Plaquemines Parish
We Do It For Love
by Chris Sheard
5.17.09
There are so many names and so many stories that I want to tell. So many intertwining paths, memories and dreams. I won’t tell you about them all. Sorry, there’s just not enough time.
I won’t tell you about the volunteer who was dying of cancer and chose to spend his remaining time on earth helping others. I won’t tell you the joy of driving a pick-up truck down an open country road, jacked up on caffeine, cigarettes and adrenaline. I won’t tell you about the residents who had done time, the ones who cried over family photos at dinner, the ones that brought us shrimp and alligator straight out of the waters of Buras. I won’t tell you about the volunteers that went missing in the French Quarter for three days and came back with what people thought was a prostitute but was in fact a truck driver whose friend had been killed in a car accident and needed a place to recover and turned out to be an amazing, kind and warm woman, who contributed more to the efforts at Buras than most of the hippies, and college students on spring break. I won’t tell you about the couple living out of a beat-up van with no registration and their beautiful 5 year old golden-hair son who lit up a disaster area like night-light running around barefoot chasing bugs. I won’t tell you what it’s like to be naked in the Mississippi River at sunrise in the embrace of a girl you are absolutely mad about. That’s one you’re gonna have to find out for yourself.
I will tell you the story of my second-to-last night at the Buras sight.
We had just finished circle, our bi-weekly meeting/hippie-chant-fest and I was getting ready to go to bed. It had been a long day. They were all long days. This one coming at the end of my 2 month stint in Buras. As I started on the long-walk from the site center back to the gym I realized I forgot my cigarettes out front. I turned around to go get them and that’s when I saw Andy pacing around.
Andy was a Buras resident. A quiet warm-hearted Tennessee boy in his early 40’s who settled down here with his wife years ago to fish and live a quiet life. After the storm his family had moved back with their relatives further up north and Andy stayed behind to rebuild the house. He was living in a FEMA trailer parked next to his house that was 75-80% blown to shit.
news
stories by author