#21 a day at the office ...and then some.

Today I slept, and slept, and slept. Wish I wasn't lying. How do you sleep when they slam on the overheads at six am? Some can, like crazy "Bob", the maroon that got me my new jobski. "Bob" could snore his way through armageddon. I figure he will. When the evening is done and all is quiet, everyone is abed, tucked in and exhausted from the day, you can hear "Bob" , at decible 13,486, attempting to singlehandedly cave in the roof with the ungodly racket coming out of his sleeping mouth and nose. If you heard and saw it in a bad "I Love Lucy" rerun, you would watch, frustrated. Impatiently wishing that the show wasn't so over the top. That was "Bob".Every single bad episode of "I Love Lucy", all rolled up into one fat neurotic dork who snored like a house on fire. Kill me now.

In any case, this morning was the same as most other mornings. I rousted myself up, only I did meander instead of rush through the particulars. In any case, I was too groggy from yesterday's whirlwind trip to Shreveport, Clansville of the north, to be fully awake. I finally dragged my sorry rump through the door of headquarters at about 9:30. What decadence. Needless to say, Boss Daddy and the girls were all there waiting for me, paperwork at the ready, with big grins on their faces. I had promised them that today I would re-up. What was I thinking?

So far, my first ARC stint had been designed by the same guy that thought "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", was entertaining. Oh yeah...it was. Never mind. You get the idea. It was like living in the funhouse without the fun. Like looking in those crazy mirrors and having a laugh only to leave the mirror maze and find out that the way everything looked in those bent and twisted mirrors was how things really were. That was a good part of the reality of the ARC. The rest of the reality was all of the nice competent people who made up for the bulk of the midway. I guess I was signing back up for them.

I went through all of the rig-a-ma-roll to re-up. Go here, sign this, go there, sign that , answer this, no, that's wrong, answer that. Oh, we made a mistake, you have to start over again. Is that right? No, ask her, oh, ask him. Yes that is how you do it. No it is not, yes it is. Do you need more money? No? Why not? didn't you spend all of yours? No? Why not? Oh, well, ok, but if you need more, then let us know by tomorrow. Is there a supervisor who know how to do this? Yes, but she just signed on today, she won't know. Do you know? Yes, I told them I knew. This is how you do it, this is what I sign. These are the right papers, these are the wrong papers. They believed me. After multiple hours. I was in again for the next four days at least, if not longer. What next?

As you stick around Baton Rouge and the Red Cross, you began to get a feel as to those who fit in and those who didn't. There was a kind of uniform. Not that stupid smock with the big red cross on it. Those were for the hicks and the newbies, those who wanted to be a visible part of the club, for whom this was summer camp and a chance to trade collectable pins. Not for us, we were the cool kids. Our kind of uniform that developed out of practice and convenience. For example. No one in our department wore that idiot smock. It fit noone, got in the way, and in any case, if you were running around the inside of the building with a Red Cross badge around your neck, bearing your picture, someone would figure out eventually, that you were actually with the American Red Cross. Good grief!

Our cell phones were these little jobs that got lost easily. Several of us figured out, that if you folded the thing over the cord holding your ARC badge, it was readily available. A necessity, as someone or another called you every 2 and 1/2 minutes on the average. Easier, than running around looking for you in the cavernous old WalMart where we were stationed. We wore comfy clothes and sports shoes. Unlike my real self, here, I wore makeup and perfume every single dang day. Can't really tell you why. I just felt it was more corporate or some semblance of what I thought corporate looked like on TV. In any case, Mascara and Moschino were derigeur as far as I was concerned. So there we were, mostly women, mostly made up and scented, trotting around in hip hop clothes with little phones swinging from cords around our necks, carrying clipboards and writing while walking most of the time, while talking on our flip phones. We looked like a really lame, ugly cult.

About mid day, I got a call from "Dora" up in Shreveport. You remember, the ultra Christian woman from Kentucky who's son in the airforce had married that nice jewish girl? She had an awful story. Turns out that the night I stayed there, she had left her wallet on the bedside table. "Dora" had apparently forgotten it was there when we left the next morning. When she returned to the room later, "Dora", discovered that the wallet had been stolen. Lock stock and barrel. Damn damn damn!!! Ok, she didn't say that, but she was really upset about it. I didn't blame her. If it was my wallet, I would have been upset about it too. She asked me if I had seen it at all? I told her that by the time I crawled into bed, the lights were out, and I didn't notice a thing. Not even the next morning as I was packing to go.

She pushed me to remember something. Anything. "Didn't I see it at any time?"" No, I wish I had." "Well," she said, "the police will be calling you ." She had filed a report, and there was an investigation in progress. "It was going to be really serious." "DIdn't I remember anything? The police would call and they would be questioning me in depth."I thought that was silly, as I had just told her that I hadn't ever seen the wallet, but I didn'[t say anything. Instead I sadi, "No, I remembered nothing at all about her wallet. Never even saw it" We continued to speak as I walked across the building. I was incensed that this nice woman had been robbed. I told her that, "she should be able to leave her damn wallet out in plain view with cash hanging out of it, and all anyone ought to think about it, is where to return it to." She agreed wholeheartedly. She said that "she only wished that →whomever← had stolen it had taken only the money, and had left her identification and the rest of the contents." The poor thing. I felt so sorry for her.

I got back to my desk and told Boss about "Dora's" wallet. everyone in the department listened raptly. They exchanged glances that I didn't pay much attention to at the time. As I walked back across the building to make some copies, I was thinking, "hmm...now, I bet I could get copies of her identification for her, as we had those here in headquarters. Yeah, that's what I would do!" Midway across, I came to a screeching halt and clapped my hand across my mouth. If I could have writhed on the floor on my back, kicking my heels, pounding my fists on the ground, screaming at the top of my lungs, while throwing my head from side to side, at that moment, I would have. Son of a bitch!!!! "Dora" thought that "the Jew" stole her wallet!!!!!!!!! That was me, "the Jew" !!!!!

She actually believed, and had evidently told others that I had stolen her wallet as she slept. That was what the call was all about, and I had missed it. Here was a woman, that had spoken at length about her Christianity and her belief in God, yet there it was. "The Jew stole her wallet". I realized, that no amount of fact would ever convince this woman otherwise. She would go to her grave thinking this was reality. There was little I could do.

I ran back to Boss and blurted it out. He and everyone else had already gotten there on their own. Beat me to the punch in fact. They were madder than I was if that was possible. Really, though, I wasn't mad at all. Just disheartened. "Dora" and I had talked into the night. I believed naively, that I had made an impression upon her that "Jews" were just like her. We lived the same lives, dreamed the same dreams, raised our children with the same love and worry, shared the same God. I was a fool. I had to laugh at myself for it.

Even funnier, was the fact that my father was a Jew. I am technically not. That would have required a conversion that I had not had, but this was the south, and ergo I was a jew. I had never been so Jewish in all of my life. I waited for the police to call. Of course they never did. I was able to confirm later that yes, "Dora", believed to the bottom of her heart," that Jew ", had stolen her wallet, even though others told her that they had been robbed by the staff at this particular hotel. Later, the whole crew moved to another hotel because of the thievery, but "Dora" still held on to her beliefs.

Weeks later, Boss still wanted to call her up and have a serious talk about it. I told him not to bother. Even though I didn't tell him, he knew that it broke my heart.

#20 Shreveport Part Deux

Up-and -at-em! Woke up in a bed, what a pleasure. My last for a while. Took a shower and washed my hair, "Dora" took hers, we packed up for the day and together, down we went, to breakfast with the boys. Breakkie was short and sweet. Boss and I were off to close a shelter with problems. What did I care, I was leaving the ARC day after tomorrow. It was the end of my tour. My attitude was: Bring it on!

A local university had opened its doors to evacuees. This I was told, was a black university. What a funny designation. Marking a school of higher learning by the dominant color of those who attend...sigh. We got to the school, and soon found the fellow in charge. As I took out my camera and started shooting photos of what might be considered damage, the conversation with in-charge guy took an interesting turn. In-charge guy wanted the whole place, "disinfected floor to ceiling". His words. In fact he was insisting upon it. Apparently he seemed to believe that poverty was contagious, as none of the evacuees had been found to have leprosy.

Before I go further into how clean he wanted the place, the disinfecting, the scrubbing, the thorough revulsion of the evacuees that peppered this guy's language, let me describe him. Standing about 6'3", he was tall and thi, slightly stooped. Balding, in his 50's, casually dressed, soft spoken, black. Thaaats right. Black. This was a "black university" , he was the "black" in charge. This man went through each room with us, me snapping photos, telling Boss and I how the dirty contaminated evecuees had wrecked their place of temporary residence, and how he wanted it rectified. To our eyes, the university was in very good shape. Barely dirty in fact. But no. Señor fix-it felt that every surface had to be scoured, in order to rid the rooms of the stink of poverty. The Black haves against the black have-nots. Holy mother of god.

At one point he took us into the laundry room, and insisted that the evacuees had destroyed the new washer and dryer that now had to be replaced. Believe me, we were willing to replace them. Boss took a look, and wrote down "replace" on the form. By this time, I was pissed, so I turned on the washer. Lo and behold...Hallelujah! It worked. I started the dryer. It worked too. I didn't say a thing, but I left both machines on as continued the destructo tour of poverty contamination. Every once in a while, I would force both Boss and Fix-it to return to the laundry room to check on the cycles, with the excuse that I didn't want to leave the school with appliances that were missing some cycle or another. In fact, I was rubbing in the point. Couldn't help it. Needless to say, both washer and dryer were in tip top shape. We weren't replacing them.

In the end, it was Boss-man who figured out that fix-it believed that because of some rumor he had heard, white schools who had volunteered their facilities were getting thousands of dollars in compensation, while the ARC was stiffing the darker section of town. Had to stop myself from banging my head on a wall, or at least trying to bang his head on one. ARC national is truly color blind. That is not to say that the local volunteers had a collective brain in their heads because they didn't, but it wasn't color directed, they were just stupid. Someone had sent in something asking for payment of some ridiculously high cleaning bill. That did not mean that they would get their wish. Just meant that they sent it in and were giving it a go. National would review it and laugh heartily and tell them to go f* themselves in short order when they saw the amount was ludicrous. Tons of moolah were being misdirected, but not on my watch.

We finished the walk through, I had the pix. The cleaning staff was up in arms as Fix-it felt that his black staff was too lazy to get the job done correctly, and he wanted some white contractor to do the job. Shall I tell you how well that went over with everyone? We just nodded, and figured to take it all up with management when we returned to HQ. We left as the cleaning staff and the coach were spitting nails.

From there we went to lunch. VIncent's High Point Cafe. What a place. All seafood all the time. Chock full of locals eating gumbo and seafood. Boss continued his tour de chicken fried steak, and I had the gumbo with a side of fried green tomatoes and crab fingers. I wanted them to throw in one fried green pickle, and I was disappointed when I didn't get it. No oysters here either. They say that the oyster beds won't come back for at least two years. That is a huge let down.

Took us a while to notice, but as far as the local restaurants and bars are concerned, colors don't mix here. Chances are if they knew I was half Jewish, someone might find my body sometime next spring or not at all. That impression was pretty strong. The waitresses all did decide that they just loved my perfume though. Especially when I told them that I was from Malibu. The girls made me write down the name so that they could all go on-line and get the same. Somewhere in some little racist dive in Shreveport, there are a bunch of over-dyed, over-plucked young delectibles wearing Moschino, not knowing how to pronounce it, but happy that they are wearing the same perfume that some lady from Malibu had on.

Next we toured the warehouse. Got there and looked around. everything looked normal except that staff wasn't following any kind of sensible non contamination procedure. Body fluid soaked cots were inside, strewn about, instead of bagged tagged and out of the building. Staff was sorting buckets and buckets of donated clothes without gloves or masks. When we brought it up, we were told that they were handling things correctly. They weren't. We had been told of the water shortage, but we could see pallets upon pallets of canned water sitting outside. When we asked why, we were told that the evacuees wouldn't drink the stuff. Thinking that It couldn't be that bad, I tried one, with the resulting suggestion that the cans of water be used to wash the dirty cots. It was that disgusting. Bleah!!!

After scraping my tongue with my shoe, we went off to check on the shelters before we headed back home. On the way, boss called HQ about the decontamination procedures. I listened as they gave him the run around. FInally, as I could see his frustration mounting to the boiling point, I asked him to pass me the phone. After ducking same phone furiously thrust in my direction, I took it in hand, and In my softest little girl voice, I asked the nice doctor on the other end of the line if the ARC had to comply with OSHA standards? When he replied with some bluster, "of course", I pointed out that OSHA standards required dust masks for sorting new clothes and materials, goodness knows what they would think of sorting used unwashed icky ones without protection of any kind. I meweled that we could stand out in a really bad way, and might get the whole of the ARC in serious trouble for non compliance with government standards. We didn't want the Feds to get involved, did we? I suggested that the big strong knowledgeable doctor-poo could be the hero by making a stand and fixing it all. To OSHA standards of course. By the time I said goodbye, Boss had pulled off the road and was laughing so hard and holding his sides, he was almost crying. He told me very decisively, that he would remember not to cross me anytime in the near future.

At Hirsh Center, it was a madhouse. What a horrible place to be stuck. Cots on cots in a dark dank arena. It was a huge dungeon. Too many people, few supplies. Under-trained staff. Not enough medicine or equipment, and the system wasn't working for anyone. They had a great nurse in charge though, fighting hard for them, and the new day supervisor was caring and smart, so these evacuees were at least getting another chance at things going right. It was an uphill fight. this place was a mess.

On the way in, we met up with the local troublemaker "Georgette", only it turns out that "Georgette" was a troublemaker in my mold. She was trying to get things done in the face of the CLS, complete with identical run-ins with the same dingbats that went after me. We decided that on our return, "Georgette" would transfer to our department ASAP. As we were talking to her, I looked on the ground beside us and noticed a dime bag of marijhuana. Well how-dee-doo! This tiny baggie was stuffed to the gills with weed! I picked it up and laughed, waving it at Boss and "Georgette".

To my surprise, Boss literally snatched it out of my hand. Did he think I was planning to use it? God knows under the trying circumstances, if I did do that, and I don't, I might have, but as I didn't, it hadn't entered my mind. Ai yi yi! Before I could ask what he was doing, Boss opened the bag and strewed the contents around the grounds, walking around and shaking the bag violently, finally ripping the seams to make sure that every last bit was gone. I was totally stunned. I loved Boss, but anyone this anal could have certainly used some weed. In the end, we took the empty bag over to the police who were stationed in front of the shelter and in an AHA! moment, Boss handed it over with a flourish, as though the cops didn't have any idea that this was going on. Poor Boss. He was such a nice guy, but so behind the times. I didn't have the heart to tell him.

While we were there, "Barney" showed up with the day's bananas. When called on the carpet, again, he gave Boss-man a talk to the hand motion, and stalked off. That would have been my cue to send ol' "Barn" back to Iowa, or wherever he came from, but I think Boss doesn't like actual confrontations, so Monkey-boy stayed, much to my disgust.

As we drove out of Shreveport, I noticed the beautiful architecture and Victorian details of the older section of town. It was a really pretty place if you could forget the racism stupidity and isolationism that seemed so pervasive. On the way back, Boss talked a bit about his life, and asked if I would re-up for another few days. What could I say. He and Daddy had saved my butt. I called HQ on the way back, and got the paperwork in motion. Sigh...

We got back to HQ late. I picked up the car that was left for me and hauled my tired self back to the shelter. I had had one night in a bed, and a bath. I had agreed to sign up for another four days at least. What a roundheels. I had lost my mind....again. So what else is new?

#19 Shreveport

Left the shelter this morning late. Late. Just wonderful. They rescue me from the CLS, and I am late. To compound my transgression, there is suddenly massive amounts of traffic backing up back to east nowhere. I am in east nowhere. Notice that I have a message on my cell phone. Uh oh.......Get the message. More good news. Boss wants to make sure he reaches me before I left the shelter. Not quite. Sigh.

Boss wants to make sure that I have packed for an overnight, because we are going to Shreveport. Just he and me. Yeah, I know that's grammatically incorrect, but it sounded cool didn't it? SIgh sigh sigh. I am not packed, I did not get the message in time and I am late, stuck in traffic, one third of the way into headquarters. Great start to a great morning.

Turn around, call Boss, grovel at 50 mph in a 35 mph zone, roaring back at warp speed to the shelter. Squeal into the church parking lot looking like a flufffy blond Popeye Doyle. This sucks. I pack at the speed of light, run back to the car, well actually it is a Ford Explorer the size of my living room. I have dubbed it "The Moose". Leap into Moosie, and I am about to screech out of there when I remember that I forgot my jammies. That would have been an unfortunate intro to my new employer. Jumped back out, bailed back in, got the jammies and tore back to the car. Drove into Headquarters like a bat out of hell. Or at least like a dingbat out of California. Yikes!

I was out of breath and way late. Boss didn't even look up. Just sat me down at my new desk, actually a six foot foldable table that I shared with him and whomever chose to sit across from me that day. Had to steal one of the "good" chairs every day until I finally marked one with blue tape bearing my name, the words, "my chair", and a picture of the skull and crossbones on it. Good chairs were solid plastic and cream colored. Bad chairs were flimsy plastic and brown. It was a pecking order thing. I own a flock of chickens at home, so I know from pecking orders. I made sure to grab only the good chairs. guessing that it might make me one of the head chickens.

In any case, Boss man right away, started to give me things to do. He called it debriefing. I called it a lot of notes. It was: call this guy, ask this thing, find out this, find out that, go here and coordinate those etc...etc..etc... There were about twenty things on the list. It took me about an hour to do them, and get it all on paper, answers printed out using my laptop. I gave Boss the printout notes of the finished tasks, and he just looked at me and laughed. Big Daddy came over, and Boss gave him the list, and then Daddy laughed. I couldn't figure out what was so funny. Turns out what was so funny was that I finished a list of to do's in an hour that had in the past taken others days to get through. I figured they must have been forced to work with some new ARC rule that required their basic intelligence to be tied behind their backs or something.

Somehow, in this situation, I became my previously unknown super-hero alter ego: LOGICAL WOMAN. Around here, I appeared to come from another planet. that worked for me. Luckily, it worked For Boss and Daddy too. Boss and I hung out for a few hours solving ARC puzzles, and finally hit the road to Shreveport. It was going to be a five hour drive. We got over the bridge in about forty minutes, and stopped to get directions. I took the opportunity to obtain some pork rinds, pralines and a pecan pie. I love weird foods. Boss was horrified. Off we went, into the next town. We noticed that we needed gas.

Problem number one: There was no gas. Anywhere. The electricity was out, and the pumps were down and there was no gas to be had. Station after station was either locked up completely, or had plastic bags over their nozzles, and were making hay selling pork rinds to tourists like myself. Crud! Around we turned and back we went, over the bridge and back into Baton Rouge until we found a gas station that had gas. How the heck did we not notice that virtually no one had any gas? Turned out that many in Baton Rouge had no gas either. We just hadn't noticed before, because the station near Headquarters always had gas. SIlly us. 40 minutes later, we were back over the bridge and on our way. An hour and a half detour. Hate it when that happens. Deja vu of this morning all over again.

Drove and talked and drove and drove some more. Boss hit the exhaustion wall, and I took the wheel. I am from Southern California. With me driving, we averaged 85 to 90 on the almost empty roads. I ignored Boss' white knuckles, and we made up the time that we had lost. Hey! I said I was from L.A. Cars, ya know? Got to Shreveport in chop chop time.

The Shreveport ARC chapter was in the middle of a run down residential area. I was later to notice that much of Shreveport was somewhat run down. I also noticed that there was a church of some kind on virtually every corner. Some streets had two churches within a couple of hundred feet of each other. They all had names like: "The Blood of the Lamb and the Righteous Light Baptist Church". This did not bode well to my way of thinking. Not because I am half Jewish, hey, the other half were a bunch of Unitarian ministers, but because of something that I have noticed. What I have noticed has happened so frequently, that I have made up a rule for it. I like to call this little rule, "The Rule of Devoutness". "The Rule of Devoutness" holds that anyone publicly making the declaration, "I am a Christian", does so only when it is right before or right after, they have done, or are going to do something absolutely despicable. Things like throwing a five year old out of a preschool because his mama's a stripper. Often, it involves something so un-christlike, that it makes your head spin. This berg had the statistical propensity to hold myriad of these kind of folks.

We went through the office meeting, "our people". Technically, these guys worked for our department. In actuality, because of the lack of staffing and leadership from Headquarters, many of the outlying chapters had created their own little feifdoms, picking and choosing the rules and regulations that suited them, ignoring the ones that didn't. This was one of those.

At first glance, They were a swell group. "John", the short, wiry, mixed asian leader from San Francisco was upbeat, friendly, cheerful, and decidedly in charge. It was his way or the highway. "Barney", was the warehouse/not a warehouse manager. We weren't allowed to call the warehouse a warehouse for some bizarre reason, the locals didn't want a warehouse in their neighborhood. Felt it ran the area down. The area couldn't get any more down. Funny idea, as though not calling it what it is would make it into something else. Gotta love that way of thinking. In fact, from here on out, you can call me a 22 year old. Is it working yet?

Barney was an interesting specimen. He couldn't figure out for the life of him how to create a flow chart so that he could order supplies ahead of need. Instead, he would rush out to the store using a credit card to make "emergency" purchases, which consisted of anything the shelters might need on that given day. He would then rush back and get reimbursed by the chapter. He did this single dang day mind you. Unfortunately, this was totally against policy, and the chapter was going to be oh so surprised when National refuses to reimburse them. Barney was doing this for the benefit of thousands of clients currently housed in arenas and other sites across the area. Barney was also financially screwing the ARC and his chapter because of his own laziness.

When I pointed out that his method was not cost effective, as we had already contracted for and stored in our own ARC warehouses, many of the things that he was paying top dollar for at the local WalMart, he just refused to get it. His statement?: "Well...like how could we order things like bananas? I mean, bananas are perishable and we need them right away?" Interesting that a total monkey would use bananas in an analogy. I suggested to ol' "Barn", that bananas came from Costa Rica, a far toss from the Shreveport WalMart, and somehow that WalMart managed to order bananas in advance all the way from Costa Rica so that he could rush out every day and buy them. Hmmmm.... One would have thought that he might have seen the irony, but not so. Instead, I, who knows virtually nothing about creating an ordering type of flow chart, but do possess an IQ higher than room temperature, spent the next half hour drawing out and explaining how invoicing and projecting need works. Sigh.

Later that day, Barney was faithfully filling out invoices, and then not sending them out and rushing back to WalMart. When caught in the act, he said that he didn't trust that my system would work, but knew that going out and buying the damn bananas worked just fine. It turned out that " Barney" was unclear that I was his boss, and that my instruction was not a suggestion, but a direct order, no matter how politely I had put it to him. In this feifdom, he thought that "John" was king, and Boss-man and I were just a couple of know-nothings from Headquarters. Well we may have been a couple of know-nothings, but as things stood, we were the know-nothings in charge of "Barney", "John", and the whole Shreveport chapter. Our faithful employees. It was going to be a long trip.

Boss and I then sat in on a meeting between the head of the Chapter and the ARC volunteer heads that we were there to supervise. The chapter head was a guy named "Roman". A tall powerful looking man of fifty-something, with a ready grin, a good ol' boy aura and a mostly full head of dyed red hair. In this area of the state, This guy was the ARC god. Unfortunately, he was not a kind, caring and gentle god. Midway through the meeting, in discussing the dissatisfaction with our operation that some clients were voicing, the words, spoken in exasperation: "These people are getting free money!" slithered out of his mouth. No one said anything to counter him, and several actually agreed. Ok, time to step up to the plate....again. I took a deep breath, as it was a David and Goliath moment. Shreveport was the longtime home of the Grand Dragon/Moron of the Ku Kux Klan. The town was pretty much segregated by unspoken agreement. From what we had seen, blacks and whites did not mix in this part of the country. Although the area was 70% black, whites were owners and blacks were not. Things were not equal by a long shot, but this was just the way it was around here. Nobody planned on changing the status quo anytime soon.

I took that breath, and in the gentlest way possible said, "excuse me "Roman", but "these people", are our clients, and we are here to serve them." You could have heard a pin drop, and that was in a room that had wall to wall carpeting. He turned to me and started to rant about how I just got here and I don't know all of the things that had happened, and I didn't understand the culture and all of the good things that his chapter had done for "these people". When he was done and out of breath, and in a high state of disgust and anger with yours truly, I gently but firmly reiterated, "I am sure you have done many good works, and accomplished a lot. I am sure that you are frustrated and feel at times that your job is thankless, none the less, "these people" are still our clients, and we are here to serve them as best we can." No one stood behind what I had just said. Not one of them said a word in support. Not even my own Boss. I think he was still too shocked at me correcting an apparent racist in charge in the middle of Klan country, in front of the whole group. I was shocked that "John" the asian guy didn't say something or even catch it, but then he had to work with this joker.

The meeting adjourned soon after with nothing of substance decided as far as I could tell. Next on the agenda, Dinner! About time. Went in a mule train to some restaurant, that turned out to be in a casino. Loud as a brass band in there. It was a buffet of every variety of heavy greasy southern chow that you could ever dream up. It was great. The piles of boiled shrimp alone were worth it. I did notice, that I was one of the only ones to eat anything green. Wonder what the heart attack rate is outside of Southern California?

FInished dinner, and dragged ourselves to the hotel. Hotel. Let me just savor that for a wee moment. A Bed! Ahhhh. A BATH! Whoopie!!!! Got our room keys, and said our goodnights. Knew it was too good to be true. There was a knock on the door. Turns out that Boss' room already had occupants. A couple of evacuees who had lied and said that they were Red Cross in order to get a free Room. They would be summarily turned out and charged to boot the next morning, but for tonight, Boss was commandeering my room. Drat! I was to move into the extra bed in "Dora's" room across the hall.

"Dora" was a coordinator in the Shreveport office. She was small and sturdy with jaw length straight brown hair and soft brown eyes. She'd married young and had three kids, one of whom was in the military. "Dora" was really sweet, she came from Kentucky and was now stuck with me. She was actually pretty gracious about it, although I could tell that it wasn't her first choice.

She did all of her bathroom stuff, and then went to bed. We talked for quite a while. Turned out that she was a very devout christian, and her son had gone off and married some Jewish girl. No one was happy about it. She was sure I would understand. Just as she was about to launch into that subject, I let her know that I was one of the tribe. She backpedaled as quick as her mouth would carry her and we ended up talking a lot more. In the end, it felt as though I might have made at least a small inroad into the Kentucky preconception of "my people", as we shared some mutual understanding, and she seemed to relax about it at last.

Odd. I have never before actually felt Jewish. My father is Jewish, but my mother is decidedly not. I wasn't raised in any faith, but I identify myself by who my enemies are, and if this was 1939 and the trains were leaving, chances are I wouldn't have been left behind because I was only half Jewish, or, I didn't look Jewish. What do you think?

Finally, I went to collapse in the bathtub. It felt so good that I fell asleep in the water. Lucky I didn't drown I guess. When I finally extracted my now prunish self from the water, dressed and came out, the lights were out and "Dora" was sawing logs. I sat up for a bit in the dark with the computer, but finally, even I passed out.