davydog

Katrina’s Diaspora

I happened upon Bruce “Shorty” Allen on NW 19th Ave., about half a block from Burnside, while walking up to Stadium Fred Meyer to buy some peanut butter. There’s a machine in their “nutrition” department that lets you grind the roasted peanuts into peanut butter. The self-grind tastes better than anything Skippy ever stuffed into a plastic jar. It was the Eve of Thanksgiving Eve. The days are short this time of year; nightfall came several hours earlier. Shorty sat in the shadows of the poorly lit street, on a knee-high concrete wall that acted as a divider separating the sidewalk from the abrupt drop-off to the car wash parking lot below.

As I approached, Shorty greeted me with “what’s up, old hippie!” then laughed. In my younger years I might have felt slightly offended at someone calling me “hippie.” After all, weren’t hippies those folks who wear hemp clothing and Birkenstock sandals, maintain uninterrupted membership in KBOO Radio’s Jerry Garcia Memorial Collective, dwell on or near SE Belmont, Hawthorne or Lower Division and carefully affix “Keep Portland Passive-Aggressive” stickers to the bumpers of their Subarus or Vanagons without the slightest trace of irony?

But nowadays I no longer automatically cringe at such insults. My lysergic-cannabinol; hardcore punk; grunge media impresario; and “urban professional” days are all long behind me. Sporting an unkempt graying, greasy mop and seedy, grizzled demeanor, I’m sure most folks in my neighborhood assume I’m a bum anyway, if they see me at all. So being mistaken for a “hippie” looks like a step up. On paper, at least. Shorty reached out and we shook hands as he remarked “I always know my own people.”

Shorty said he’d come down here to Portland from Seattle, where FEMA had relocated him after the flood. He told me he’d lost fourteen family members in the Katrina cataclysm. Shorty broke into tears as he described how he tried, and failed, to save the lives of a drowning baby and her mother. Just talking about that experience seemed to transport him back to the moment. Back into the murky, filthy, moccasin-infested floodwaters, trying–and failing–to pull those particular doomed victims to safety.

Shorty asked me if I’d buy him a burger, but quickly corrected himself, requesting “Chinese rice” instead. The Panda Express restaurant sat just on the other side of the car wash. Unsure if he wanted me to actually go into the restaurant and buy him his meal, or just fork over a few bucks, I decided to give him the ten dollar bill I found nestled next to two singles in the little change pouch I found tucked in my front-left pocket.

Shorty had suffered much in his forty-two years on this planet. His many hardships left visible marks on his face, in his eyes, and on his beaten down body. One of the side effects of having gone through so much trauma is the inevitable alienation trauma leaves in its wake. Your story, your experiences set you apart from others around you. It imposes an insurmountable barrier between you and the reigning social “norm.” Your story makes others uncomfortable. They don’t want to hear it, or may doubt or dismiss the story you tell.

It was important to Shorty that I understood he was not bullshitting me or telling me lies. His experiences, his traumas, were real. They really happened to him. As if to prove to me that he actually existed, Shorty pulled out his I.D. card to “show” me he was for real. Shorty wasn’t the first person I’ve encountered who did this. Even so, it astonished me each time I witnessed it. It was a gesture that never failed to usher in an awkward and deeply poignant moment in which words failed. How do folks get so thoroughly beaten down that they feel compelled to justify their existence to a stranger?

In better times, Shorty had traveled extensively. He worked for Unocal on oil rigs off the Gulf Coast and around the world: Russia, Venezuela, Brazil, Trinidad and other faraway lands. His seventeen year-old daughter lives with her mother in Rio de Janeiro and his twenty-one year-old son is enrolled at Texas A&M University.

But on this particular evening Shorty found himself, on the cusp of Thanksgiving day, sitting alone on a concrete curb, nursing a tall can of malt liquor discretely tucked into an inside pocket of his overcoat. No place in Portland to call home, Shorty lived on the street. He was too scared to return to his former home in New Orleans, which likely no longer existed anyway.

His experiences had clearly traumatized him; during our conversation he repeatedly emphasized that he had a lot of “gratitude.” His survival mantra. For as bad as he has it, he knows that there’s someone else, somewhere, who has it worse. And then he would weep. He desperately clung to the belief that his “God” watched over him. I gathered that his repeated use of the phrase “my God” was meant to distinguish his God from whatever “god” the Republican member of Congress referred to when he quipped “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” I asked Shorty if he might consider writing down his story. I appreciated his sharing it with me, and pointed out that his story is important. Others should hear it.

I didn’t make it to Fred Meyer that night, but–after walking Shorty to the door of the Panda Express restaurant–I slowly and dejectedly walked back to my tiny studio apartment. For many of us, even those of us spared the horror that Shorty and so many New Orleans citizens went through, Katrina and her aftermath signaled a turning point. It unmasked the mythical and fraudulent “American Way Of Life.” The “non-negotiable” delusion our society has tortured and murdered so many to protect and uphold. Katrina guaranteed the death and damnation of this rancid “Way Of Life,” which now rots in a hell of its own design.

Oh yeah, uh, happy shopping!