to fill the van with water and fuel, pick up enough food for a week, install a taller CB antenna I had picked up at a truck stop and head out while it was still dark in the early morning. Surely, I would miss the traffic. By the time I hit the interstate the next day, things were getting scary. I merged onto I-10 and hit a wall of traffic that looked like the Los Angeles 405 in rush hour. Worse, rush hour with a wreck – or two – or three. In less than 24 hours, I had gone from being a second-response relief worker to an evacuee. Now, I sat, engine running, on a two-lane interstate, with 5 million people from Texas and Louisiana, all of who had been told to leave. For a long, long time, I felt like I was in that scene from that ‘comet strikes America’ move. (I can’t remember which one, as there were two that season and I watched them both within a week). Anyway, the scene seemed ludicrous at the time. It was where everyone in the city left on the same interstate and got stuck in traffic. Then the wave from the comet submerged them all. I remember thinking to myself ‘That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen – surely people would walk or ride their bikes or run.’ It turns out I was wrong. And I wasn’t interested in waiting for the wave. By daybreak, I had left the interstate and was trying to head eastward on a parallel road, only to find the same dilemma. Traffic was backed up and no cars were moving. I gave it another half-hour, turned up the gain on the CB, pulled out the Louisiana Gazetter map, turned the steering wheel and stepped on the gas. In my mind, the van burned rubber in a U-turn. In reality, she slowly lumbered around in a semi-circle and began to travel in the opposite direction to the thousands of stranded motorists. My blood pressure rose steadily as I counted the cars in blocks of fifty. Fifty, one hundred, one fifty, two hundred. Alone, I passed them all. ‘Am I crazy?’ I wondered. I was the only one heading west – back toward Lake Charles and back toward Rita. It must have been a strange sight. A vividly painted van with California plates heading toward a storm the likes of which had just flattened whole cities. Nevertheless, I had clearly marked a route that would get me well east of the storm; the only caveat was that I would first have to return to Lake Charles. With no traffic in sight, the van flew down side streets and connecting highways. Lake Charles was a ghost town. No cars. No people. No open stores. Not even police. Every minute that passed seemed like eternity. I just wanted to go faster, father, in less time. By the time I had reached the outskirts of the deserted city, I had given up on following traffic regulations. I put the van in 4th and kept the accelerator near the floor. Stop signs and red lights were meaningless. There was simply nobody on the roads. I turned left on the last city road and began to head east. My pulse slowed a bit as I saw the LA highway sign for highway 14. A few miles out of town, I passed a gas station – a line of SUV’s, trucks and Winnebagos had just finished gassing up and was leaving. Strange, even in near-deserted condition when people don’t know each other, they still tend to clump together and travel in packs. State highways are posted at a 45-mile per hour speed limit. Our ‘pack’ was doing 75 on the straightaways. At some stage, everyone turned on their emergency blinkers. I noticed a few retired military plates and even one POW sticker. At least a few of these folks knew each other and they knew where they were headed. We were like some sort of Mad Max band of road warriors heading for a safe settlement – somewhere far from here. Indeed, it would have been difficult to stop the numerous tons of steel all headed together, bumpers almost touching, down these little highway roads. We passed house after house with boarded windows. Even the countryside was deserted. The cavalcade accelerated to 80 and then to 85. Knowing the danger we faced even at 70mph on the tiny 2 lane bitumen roads and the limits of the Veggie Van, I backed off and pulled onto a dirt shoulder to let the vehicles pass. At the end of the line, I began to accelerate again, only to find a truck whip past me. A gust of wind picked up some of its loosely tied cargo dropping things all over the road. I ran over some pieces of what had once been one of those hefty barbecues. The pickup driver never even slowed down. I head a loud thud under the back axle but the van kept going. I decided to burn a few more miles before stopping to check the van. I continued along my route moving as fast as I could. The wind was picking up and I could feel the van swaying more with each gust. Clouds were gathering to the south. Of all the days to be driving alone, this was not it. Flying down deserted state highways, running from a hurricane, strange thoughts went through my head. I went over the list of things I had in the van to make myself feel better. 30 gallons of biodiesel fuel in the tank and 30 gallons in jugs. That 60 gallons would get me at least 1,200 miles. 10 gallons of water in the holding tank plus three cases of drinking water bottles. Clif bars, protein powder, apples, bananas, canned food, rain gear, CB radio, tools, emergency medical supplies. What was I worried about? I had everything I needed. Well, almost everything. I rounded a bend and headed north on highway 99, hoping to cross the interstate and continue north toward highway 190. Just as I began to accelerate again, I head a screech coming from the back drivers’ side wheel. I began to pray. I mean, I began to pray more – I’d been praying all day. Soon, smoke was pouring out from the wheel. ‘Darn it,’ I thought, ‘the bearing is gone. But how in the world did that barbecue do that?’ Still praying, I pulled over into the yard of a burned down house. I got out of the van to inspect the wheel. Brake fluid was everywhere and smoke poured out from the wheel. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that the rear brake line had been severed, squirting fluid down into the wheel, and cleaning all the grease out from the bearing. Right then and there, I vowed never to carry a barbecue grill in the back of a pickup while running from a hurricane. I also vowed to always carry the one spare part I didn’t have: wheel bearings. I had at least made it into cell phone range. After several tries, I finally got the RV club towing service on the phone. I gave my details and the representative went away to check on a tow truck. When he returned, his voice was serious. “Sir, I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” he said. “But, you’re in a hurricane evacuation zone.” I restrained from screaming “Um, thanks for the announcement Captain Obvious. I can see the trail clouds for the hurricane from here – do you think I’m just out taking a scenic tour of Louisiana’s swamps?!” Instead, I let him finish telling me there were no tow trucks available because they had all been commissioned by the police department. Towing what? He didn’t know. He couldn’t do anything to help me, but did offer to reimburse me for any expenses I might incur. I thanked him and hung up. I wish I had been near a Circuit City, I would have gotten that new XM car radio and sent him the bill. I looked around at the charred foundation of a house, a deserted road and a darkening sky. ‘Why God?,’ I asked. ‘Why today? Why now? Why here?’ Just then, a beaten Ford Bronco appeared on the road. A young, tough looking guy poked his head out of the window, “You need a hand with that?” he asked. As it turns out, Billy Eaton lives on highway 99 right next to the foundation of a burned down house. He works on a local farm that grows rice and beans, but he finished a technical training course in mechanics. In less than 10 minutes, he had the wheel off the van and we were inspecting the bearing, which had indeed lost all of its grease and was now a mangled metal mess. “Is this a Dodge or a Chevy rear end?,” asked Billy. “Neither,” I said, “it’s a Renault.” Just then, I gave up on ever driving the Veggie Van again. Renault is long gone from the United States. Their only parts and service center is in Iowa. And I had a funny feeling a next day delivery to this area was out of the question. I made a mental list of what I needed from the van and said goodbye to the old girl. She had been a valiant servant and a good friend, but there was no way I was going to hang around and wait to see what Rita would do to her. Billy studied the rear end again, shook his head and looked back to me. “Where you headed?,” he asked. Billy didn’t talk much, but when he did, he asked good questions. Forty bucks in gas (yes, we found one of the ONLY open gas stations in Louisiana) and some fried boudin sausage later and we were screaming down farm roads away from the interstate (which was still clogged at the intersection of LA 99 and I-10) away from Billy’s home in Welsh, Louisiana and away from Rita. I didn’t care where we went and I had ceased caring about the van the moment I locked the door. I had asked God why, and God had sent Billy, as rough and tumble, as Cajun as they come - in a Ford Bronco he had bought out of the back yard of a stranger for $300. And under the circumstances, Billy and his Bronco were just fine with me. It wasn’t even 6pm and the sky was almost completely obscured. For a brief while, we could see the interstate. Cars were pulled over on the sides. People were waving gas cans in the air. We passed thousands of stranded motorists and hundreds who had run out of fuel or whose cars had overheated. Meanwhile, two lanes of westbound open highway stared at them from across the median. Not only did I not feel bad about abandoning the Veggie Van, I was amazed at the speed with which we were traveling in comparison to the easily over 1 million cars that were not moving. Billy knew the farm roads, the rice fields, the bean fields and the cow pastures. His $300, four wheel drive Bronco was worth its weight in gold as we navigated into the night. Eventually, Billy dropped me off at a house of some of my relatives where I would weather Rita. I gave him some money for gas and some money for his time and he headed back into the night – back toward his home and back toward Rita, who was now bearing down on Lake Charles with a similar wrath that her wayward sister, Katrina had showed to New Orleans. As Rita screamed late into the night, I prayed again, this time for Billy and all of the people like him.