A forgotten town, and my mixed thoughts....

As most of you know, I've spent a considerable amount of time in Louisiana, mostly around New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Recently I spent time in a small unknown town called Venice. Venice is as far south as you can get, down at the very tip of Louisiana. The main 'commerce' here is the gas plant. Natural gas is harvested so-to-speak, from the Gulf, then processed and sold. Other businesses there include commercial fishing. I was told that some of the best fishing around was in Venice. However, the once prosper town seemed to be almost abandoned.

All along the side of the only road leading in to Venice were concrete pad where houses once stood. Near those pads ( a few, anyway) were FEMA trailers, and some even had single-wide mobile homes. Scattered throughout were remnants of buildings. Some were houses, some businesses. Boats scattered around dry land, and debris from trees and mud. Let me explain....

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Venice is the first place it hit. The storm-surge broke through the levees, and all of the back-pressure poored it into this town. As one man described it, it was like being on the bottom end of a waterfall. "It looked like someone took their hand and just wiped everything inland" ......I asked what Venice was like before the storm....booming town was the description I received. However, after Katrina, it looks like a ghost town. The few buildings that survived are boarded up or just completely abandoned. It was a truly sad scene.

But did any of us hear about Venice? No. All we heard about was New Orleans, and all of the people who chose to stay behind, living in the Super Dome.

This is where my mixed thoughts come into play......

You choose to live in an area that is basically below sea level; a bowl. You know the hurricane is coming, and you choose not to leave. The storm arrives and you are trapped either in your home, or in a shelter with thousands of other people who made the same decision as you did. Then you beg, plead, and play the sympathy card, making the whole world believe that you are genuinely stricken with a huge problem. "Katrina took out everything!" as you stand in front of the shell of your house. The government gives you housing, money, and the rest of the US comes to your aid. You still beg and plead, saying nobody helped you. Habitat for Humanity comes in and builds you new housing, and you still say you were shorted.

Not one time did you hear the people of Venice complain, beg, or scream. They evacuated as they were told to do. The storm wiped them out...COMPLETELY. Their houses weren't just flooded, they were torn from the foundation and pounded to pieces. Nothing was left for them but the cement foundation. NOTHING. Again I ask, did we hear about these people? No. The few that came back, the ones who still had work to do with the gas plant, put their families in the few trailers that FEMA was able to spare, and went right back to work. They have been busting their ass trying to get their town back. Some of them live several hours away, working 7 days on, then 7 days off. But they are working, and not begging from the government or crying 'poor me' to the rest of the country demanding a hand out.

Don't get me wrong....I loved visiting the French Quarter, and will be back in New Orleans in a week or so. I will be playing tourist again, going to the beautiful cemeteries, and other museums and places of interest. I guess now I look at it in a different light. I say to everyone out there, there was more to the devistation of Katrina than just New Orleans. Get out your map and look south....way south. Look past New Orleans, and all of the drama it produced. Look at the small towns and ask yourself "Did I hear about these places in the media?"

As for me, I don't feel sorry for the people of New Orleans. And the people of Venice don't want me to feel sorry for them, either. They just want to get on with their lives and put the storm behind them.