St. Bernard Parish : The Idiot’s Guide to Disaster Relief
Rich Weinroth
of the giant Army surplus variety with pallet after pallet of cheese sauce, lima beans, canned carrots, corn and flour. They had beans I’d never heard of and I’d certainly never seen a 55 gallon drum of peanut butter. How about a one ton bag of mashed potato flakes? Seriously.
It was a MASH tent during the Korean War, or that’s the story I began to tell the newcomers while disregarding actual fact. It had been christened Hot Lips. I would have called it the Swamp. I made the MASH signpost with the miles from home and directional arrows in case someone got lost.
photo by Jennie Clutterbuck
It was manned by, and I say manned just to piss them off, two of the greatest women you’ll ever meet. Each having come over a thousand miles on their own to volunteer, to try to help out, winding up in this place. There were volunteers from coast to coast and from beyond international borders volunteering down at Emergency Communities. Bierin introduced me to Laura and Julie as we shopped for giant cans of whatever looked good for dinner. The ladies were otherwise occupied actually working as usual, and being the new guy I got the perfunctory greeting. Subsequent visits for whatever looked good for dinner and I’d learned that Laura is from Montreal and Julie from Ann Arbor. When they heard I was from L.A., I think they rolled their eyes. But when they heard I was a chef, they were excited that someone else with some experience would be in the kitchen.
They said the Goddesses were working too hard, and I was thrilled to think that there were Goddesses on site until I realized it was a Hippie thing and they were merely mortal women, however wonderful, spiritual and talented they may be after all. Kitchen Goddess is a great title and would look good on any resume. When they heard that little RV was mine, they had thought the sticker proclaiming ’me and bob coast to coast’ implied the arrival of an elderly couple who had shown up to volunteer. They claimed to be pleasantly surprised and I like to believe them. When I said I was leaving in a few days, I was flattered when they genuinely seemed disappointed.
My first dinner was uneventful, which is good when you’re the cook, and my first day as a volunteer was great. I should volunteer more. It’s fun. Everyone should, not that I’m preaching. I’d just missed working with the Extreme Home Makeover Show by a day or so. Scarlett Johansson volunteered last week and Ashley, one of the several pretty red haired hippie girls, killed a wild boar with a bow and arrow in that field right over there and it tasted a little gamey and that drunk guy Skinner got his nickname cuz he was the one
news
stories by author