beachtime in Gulfport

Sitting on the white sand on a stretch of beach that's been cleared of storm debris by the city. Looking out at the Gulf of Mexico, bits of debris and tree trunks and metal shards poking out of the water. The signs say "Danger: Do Not Enter Water", but families are wading in the warm gulf anyway, enjoying the hot Sunday sun, hazardous waste and sharp objects be damned.

I'm listening to my 80's mix on the i-Pod, mostly to drown out the ranchero music that the Mexicans in the parking lot are blasting out of their El Dorado. My work phone rings but I move not a muscle. Today is my day - or at least a few hours of it - to do nothing.

Next thing I know, over strolls Jimmy Redneck with two cans of Bud. "Would you like a cold beer, ma'am?" "Sure," I say. What else do I have to do for the next few hours? He wouldn't be bad-looking, if he weren't so obviously Republican.

Jimmy Redneck has a shredded Confederate flag tattooed on his right arm, and another tattoo of a Chinese symbol on his chest. I ask him what the Chinese one means. "Aw, that ain't nothin' nice," he laughs. I press him on the matter, and he offers, "I just don't really care for people who think different than I do." Which is a candid but euphemistic way of admitting one's racism, I suppose.

Jimmy's work buddies are out splashing in the water, a couple of skinny pimply things who are supposedly 18. Jimmy says he's the big boss man at a construction site and these boys are his apprentices. When they gangle over with their awkward pale limbs and start talking to us, I can hardly understand what they are saying. Sounds like maybe an Alabama accent, but possibly a speech impediment thrown in there, or slight mental retardation? Maybe just social shyness? I want so desperately not to stereotype them as country yokels, but they are making it difficult: When they scurry over to the truck to grab Jimmy more beer, Jimmy tells me the blond boy was beaten by his father every day of his childhood after the man found out he wasn't the boy's father. The brown-haired one can't utter half a sentence without a torrent of profanity. Another colleague that appears, an older one with a beer belly, shakes my hand and offers a smile with half his teeth missing. (You think I am making this up??)

Jimmy Redneck isn't just red around the neck. He's starting to burn over most of his back and shoulders, but, as one of the boys puts it, "thunthcreen ith for puthieth". I have another beer and offer some of my sunscreen anyway. I am entertained, to say the least.

Jimmy eyes the Mexicans who are standing by the water and says he'll kick their asses if they don't stop staring at me, and why don't they all just fucking go home anyway? "Your family came from somewhere else once, too, you know?" I remind him. "And we invited them here to work on the recovery." Jimmy knows where this conversation is headed - If he wants to keep talking to bikini girl on the beach, he knows enough to stop his racist rant for the time being, so he does his best to play nice.

Now he's starting with how much money he's making doing construction down here, and it's so much money he doesn't know what to do with it. When he finds out that I'm working for a charity organization, he laughs, realizing how far off the mark he is, trying to impress me with his fat bank account.

Finally, after my Bud gets warm, I say goodbye to my beach buddies, thinking to myself, "This stuff is better than TV."

children's drawings at a local community center

" Lightning and Rain

the only house that

survived."

"Hurricane Katrina"

"There was water all around the houses in Pearlington, Mississippi"

my roommate Harvey