18 April 2006 - "They're all Christians until they get elected."

First thing up is breakfast in the balmy air - divine eggs, fruit and cereal and hot strong coffee, accented with lots of Victoria's Secret Vanilla Lace body lotion, the rumored repellent par excellence for the local plague of biting gnats. Joan brought out a puppet of a skillet with a face made of bright egg eyes and a bacon smile and worked on the controls for the features while Andrea and Howard and Daniel played with the Samba workshop instruments.

When we finished eating we quickly convened a meeting, knowing that our first show was due to start at 1 PM and we had very little time to get organized. We quickly did a circle around the group, establishing tiny biographies of ourselves. During the introductions, quite a number of people said that they were members of Nanda [a wonderful, younger group of juggling entertainers whom we've been honored to have in our recent shows - Ed.], including Rod [Kimball, the youngest member of that wonderful, older group of juggling entertainers, The Flying Karamazov Brothers - Ed.]. CiCi introduced herself as Nanda's manager. After going once around, we started work on establishing the schedule for the day. Candace - a volunteer from a Port Townsend sister city group that has had a presence here on and off since the hurricane hit - joined us to let us know about some projects that we are going to help with after our first show today, at 1 PM, at the Senior Center. The show is the first activity, followed by taking down a large tent at the Senior Center that has until recently been used to house volunteers. A small group of our people will help clear a local hero's yard and Candace will take two shifts of people on a guided tour of the city, so we can get a picture of the history of the place and see for ourselves what the community is facing. But before all of that there is a band rehearsal. This is a notable tour in that there are many members of the band who are band leaders past or present. In fact, band leaders almost outnumber the players. The beginning of lunch melds with the end of band practice. Tiberio (also known as Delicious) is busy whipping out great food for hot climates, which we enjoyed as lunch merged with dressing in costume to head out to the show. Tiberio is fashioning a costume based on his cook's apron and is looking for the perfect pants. When he sees my ruffled cancan underwear, he declares that something like that would be perfect. Fortunately, I have a second pair in bright orange so his costume is soon complete.

We were originally going to parade to the Senior Center, but when Tim checked the route he realized that it was too far, especially in the tremendous heat of the day. Instead we drove through the smashed landscape of Bay St. Louis. The very fabric of the place is asunder and there are whole neighborhoods stripped to their foundations. Intact structures are a rarity. Many homes are empty shells, with trailers parked nearby. Whole fields of trees look like an immense game of pick up sticks. The Senior Center itself housed 168 people immediately after the storm, and a woman named Arlene is the hero of the place, having taken care of all those people during the aftermath. It is her yard that we will clean up today.

 

Our performance space was a classic classroom-style setting with low ceilings, already crowded with residents and staff when we arrived. While the band and jugglers fooled around outside, the show crew decided which corner of the room we would mash the band into, and which direction the show would face, and then the show was on. As Faith sang "Home on the Range" with all the verses, we marveled at her storehouse of songs. It is always a special moment when she sings the simple old songs and the residents all sing along.

Photo by: Joan Matey

 

Jeremiah made his solo show debut with a club juggling routine and was of course a smash. Jan sang an Irish ballad and Gina took us all on a sea journey with the Flanders and Swann song about the chivalrous man eating shark. They loved Michael's magic. They also loved Tiberio's outfit, and much butt-pinching ensued as he made his way through the group. Nanda did an acoustic version of their act, even wedging themselves up against the ceiling in some acrobatics.

After the show we talked with the audience, and over and over again we heard how grateful and astonished they were that we were there. Abandoned by their government, and in many cases by their insurance companies, people here are lavishly grateful for our presence.

A group stayed at the senior center and struck the large tent that was no longer needed to house volunteers. Candace took the first tour group off in the bus, CiCi following in a van. We cruised the town, seeing the tiny pockets of open businesses surrounded by fields of devastation. Down at the beach, an entire street was washed away. Imagine Water Street in Port Townsend stripped away and vanished from existence. The beach was formerly lined by giant historic mansions, some present since the 1800s. One of these extraordinary house retains its foundation, a remnant of its marble ballroom floor, and the owner's Rolls Royce, which was in storage at the time of the storm. There are two travel trailers parked within the foundation, the margins of the property marked by decorative urns with plantings and the Rolls parked to one side. A church steeple is lying on its side next to its church, marked "Do not remove steeple." The Army Corps of Engineers has been bulldozing and removing the rubble since the immediate aftermath of the storm and the were poised to scoop the steeple out of the middle of the street to be stopped only by the minister running out of the church. People are clinging to hope that their structures are salvageable when they have been declared unfit, so many buildings have been spray painted with the words: "Do not destroy."

The bus dropped its group at camp, and went back to collect the tent strikers for their tour. The gardeners headed out to Arlene's garden. They were daunted at first by the disarray they faced, but after they got done they were happy with what they had accomplished.

 

Our next event was sharing dinner with the City Team kitchen next door, a relief organization here for months making meals, repairing houses, clearing debris and distributing contributions. They had invited us soon after our arrival. They have a dining room/living room tent with bleachers, tables and chairs and a big movie screen. The tables are covered with quilts under protective plastic, with bouquets of flowers at each table. Dinner was lasagna, bread, salad and fluorescent fruity drinks. We ate and talked with the local residents there for dinner. I talked with someone who knew both what a Chautauqua was and that W.C. Fields got his start as a juggler and vaudevillian. Oliver entertained with Italian laced tunes on the accordion, and Tim and I polkaed through the dining room. After dinner talk turned to politics, and I looked through a different window as the folks at our table talked about the Bush family, and how they have a lot of wisdom in the family, "a good Christian family," they said. One of the women commented, "They're all Christians until they get elected." They are the ones to tell us first that the faith based volunteer groups are the heroes of the story for them. Without the Baptists (more kinds than they could enumerate), Mormons, Mennonites (who brought the Amish with them) and others, they wouldnÕt have been able to make even the small progress that they have made. They reported with a kind of wonder that even the Buddhists had been there, and had passed out gift cards to everyone.

After dinner it was back to band rehearsal in the failing light, setting up the tunes with Doug tweaking chords and rhythms, resorting to stand lights and head lamps in order to keep playing. We stopped only when it was time for a band of musicians to head off the the Bay City Grill, where they had a gig. The bar was flooded during the storm, and had only recently reopened. A whole gang went down there after the band rehearsed Mark's "Papa Ray" song. They set up and we shared yummy food with some folks who had arrived earlier to eat dinner. The band took the stage with guitars, bass, horns, drums and vocalists. They played a few notes of a New Orleans style tune, coughed, sputtered and caught fire into a roaring train of sound. They rocked the house for three songs, with the Chautauquans and locals dancing like crazy and then a shift in personnel yielded a new band. They played Mark's Papa Ray song and everyone danced like crazy and then Michael made magic, CiCi sang, Kevin gave a poem and then more music flowed. The owner bought drinks for everyone, and then came around with shots of something amber and fruity. He brought chalk around when it was time to go and asked us to add our signatures to those already on the brick walls of the bar, and told us if any of us were to come to visit, he would happily feed us.

Back to camp, where Gina and Jan had been making beautiful music of their own in the quiet night. And then off to bed, with a two show day tomorrow.

---

Return to Jambalaya Tour Journal's main page

---