FEMA-Disaster Housing Inspector
People often ask me how I got involved with FEMA. Actually, I simply answered a newspaper ad. It was just a few months after the 9/11 incident and people were looking for ways to make a difference.
For most of my life, I had lived a fairly normal life as a wife and mother. When my husband and I were younger, we were avid canoers enjoying the thrill of white water. That was about the most exciting thing I'd done.
I applied for the job of Disaster Housing Inspector and received the training and before I knew it, I was out in the Chesapeake Bay area for Hurricane Isabel. I came home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. None of the training had prepared me for what I saw.
Being deployed to a big disaster is like getting thrown into a war zone with almost no training or supplies. I had no idea what I was getting into but I quickly learned. In a job that most people only do once and then go home and say, "Oh my God! I'll never do that again!" I actually found that I had innate skills and abilities that I'd never realized before.
For one thing, I am flexible. I can sleep on the floor of a hotel hallway one day and in my car the next. I can eat chicken spread directly from a can. I can climb 8 flights of stairs carrying all my equipment because the electricity is off and the elevator doesn't work. I've been on board more than one boat that was sinking to do an inspection. As long as an applicant can prove that "anything" is their primary residence, FEMA inspectors are required to inspect it. That includes tents, trailers, cars, and boats.
I even managed to work on the island of Puerto Rico for over two months when the majority of the population spoke Puerto Rican and I barely knew a few words of Spanish. Imagine walking into a convenience store and asking if anyone speaks English and out of 20 people only 1 of them says, "Poquito. I know leetle English. What do you need?" One night I stopped at a place called a hotel but they only rented the rooms by the hour. I quickly got out of there. It was some sort of "Lover's Inn".
When it came time to go to New Orleans for Katrina, all my friends said, "Don't go! It looks very dangerous there." Even colleagues and people that had worked in disasters for years refused to go there because of the many dangers present. There were stories of murder, rape and Cholera epidemics. After praying about it (I'm a Christian) I realized that the bottom line for me was that I had a mortgage to pay and needed the money.
So I packed my car with food, sleeping bags, first aid kit and everything it would take to live in my car for however long and headed to New Orleans. I have started a book about my own personal experiences there. Here's the link to that story. It's called, "The Hurricane Gypsies" and I named it this after seeing how the victims and survivors were constantly forced to move to a new place every few weeks.
Everything they owned and everything their relatives and friends owned was washed away by Hurricane Katrina and they had no place left to call home.
THE HURRICANE GYPSIES
Souls at unrest
Searching...
For their grandmother’s chair
A blanket they’ve had since childhood
A picture the eight-year old drew.
Searching for photos
Of picnics and barbecues
Of Weddings and births.
Searching for papers
Meaningful things.
Rummaging thru debris...
Nasty, muddy relics,
The stench of death
Still lingering
In what was once a home.
Hurting, angry souls
Crying out to no one.
Souls whose dreams
Are filled with turbulence.
Lost souls
With no home
No place to lay their heads at night.
People with only memories now
Of a wonderful life they once enjoyed
And nothing more.
All that remains
Are gnawing fears of tomorrow,
Agonizing thoughts of what will be.
Lonely, lost vagabonds
In search of a place to call home.
Carolyn L. Sorrell – Copyright October 2005 – New Orleans – All Rights Reserved
.............................................................................................................................
DAY 36 OF HURRICANE KATRINA
A lot of people out here in New Orleans are angry. They don’t think the govt is doing enough to help them. I guess it’s hard for them to realize that NO govt could effectively figure out housing for half a million displaced people in a month’s time.
Everyone feels awful for their plight, but no one has any viable, long-term solutions. Another factor that makes it difficult is that many of them want to stay here in Louisiana. The resources here to help victims are all but depleted. They’d get a lot more help if they moved away from Louisiana into areas like Colorado and Tennessee. Some have done that.
I’m doing an inspection tomorrow for a guy who’s been staying in California with friends. This is his first time back and he’ll be seeing his place for the first time since evacuating. Those are the hardest. Everyone cries the first time they see what’s left of their home.
I got a call today from a field officer who instructed me that I’d be getting an inspection to do from someone in a high political office. Of course they told me to do a thorough job, be courteous, dress nicely…etc.
Oooops! Did I mention that all my clothes are dirty? I’m down to wearing those few things that you keep in your closet but never wear. Normally, when I run out of clothes and there’s no working Laundromat nearby, I simply go buy new clothes. A few of the stores are beginning to re-open but not many.
Apparently NONE of the car washes survived and my car is filthy. I took it down to where the decontamination unit is set up today and they sprayed it with decontamination stuff, but it ain’t like it got washed or anything. A lot of the black mud/oil/benzene crap is gone though.
My wrist is feeling better. The swelling is going down. Those navy doctors really know their stuff. I’m working on future illnesses that might require me to return to the USS Comfort…there were a couple of hot navy dudes I could get to know a little better. LOL!
I met a really nice guy today at an inspection too. Or maybe I’m just lonely. Anyway, he says, “I wish we’d met under different circumstances.” just as I was leaving. Me too, cuz they don’t allow us to date our applicants…guess you can see the conflict of interest there.
The days are long and hard…I’m getting too much sun and not enough sleep. And wondering when this one’s going to end. Home feels like a distant memory now.
For most of my life, I had lived a fairly normal life as a wife and mother. When my husband and I were younger, we were avid canoers enjoying the thrill of white water. That was about the most exciting thing I'd done.
I applied for the job of Disaster Housing Inspector and received the training and before I knew it, I was out in the Chesapeake Bay area for Hurricane Isabel. I came home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. None of the training had prepared me for what I saw.
Being deployed to a big disaster is like getting thrown into a war zone with almost no training or supplies. I had no idea what I was getting into but I quickly learned. In a job that most people only do once and then go home and say, "Oh my God! I'll never do that again!" I actually found that I had innate skills and abilities that I'd never realized before.
For one thing, I am flexible. I can sleep on the floor of a hotel hallway one day and in my car the next. I can eat chicken spread directly from a can. I can climb 8 flights of stairs carrying all my equipment because the electricity is off and the elevator doesn't work. I've been on board more than one boat that was sinking to do an inspection. As long as an applicant can prove that "anything" is their primary residence, FEMA inspectors are required to inspect it. That includes tents, trailers, cars, and boats.
I even managed to work on the island of Puerto Rico for over two months when the majority of the population spoke Puerto Rican and I barely knew a few words of Spanish. Imagine walking into a convenience store and asking if anyone speaks English and out of 20 people only 1 of them says, "Poquito. I know leetle English. What do you need?" One night I stopped at a place called a hotel but they only rented the rooms by the hour. I quickly got out of there. It was some sort of "Lover's Inn".
When it came time to go to New Orleans for Katrina, all my friends said, "Don't go! It looks very dangerous there." Even colleagues and people that had worked in disasters for years refused to go there because of the many dangers present. There were stories of murder, rape and Cholera epidemics. After praying about it (I'm a Christian) I realized that the bottom line for me was that I had a mortgage to pay and needed the money.
So I packed my car with food, sleeping bags, first aid kit and everything it would take to live in my car for however long and headed to New Orleans. I have started a book about my own personal experiences there. Here's the link to that story. It's called, "The Hurricane Gypsies" and I named it this after seeing how the victims and survivors were constantly forced to move to a new place every few weeks.
Everything they owned and everything their relatives and friends owned was washed away by Hurricane Katrina and they had no place left to call home.
THE HURRICANE GYPSIES
Souls at unrest
Searching...
For their grandmother’s chair
A blanket they’ve had since childhood
A picture the eight-year old drew.
Searching for photos
Of picnics and barbecues
Of Weddings and births.
Searching for papers
Meaningful things.
Rummaging thru debris...
Nasty, muddy relics,
The stench of death
Still lingering
In what was once a home.
Hurting, angry souls
Crying out to no one.
Souls whose dreams
Are filled with turbulence.
Lost souls
With no home
No place to lay their heads at night.
People with only memories now
Of a wonderful life they once enjoyed
And nothing more.
All that remains
Are gnawing fears of tomorrow,
Agonizing thoughts of what will be.
Lonely, lost vagabonds
In search of a place to call home.
Carolyn L. Sorrell – Copyright October 2005 – New Orleans – All Rights Reserved
.............................................................................................................................
DAY 36 OF HURRICANE KATRINA
A lot of people out here in New Orleans are angry. They don’t think the govt is doing enough to help them. I guess it’s hard for them to realize that NO govt could effectively figure out housing for half a million displaced people in a month’s time.
Everyone feels awful for their plight, but no one has any viable, long-term solutions. Another factor that makes it difficult is that many of them want to stay here in Louisiana. The resources here to help victims are all but depleted. They’d get a lot more help if they moved away from Louisiana into areas like Colorado and Tennessee. Some have done that.
I’m doing an inspection tomorrow for a guy who’s been staying in California with friends. This is his first time back and he’ll be seeing his place for the first time since evacuating. Those are the hardest. Everyone cries the first time they see what’s left of their home.
I got a call today from a field officer who instructed me that I’d be getting an inspection to do from someone in a high political office. Of course they told me to do a thorough job, be courteous, dress nicely…etc.
Oooops! Did I mention that all my clothes are dirty? I’m down to wearing those few things that you keep in your closet but never wear. Normally, when I run out of clothes and there’s no working Laundromat nearby, I simply go buy new clothes. A few of the stores are beginning to re-open but not many.
Apparently NONE of the car washes survived and my car is filthy. I took it down to where the decontamination unit is set up today and they sprayed it with decontamination stuff, but it ain’t like it got washed or anything. A lot of the black mud/oil/benzene crap is gone though.
My wrist is feeling better. The swelling is going down. Those navy doctors really know their stuff. I’m working on future illnesses that might require me to return to the USS Comfort…there were a couple of hot navy dudes I could get to know a little better. LOL!
I met a really nice guy today at an inspection too. Or maybe I’m just lonely. Anyway, he says, “I wish we’d met under different circumstances.” just as I was leaving. Me too, cuz they don’t allow us to date our applicants…guess you can see the conflict of interest there.
The days are long and hard…I’m getting too much sun and not enough sleep. And wondering when this one’s going to end. Home feels like a distant memory now.
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................
TRUE CONFESSION: I AM A HOUSING INSPECTOR FOR FEMA
November 2005 Pahokee, Florida Hurricane Wilma
Yesterday in the little coffee shop where I eat breakfast sometimes, I overheard 3 workers talking about how many hours they’d been putting in since hurricane Wilma hit. So I pulled out a pen and did the math on my napkin. I’ve been working 95 hours per week for 95 days. You all know my propensity for bizarre numerical idiosyncrasies. So I ask you…what does this mean?
Does it mean I’ll be going home soon? Does it mean another great disaster is on the horizon? Does it mean I should get back into therapy? (most likely answer)
In the world of disaster home inspections, here are a few of TODAY’S WINNERS on my appointment list:
At 5 p.m. I’m meeting an applicant in a Winn Dixie parking lot. The reason? He has no home address. At the time of the storm, he was living in his automobile (still is). The hurricane damaged his car and he doesn’t have insurance to cover the damages, so he’s asking for federal assistance to repair his auto.
Question: Does the auto get entered as ‘”Transportation” or as a “Home Residence”?
I’ve also spent a fair amount of time in the illegal alien trailer park. Here’s what I’ve learned about illegal aliens while working Florida this year:
Each morning, when I open my eyes and think about my day, I am only able to remove myself from my comfy bed, put on clothing, and go out into the damaged world to inspect a few more wet, cockroach-ridden shitholes by telling myself that soon, yes, very soon, I shall be heading HOME.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PUERTO RICO DE MIS SUENOS
If a country could steal your heart, it would be this one. I know it won’t appeal to all of you, but my personality is such that we fit well together.
The lack of caution and care in everyday life; the haphazard way the town is thrown together. It’s as if it hasn’t occurred, even to city planners, that erecting a building only a few feet away from a street that is already too narrow, is a bad idea.
If you’ve been reading me, you know that the highways are littered with strays of every kind—cats, dogs, chickens and even cows and horses. Perhaps that’s the number one thing that draws me most—I am a stray, of a different sort, to be sure. But still a stray.
No home, no family, no place where I belong. There’s no reason for me to ever go home.
When I get home from work tonight, I will undress, step into the shower, stand under the warm water (hopefully it will be warm, but you never know here), and I will weep for half an hour. Then I will get out, dry off and be fine again for awhile.
The tears flow when I remember that I’ve been on the road for months and that this is the last big disaster of the season…I’ll go home soon. Life on the road suits me. Places where you never know what will happen when you get up each morning or where a day will take you.
Raw sewage has been bubbling up in the middle of the street in front of our hotel since I got here on October 13th. Several weeks ago, someone fixed it and the sewage stopped for about 3 days. Then one day, there it was again.
One of the guys here at the hotel was laughing and talking about it at dinner the other night. He said, “It was great there for a few days till someone flushed their toilet.” We were all amused, but I still recall thinking that he may have been closer to the truth than he knew.
These mountains, they take your breath away. The ocean at Old San Juan is the bluest you’ve ever seen; no description captures it. The Caribbean, just an hour south of here is vast and remarkable.
How could one not come here and lose their heart to this rare and extraordinary place?
Carolyn L. Sorrell – Copyright November 2004 – All Rights Reserved
..............................................................................................................................
What I Learned In Pahokee, Florida ~ Hurricane Wilma 2005
I’ll never forget the day I drove into Pahokee, Florida. I had been out in New Orleans for some months working Hurricane Katrina. There were no hotels, no gas stations, no grocery stores…nothing at all open and working along the Gulf Coast.
It was quite challenging simply to go out on the streets and work every day. You couldn’t stop and get and coke and pee. You were forced to carry extra gasoline with you wherever you went to make certain you did not run out somewhere in the heart of New Orleans. Because guess what? You wouldn’t even have been able to get a tow truck or any help.
I still recall the day I left New Orleans. All the way east on I-10, I dreamed of getting down to Miami. For even though they had been hit with a very deadly Cat 3 hurricane just a week before, I was certain it couldn’t be worse than New Orleans.
I drove into Pahokee on a bright September morning, where the skies were pale blue. The main street was lined with tall, graceful palms. A closer glance revealed lovely old mansions sitting back from the road…the kind you see on the cover of magazines. Beautiful, stately homes from the turn-of-the-century.
As I drove on into Pahokee, though, I quickly saw a much different landscape. Down in the heart of this small town was one shabby section 8 housing complex after another. The main street downtown was lined with rough-looking black men who seemed to be waiting for unsuspecting tourists or passersby, so they could make their score for the day.
In front of many of the run-down, cockroach infested rooming houses sat gangs of black men just daring anyone to come near their territory. For to do so, was certain death. They each had their own little region that they alone ruled. They controlled the drugs and prostitution in this one section of the town and no uninvited guests ever entered their domain without an invitation.
The only hotel in town had been all but destroyed by Wilma’s high winds and finding a hotel room in any nearby city was like finding a needle in a haystack. There were already thousands of emergency workers flooding into the area, searching for someplace to lay their weary heads at night.
But God had always looked out for me. I knew that somehow someway, He’d help me find a decent place to stay. My daughter searched around online for several days and finally located an expensive Bed and Breakfast in West Palm Beach that had a room available so I snapped it up quickly, barely hearing the lady tell me that she had no electricity or water.
I’d drive to work…it was about an hour…every morning at around seven o’clock and return home to West Palm Beach at about 7 in the evening. I would be filthy from climbing over debris and wading through muck all day long. Most of those Section 8 apartments were pretty nasty on the inside even before the hurricane did its thing. I would trudge home weary and filthy to a room with no water or electricity. That meant no shower.
Sometimes, at the end of some of my days of disaster work, the only thing that keeps me going is the thought of a hot shower when I get back to my hotel room. It was a full two weeks before the electricity and water could be restored and I could actually get that hot shower.
Each day when I would drive the streets of Pahokee searching for my addresses, I’d tell myself, “No way will I ever miss this God-forsaken place!”
Even the residents jokingly called Pahokee the “Armpit” of Florida. There was only one decent place to eat lunch in the whole town—The Jelly Bean Café—and I was thankful when they were able to repair their damaged roof and reopen. They had plate lunches and the best sweet tea I’d ever tasted. It was a welcomed respite from my long days of trudging through muck and mire as I watched my back, ever wary of the dangers that loomed out in the streets on any ordinary day.
Each time I’d leave a particularly horrible address and crawl back into my car, I’d say: “Oh my God! I can’t wait to leave this town!”
In the past, I’d found that no matter how difficult an assignment was, no matter how dirty or dangerous a town was, that I would eventually miss the place once the assignment was over and I had returned home. But I swore to myself that I’d never miss Pahokee no matter what.
And yet, only a few months after returning home from Pahokee, I found myself staring out a window in my den, daydreaming of having lunch of the Jelly Bean Café.
I snapped to attention and said out loud, “Holy Cow! Was I just reminiscing about being in Pahokee, Florida?” The thought stunned me. Over the next few months, I reflected upon my time there. I had forgotten the dingy, dirty apartments and the filthy-talking women. I had forgotten about the gangs and the cockroaches.
All I could recall now was that bright morning in September when I drove into the city down the wide boulevard past those tall, graceful palm trees. All I could remember were the many lunches I had enjoyed at the Jelly Bean Café and how great their coconut pie was.
I’ll never forget my last day in Pahokee. I went to have one final lunch at the café and say good-bye to the people there, who had by now, become friends. It was a long lunch that I lingered over. Eventually though, I got up, waved a final good-bye and strolled outside.
It was a beautiful, sunny day in December and two men were sitting out front in the rocking chairs, picking their teeth. I turned to face them. “Well, I’ve enjoyed my time in your little town,” I told them. “But I’m going home today.”
"And where's home?" one of them asked.
“Dallas. Leaving right now I guess.”
“Well, we’re glad you came. Thanks for all the hard work. Town’s looking better.”
“Oh yeah, it’s been a long hurricane season,"
“Guess you’ll be glad to get home,” says the other guy.
I shrugged. “You’d think.” I smiled. “Live alone, not much to go back to.”
They both smiled too. “Well, go carefully Miss Carol and come back to see us someday,” they both said simultaneously.
“Can't promise nothing. I rarely go anywhere that hasn't just been destroyed.”
They laughed and got up to wave when I got in the car. I pulled away from the curb and glanced back for one final wave goodbye. I always was such a sentimental soul. I took Hwy 715 south out of town, driving down the middle of the few beautiful homes in the city. They were old-timey plantation-style mansions at least 100 years old each. The wide highway was lined with lush palm trees, then behind them in the distance were these stately old mansions from another era. Really the only redeeming thing about the whole town.
If you can miss a town like Pahokee, something ain’t right in your head. Better get it checked out. All these years later, I still think of that town and all those days and nights I spent there. All those applicants living in those Section 8 apartments…always had some story about how much they lost and how badly they needed to get some money from the government right away. I didn’t doubt they were broke at all. People like that always live hand-to-mouth with never enough to get by. Sad there’s so many of them and nobody cares.
There’s so much despair and hopelessness in the Section 8 World. It’s the kind of place you don’t even want to visit. You’d rather pretend places like this don’t exist. They’re full and overflowing with poor black mothers who have 4 kids and 1 on the way because they don’t have any other way to earn a living except to keep having children that the government will pay for. You can’t blame them for being born into such a world. It could have happened to any of us. You leave thinking about how lucky you are not to have been born there.
I’m going back to Pahokee one day. I’m gonna drive around and see if I can find my favorite drug dealers and prostitutes. They’re real people with a story to tell. I’m going to Jelly Belly’s and get me some chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy…and sweet tea. They have homemade desserts too…maybe I’ll get some coconut pie.
Till then, I'll remember that no matter how bad an experience is, when you look back on it, you'll miss certain things. Every cloud has its silver lining.
TRUE CONFESSION: I AM A HOUSING INSPECTOR FOR FEMA
November 2005 Pahokee, Florida Hurricane Wilma
Yesterday in the little coffee shop where I eat breakfast sometimes, I overheard 3 workers talking about how many hours they’d been putting in since hurricane Wilma hit. So I pulled out a pen and did the math on my napkin. I’ve been working 95 hours per week for 95 days. You all know my propensity for bizarre numerical idiosyncrasies. So I ask you…what does this mean?
Does it mean I’ll be going home soon? Does it mean another great disaster is on the horizon? Does it mean I should get back into therapy? (most likely answer)
In the world of disaster home inspections, here are a few of TODAY’S WINNERS on my appointment list:
At 5 p.m. I’m meeting an applicant in a Winn Dixie parking lot. The reason? He has no home address. At the time of the storm, he was living in his automobile (still is). The hurricane damaged his car and he doesn’t have insurance to cover the damages, so he’s asking for federal assistance to repair his auto.
Question: Does the auto get entered as ‘”Transportation” or as a “Home Residence”?
I’ve also spent a fair amount of time in the illegal alien trailer park. Here’s what I’ve learned about illegal aliens while working Florida this year:
- Immigrant Farm workers work very hard and don’t make much dineros.
- They all live in a crappy mobile home park out east of town on the main highway.
- There are many demolished and/or shitty mobile homes in said trailer park.
- There are also many children and dogs in said park.
Each morning, when I open my eyes and think about my day, I am only able to remove myself from my comfy bed, put on clothing, and go out into the damaged world to inspect a few more wet, cockroach-ridden shitholes by telling myself that soon, yes, very soon, I shall be heading HOME.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PUERTO RICO DE MIS SUENOS
If a country could steal your heart, it would be this one. I know it won’t appeal to all of you, but my personality is such that we fit well together.
The lack of caution and care in everyday life; the haphazard way the town is thrown together. It’s as if it hasn’t occurred, even to city planners, that erecting a building only a few feet away from a street that is already too narrow, is a bad idea.
If you’ve been reading me, you know that the highways are littered with strays of every kind—cats, dogs, chickens and even cows and horses. Perhaps that’s the number one thing that draws me most—I am a stray, of a different sort, to be sure. But still a stray.
No home, no family, no place where I belong. There’s no reason for me to ever go home.
When I get home from work tonight, I will undress, step into the shower, stand under the warm water (hopefully it will be warm, but you never know here), and I will weep for half an hour. Then I will get out, dry off and be fine again for awhile.
The tears flow when I remember that I’ve been on the road for months and that this is the last big disaster of the season…I’ll go home soon. Life on the road suits me. Places where you never know what will happen when you get up each morning or where a day will take you.
Raw sewage has been bubbling up in the middle of the street in front of our hotel since I got here on October 13th. Several weeks ago, someone fixed it and the sewage stopped for about 3 days. Then one day, there it was again.
One of the guys here at the hotel was laughing and talking about it at dinner the other night. He said, “It was great there for a few days till someone flushed their toilet.” We were all amused, but I still recall thinking that he may have been closer to the truth than he knew.
These mountains, they take your breath away. The ocean at Old San Juan is the bluest you’ve ever seen; no description captures it. The Caribbean, just an hour south of here is vast and remarkable.
How could one not come here and lose their heart to this rare and extraordinary place?
Carolyn L. Sorrell – Copyright November 2004 – All Rights Reserved
..............................................................................................................................
What I Learned In Pahokee, Florida ~ Hurricane Wilma 2005
I’ll never forget the day I drove into Pahokee, Florida. I had been out in New Orleans for some months working Hurricane Katrina. There were no hotels, no gas stations, no grocery stores…nothing at all open and working along the Gulf Coast.
It was quite challenging simply to go out on the streets and work every day. You couldn’t stop and get and coke and pee. You were forced to carry extra gasoline with you wherever you went to make certain you did not run out somewhere in the heart of New Orleans. Because guess what? You wouldn’t even have been able to get a tow truck or any help.
I still recall the day I left New Orleans. All the way east on I-10, I dreamed of getting down to Miami. For even though they had been hit with a very deadly Cat 3 hurricane just a week before, I was certain it couldn’t be worse than New Orleans.
I drove into Pahokee on a bright September morning, where the skies were pale blue. The main street was lined with tall, graceful palms. A closer glance revealed lovely old mansions sitting back from the road…the kind you see on the cover of magazines. Beautiful, stately homes from the turn-of-the-century.
As I drove on into Pahokee, though, I quickly saw a much different landscape. Down in the heart of this small town was one shabby section 8 housing complex after another. The main street downtown was lined with rough-looking black men who seemed to be waiting for unsuspecting tourists or passersby, so they could make their score for the day.
In front of many of the run-down, cockroach infested rooming houses sat gangs of black men just daring anyone to come near their territory. For to do so, was certain death. They each had their own little region that they alone ruled. They controlled the drugs and prostitution in this one section of the town and no uninvited guests ever entered their domain without an invitation.
The only hotel in town had been all but destroyed by Wilma’s high winds and finding a hotel room in any nearby city was like finding a needle in a haystack. There were already thousands of emergency workers flooding into the area, searching for someplace to lay their weary heads at night.
But God had always looked out for me. I knew that somehow someway, He’d help me find a decent place to stay. My daughter searched around online for several days and finally located an expensive Bed and Breakfast in West Palm Beach that had a room available so I snapped it up quickly, barely hearing the lady tell me that she had no electricity or water.
I’d drive to work…it was about an hour…every morning at around seven o’clock and return home to West Palm Beach at about 7 in the evening. I would be filthy from climbing over debris and wading through muck all day long. Most of those Section 8 apartments were pretty nasty on the inside even before the hurricane did its thing. I would trudge home weary and filthy to a room with no water or electricity. That meant no shower.
Sometimes, at the end of some of my days of disaster work, the only thing that keeps me going is the thought of a hot shower when I get back to my hotel room. It was a full two weeks before the electricity and water could be restored and I could actually get that hot shower.
Each day when I would drive the streets of Pahokee searching for my addresses, I’d tell myself, “No way will I ever miss this God-forsaken place!”
Even the residents jokingly called Pahokee the “Armpit” of Florida. There was only one decent place to eat lunch in the whole town—The Jelly Bean Café—and I was thankful when they were able to repair their damaged roof and reopen. They had plate lunches and the best sweet tea I’d ever tasted. It was a welcomed respite from my long days of trudging through muck and mire as I watched my back, ever wary of the dangers that loomed out in the streets on any ordinary day.
Each time I’d leave a particularly horrible address and crawl back into my car, I’d say: “Oh my God! I can’t wait to leave this town!”
In the past, I’d found that no matter how difficult an assignment was, no matter how dirty or dangerous a town was, that I would eventually miss the place once the assignment was over and I had returned home. But I swore to myself that I’d never miss Pahokee no matter what.
And yet, only a few months after returning home from Pahokee, I found myself staring out a window in my den, daydreaming of having lunch of the Jelly Bean Café.
I snapped to attention and said out loud, “Holy Cow! Was I just reminiscing about being in Pahokee, Florida?” The thought stunned me. Over the next few months, I reflected upon my time there. I had forgotten the dingy, dirty apartments and the filthy-talking women. I had forgotten about the gangs and the cockroaches.
All I could recall now was that bright morning in September when I drove into the city down the wide boulevard past those tall, graceful palm trees. All I could remember were the many lunches I had enjoyed at the Jelly Bean Café and how great their coconut pie was.
I’ll never forget my last day in Pahokee. I went to have one final lunch at the café and say good-bye to the people there, who had by now, become friends. It was a long lunch that I lingered over. Eventually though, I got up, waved a final good-bye and strolled outside.
It was a beautiful, sunny day in December and two men were sitting out front in the rocking chairs, picking their teeth. I turned to face them. “Well, I’ve enjoyed my time in your little town,” I told them. “But I’m going home today.”
"And where's home?" one of them asked.
“Dallas. Leaving right now I guess.”
“Well, we’re glad you came. Thanks for all the hard work. Town’s looking better.”
“Oh yeah, it’s been a long hurricane season,"
“Guess you’ll be glad to get home,” says the other guy.
I shrugged. “You’d think.” I smiled. “Live alone, not much to go back to.”
They both smiled too. “Well, go carefully Miss Carol and come back to see us someday,” they both said simultaneously.
“Can't promise nothing. I rarely go anywhere that hasn't just been destroyed.”
They laughed and got up to wave when I got in the car. I pulled away from the curb and glanced back for one final wave goodbye. I always was such a sentimental soul. I took Hwy 715 south out of town, driving down the middle of the few beautiful homes in the city. They were old-timey plantation-style mansions at least 100 years old each. The wide highway was lined with lush palm trees, then behind them in the distance were these stately old mansions from another era. Really the only redeeming thing about the whole town.
If you can miss a town like Pahokee, something ain’t right in your head. Better get it checked out. All these years later, I still think of that town and all those days and nights I spent there. All those applicants living in those Section 8 apartments…always had some story about how much they lost and how badly they needed to get some money from the government right away. I didn’t doubt they were broke at all. People like that always live hand-to-mouth with never enough to get by. Sad there’s so many of them and nobody cares.
There’s so much despair and hopelessness in the Section 8 World. It’s the kind of place you don’t even want to visit. You’d rather pretend places like this don’t exist. They’re full and overflowing with poor black mothers who have 4 kids and 1 on the way because they don’t have any other way to earn a living except to keep having children that the government will pay for. You can’t blame them for being born into such a world. It could have happened to any of us. You leave thinking about how lucky you are not to have been born there.
I’m going back to Pahokee one day. I’m gonna drive around and see if I can find my favorite drug dealers and prostitutes. They’re real people with a story to tell. I’m going to Jelly Belly’s and get me some chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy…and sweet tea. They have homemade desserts too…maybe I’ll get some coconut pie.
Till then, I'll remember that no matter how bad an experience is, when you look back on it, you'll miss certain things. Every cloud has its silver lining.
