At age nine Linda began babysitting and cleaning homes, quit high school at sixteen, had her first child two years later, married a man who bombarded himself with drugs, divorced him, and began moving the other way.\u00a0 For eight years she managed residential properties of a private investor, and eventually lived in one of his rentals, a large custom house, making more money than she ever expected.\u00a0 Then her boss offered a strategic investment plan: since prices in Bakersfield, California have been increasing at a nation-leading pace, let\u2019s look for bargains in the South.<\/p>\n
Linda embraced the opportunity to move to Pascagoula, Mississippi and become \u201cchief cook and bottle washer.\u201d\u00a0 She searched for apartments.\u00a0 She examined houses.\u00a0 She did impact studies of Mississippi and was shocked by low wages and high rates of poverty and illiteracy.\u00a0 But she was also enticed by residential properties cheap for an investor who began selling his California holdings and aiming funds at Pascagoula.\u00a0 Within a few months, guided by Linda, three apartment complexes and two houses were purchased.\u00a0 Linda lived in one of the apartments and managed everything in the portfolio.<\/p>\n
While real estate was familiar, cultural attitudes in the South were often challenging: some men hired to refurbish and maintain the properties declared they wouldn\u2019t take orders from a woman.\u00a0 Linda said fine, either do it this way or take your tools and leave.\u00a0 Plenty of diligent workers stayed.\u00a0 At the same time Linda was being seduced by the charm of many Southerners, their soft, slow way of speaking, their less frenetic style of living. \u00a0Pascagoula, at rest on the Gulf of Mexico, was becoming home and she didn\u2019t want to leave.\u00a0 The old timers said it wasn\u2019t necessary.\u00a0 They\u2019d survived many tropical storms and hurricanes.\u00a0 This one two days away would be \u201cjust another blow in the wind.\u201d\u00a0 Board up your windows and go buy some canned food and bottled water.\u00a0 My goodness, Miss Linda, your place is sitting way up on those two-foot cement blocks. \u00a0Stay and we\u2019ll get together and drink and have some Hurricane Parties.<\/p>\n
Linda\u2019s seventeen-year old son focused on the news and told her about radio and television reports Katrina was going to be a Category 5 disaster, the biggest in a century, and they had to flee.\u00a0 The day before the hurricane hit, in rain and thirty mile-an-hour winds, they took two friends, renters from the apartment, and began driving east on Interstate 10 toward Tallahassee where Linda had booked a motel reservation.\u00a0 Nine hours later they were in Florida\u2019s capital city, inland and north of the coasts and a haven from storms. \u00a0Thousands of others were also there, scurrying to find lodging.\u00a0 Linda\u2019s motel room had already been rented. \u00a0They went to another motel and another and another and thought they\u2019d be sleeping in the car.\u00a0 Ultimately, after about fifteen inquiries, they found a vacant room.<\/p>\n
Relatively mild rain stroked Tallahassee and offered no indication of wind and water exploding to the west in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.\u00a0 Fellow lodgers and other refugees in Tallahassee shared their stories.\u00a0 One lady from New Orleans had panicked and jumped in her car and driven straight to Florida, failing to notify her husband at work or her children at their grandmother\u2019s house.\u00a0 Now she didn\u2019t know if they had survived.\u00a0 Phone service was out in the most devastated areas and no one could reach family members.\u00a0 Television meanwhile was pounding them with images of corpses and demolished buildings and flooded streets.\u00a0 Tension intensified, anger erupted.\u00a0 Linda\u2019s \u201cfriends\u201d threatened to kill her son.\u00a0 They needed to get back.\u00a0 Everyone had to find out who was alive and what happened to their homes.<\/p>\n
Linda called her boss.\u00a0 He authorized her to use company credit to rent a trailer and buy generators, roofing supplies, tools, and eight hundred dollars of food.\u00a0 They loaded up and, with their uneasy friends, headed west on Interstate 10.\u00a0 Only one lane was open on the bridge over Mobile Bay.\u00a0 A retired naval destroyer had been hurled onto the shore.\u00a0 Parts of three shattered oil derricks gnawed at the base of the bridge, others punctured the land.\u00a0 They saw big trees ripped out and stacked on other trees.\u00a0 In some places it looked like someone had \u201cpicked them up and laid them out like a row of carrots.\u201d\u00a0 By the side of the road, which had become a huge campsite, people were crying and hugging each other and shouting, \u201cMy house is gone.\u201d\u00a0 There weren\u2019t any medical services.\u00a0 And they still couldn\u2019t get through to anyone on the phone.<\/p>\n
After driving on the freeway at a walker\u2019s pace, they ultimately entered Pascagoula which Linda said looked \u201clike war.\u201d\u00a0 Military trucks loomed all around and alligators patrolled the road.\u00a0 People were \u201cstaring dead stares like their souls had been ripped out of their bodies.\u201d\u00a0 Winds had torn through town at one hundred twenty miles an hour.\u00a0 Cars were turned over.\u00a0 Some buildings were completely destroyed, only the slabs left.\u00a0 Others had their roofs ripped off.\u00a0 Some were blown over on their sides.\u00a0 People had no food, water, or power. \u00a0The whole scene was \u201cmorbid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the apartments where they\u2019d been planning Hurricane Parties were demolished.\u00a0 Linda assumed those people had died and been washed away.\u00a0 She dropped off her friends at their place.\u00a0 It still had about three inches of water everywhere inside.\u00a0 At her apartment three trees had blown over and big branches lay on the roof.\u00a0 She needed help to push the front door open because her furniture and debris from the coast had blown inside against the door.\u00a0 Now there was no water in the house but it had rushed in at five-and-a-half feet; everything at that point and below was destroyed or contaminated and covered by green and black mold.\u00a0 She lost three cars, a motorcycle, photos of her kids, a stereo, a TV, everything but a few items in the highest cabinets.<\/p>\n
As police, coroners, and other rescue workers spray painted orange circles on residences and inside the circles marked how many people had been found alive and how many dead, Linda shared her food and water then began taking pictures for her boss.\u00a0 He needed to document all damage for his insurance company.\u00a0 By phone from Bakersfield he directed Linda to stay at a company apartment further inland.\u00a0 Linda and other workers tore out carpets and began bleaching the cement floors.\u00a0 She was assigned to stay in the model unit where the carpet was unscathed and the beds intact.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe model unit was in back,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cUp front one guy told me he could hear his roof slowly beginning to tear before being ripped away.\u00a0 Shingles scattered like cards in the wind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linda\u2019s not entirely friendly friends told others she had a truck full of supplies.\u00a0 Several people jumped on the vehicle while another hit the rear door with an axe and said, \u201cOpen up or I\u2019ll kill you.\u201d\u00a0 She and her son hopped into the cab and drove to Mobile where they returned merchandise to another hardware store of the same franchise.\u00a0 The company received credit, just as the boss had insisted.<\/p>\n
Back in the apartments in Pascagoula, a neighbor told Linda: \u201cIf you make any noise, I\u2019m gonna slit your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI helped people all I could,\u201d Linda said.\u00a0 \u201cOn the way back from Mobile, I\u2019d bought some more food and water, and we shared it, too.\u00a0 I also kept taking photos and making lists of stuff destroyed.\u00a0 But everyone was always yelling and fighting.\u00a0 My son got so distressed he just began to lie in bed all the time, looking at the ceiling, not doing anything.\u00a0 I thought I was having a nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, when phone service returned, I got a call from my daughter that my ex-husband was dying near Palm Springs.\u00a0 That helped me decide what to do.\u00a0 My son and I had to take four flights to get to California.\u00a0 I had to get out of that disaster.\u00a0 There\u2019s mold in my lungs and I\u2019m having trouble breathing.\u00a0 I\u2019m not feeling close to a hundred percent.\u00a0 I have a lot less energy.\u00a0 And I\u2019m uncertain about people and places.\u00a0 I know I need to get out and start doing stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the clean and modern Salvation Army facility in Bakersfield, where this interview took place, Linda has received food, towels, soap, and other supplies.\u00a0 She\u2019s thankful to be staying with relatives but said, \u201cMy boss, the same guy who sent me to Pascagoula, told me there\u2019s no work for me in Bakersfield since he\u2019s been selling his property here.\u00a0 He said, \u2018It\u2019s not promising.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to have to find something else.\u2019\u00a0 He didn\u2019t even want to give me the key to the supply storeroom here.\u00a0 And I was his coordinator.\u00a0 He\u2019s turned on me.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spent all my money on hotels and travel and other things after Katrina.\u00a0 I need a job.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boss said, \u2018You can go back to that hell hole and have a job.\u2019\u00a0 I\u2019m not going.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019ll have to take him to court to be reimbursed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At age nine Linda began babysitting and cleaning homes, quit high school at sixteen, had her first child two years later, married a man who bombarded himself with drugs, divorced him, and began moving the other way.\u00a0 For eight years she managed residential properties of a private investor, and eventually lived in one of his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,90],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n