More on the personal side...

[nolly]

Now that I've heard from family and all, it's starting to hit me that one of my childhood homes is almost certainly destroyed. For about 4 years in the early 80s, my family lived on the mIssissippi Gulf coast, in a little town called Gautier, near Pascagoula. We moved away 20 years ago this summer, right around the end of July, if I recall correctly. The first home I memorized the address for is likely destroyed. The library where I learned to use microfiche readers, where I raced worms and won prizes for cookies. My first elementary school. The school where I learned BASIC.

Now, I've only been back once in the 20 years we've been gone. And most, if not all, the people I knew have left the area in that time. This is nothing compared to the losses suffered by those who lived there currently, who had family there, who lived nearby...

But it's really odd to think of all those places being gone.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

The library my mom learned to read in was broken beyond use in a quake last year. Those little things, those memories, really hurt.

(Raced worms?)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

It was a summer reading program activity, as were the cookie baking contests. No, I don't remember what the worm race had to do with reading. It might've connected to some book or a theme for the summer. It might've just been a way to get kids to the library. The race was outside, on a patio-type area, not in the library itself. My worm did not do well. Had it been a fast worm, I doubt I would've caught it in the first place.