Previously: The National Guard told me they would wouldn’t get all of us out in a day, so I knew I had to be patient. I asked him how many bodies they seen? He said, “Over 200 bodies,” not counting all the ones he didn’t see. I opened up to him about the things I learned during my years in and out of prison and how that prepared me for rescuing folks from the hurricane…
Y’know how, when you feel comfortable with someone, you can open up?
That’s how I felt that day, as the National Guard and I continued talking, sittin’ on the balcony at the projects. I told him that in prison, I learned how you can use two batteries and a razor blade to start a fire. So with us not having power during Katrina, I would take two batteries and turn one up, one down, tape them down and connect them with any kind of wire—you gotta know how to separate it and put the razor blade on top—but you can make fire this way.
It like a time bomb, it can tick off any time, so you gotta be real careful. (Don’t try this at home.)
In prison, riot breaks out while we tryin’ to protect each other; if you can help me, you help me. If you have to be on lockdown when a riot break out, prison culture teach you how you cook. Otherwise, you get tired of eating peanut butter sandwiches on lockdown. We think of it as a bad situation, but we help others.
For example, you can take a milk carton and burn it to make hot water to cook soup. You use toilet tissue and wrap it and put grease on it and it can burn slow. Hair grease or Vaseline help things burn slow. We would cook this way in the shower stall. If you want to burn something in your cell, you gotta put a blind up so the guards and the camera couldn’t see you.
I open up more to the National Guard, forgetting that everyone around us waitin’ impatiently to leave. I told him I was a junior lifeguard coming up, and I never forget the thing they showed me how to survive in the water, so that’s what help me reach out to help a lot of people now.
I went on about how as a young boy, I always wanted to become a police officer or a fire department. When I was 14 or 15, I was thinking about that. You had officers comin’ to school to talk about it.
But then I started doin’ time, and I recognize I couldn’t really be no police. I be getting’ in so much trouble, y’know?
(to be continued)
I told the guard I was born and raised in New Orleans. He said, “You know a lot about this city.” I told him I sure know the ins and out, the bad side and the good side.
That guard really made me feel comfortable.
He told me, “I would lose my life to save other life. I would put my life on the line to save y’all.” That’s when I know he was really tryin’ to help us.
He was sharing his life with me. He is a white guy, but he talk more like he black. Me being the person that I am, it seem like he seen a lot of pain in his life, same as me.
He been to prison because he got caught with weed, and then his mother and father told him if he didn’t want to be in prison the rest of his life, he had to finish school and go in the military.
My mother and friends’ mothers talked to me like that. When they did, I was hearin’ it but not hearin’ it. My older brother tried to be like a father to me, but he couldn’t control me. My gramma, we eye to eye. She like a father-mother—I came up like a gramma boy.
When I was in prison they called me to the chaplain office. He told me to sit down and told me we got a phone call. Your gramma passed. With me bein’ in the prison system, I be seein’ guys bein’ called to the chaplain office that they family members passed away. The chaplain helped them stay strong. I just took it.
My gramma and I would sit on a bed or on the couch. We sit out real good. She would ask me how you doin’? She get anything out me. We was real deep with each other, y’know?
Here on the balcony I almost forgot about what was going on. But then the guard told me they have so many people at the Convention Center that they layin’ all over the ground, getting medical help. Some afraid to go on the helicopter. He try to do all he could to help.
Suddenly, I put my head down and wonder whether I was really gonna make it.
I felt that way because he talk about all the people messed up, like how people was cryin’ about they family member, not sure they family member make it. So much that shook me up, hittin’ the bottom of my stomach.
To be continued . . .
