We decided to stop at the traveler's favorite on the road friend, "Cracker Barrel" for a quick bite of lunch. This friendly little roadside restaurant chain reminds me of the famous "Stuckey's" of the past. Do you remember "Stuckey's"? If you do, you would probably be about my age. It was my family's favorite roadside stop whenever I was a child. "Cracker Barrel", the new version of the old "Stuckey's". Once seated, I noticed the word, "harvest" on a few pictures and on a woman's nursing uniform. Of course, it was the Thanksgiving Day holiday, so naturally there was a logical reason this word would emerge this time of year, but perhaps there was another reason. We traveled even farther down into Mississippi. David and I commented how much it looked like Louisiana. We reminisced over our days at Ft. Polk, LA, the army's hidden treasured spot of the south. It was a place where families and friendships flourish, because there was no place to go besides Wal-Mart. Like that of Louisiana, the terrain of Mississippi was flat, full of stately pine trees and long roads.
As we kept driving, I spotted something past the tree line, massive amounts of little white travel trailers. They were all stacked neatly next to each other in rows and columns. As we drove on, we continued seeing these trailers, there seemed to be no end to them. David said, these were the homes the government provided the homeless hurricane Katrina victims. It looked like a massive trailer home gravesite; almost erie in some ways, yet very surreal.
I flashed back to a memory I had from a flood that Steven and I had been in years prior in New Braunfels, Texas. A storm had dumped over 20" of water within a very short period of time, which turned the once peaceful Guadalupe River to raging flood waters. Almost all the homes situated along the river's banks were swept away. It was a horrible scene, one that was almost unfathomable to think about. Following that storm, people set up little white trailers similar to these. They set them up on the foundation that their once "permanent" home sat on.
I thought about how difficult it must have been for those whose homes were destroyed by raging flood waters. All those little white travel trailers represented a family or individual whose life had been torn apart by the storm. They had to start over with what they had left and what they had been given. In spite of the difficult situation they found themselves in, families made memories in these little homes. All the raw pain from the grief of loss would be deposited here and then hopefully left behind when they moved on. Yes, the pain could still be felt, but it would be a more distant ache as people began rebuilding their lives. I would guess there could be some good that would potentially come out of these little houses. They represented the places where tears would flood from the soul and onto the faces of the thousands who were affected by these devastating storms of life. I'm sure each little white travel trailer represents memories too painful for words to convey. Yes, they are now on the side of the road--hopefully as a sign that many have been able to move on to a better place.
© Brenda L. Marlin 2010
