St. Bernard Parish
The Idiot’s Guide to Disaster Relief
by Rich Weinroth
3.3.06
The sun was about to set on the site of The Battle of New Orleans; which I learned from both my map and the position of the sun in the sky simultaneously. I had reached my destination or so I gleaned from the spray-painted flood-plywood signage declaring “Emergency Communities...Free Food”. It looked like a 5 year old painted it and following what vaguely resembled an arrow pointing left I parked between the flooded out neighborhood OTB and a 50 foot geodesic dome tent among many other tents in that big parking lot. It was teeming with both residents and volunteers alike. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one there to help.
And now I see why they call it the Hippie Camp, a more apt name than Camp Premiere. There are some Hippies here and nothing remotely premiere at the other camp. I heard the telltale Bob Dylan, I saw the hackysack and the tie dye and the creatively handwritten sign above the pretty young girl with the dreadlocks and a natural approach to the issue of body hair. They're everywhere. Hippies don’t scare me. The pretty young girl said that they don’t really take walk-in volunteers and when I claimed to have emailed the volunteer coordinator, she passed the buck to a guy named Jason.
I like this place better than the armed encampment of Camp Premiere already. Hippies seemed nicer than the guys with those Blackwater patches on their shirts and guns at their sides. Jason, it turns out, was from my home state of California though from the Bay Area. Not only was Jason a good guy and a great cook but he really did have the coolest damn porkchop sideburns this side of Memphis and what we’ll call a creative fashion sense. He would eventually be nicknamed Jason Of The Chops, and the name stuck. Nicknames are cool, I wanted one. Jason gave me the orientation tour.
Really? You’ve cooked at a restaurant before?
A few.
Great. We could use help in the kitchen.
Great. I’ll help in the kitchen.
He gave me a three day parking pass to camp onsite as well as the official 8 minute tour of the EmergencyCommunities Disaster Relief Site in St. Bernard Parish. It really was an amazing operation they'd
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