Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 6 · column 3 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
Judy, Trinity church secretary Sharon Kilpatrick, Harold Beebout, and I had no idea what we would find in Bay St Louis and Waveland when we left Rappahannock early in May in Harold’s truck with a U-Haul trailer loaded with tools. We got our first warning at the Mississippi visitor’s center just over the Alabama line when a center staff member said she “figured” we must be going to the coast to work “’cause otherwise, there’s nothing there.”
When we finally turned off of 1-10 at the Waveland exit (the faster Rt. 90 bridge is still closed—well, not closed, exactly, it simply doesn’t exist anymore), we needed gas. I guess we’d forgotten for a moment where we were headed.
The first gas station directly off of I-10—the equivalent of our “Quickie Mart”— was devastated. As we proceeded south toward the shore, the sturdiest structures were mostly temporary trailers housing real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and tax accountants. Down on R. 90, which parallels the shore, national commercial chains, such as Wal- Mart had managed to rebuild fast enough to provide critical gasoline, groceries, water, and some pharmaceutical supplies. With some exceptions, most local establishments were still recovering, or still in heaps of rubble, 8 Vi months later. As Sharon commented, “Looks like Katrina took all the pretty stuff and left
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