PrettyFakes

I stayed in a broke-down Econo Lodge on Highway 90 that I’d passed a dozen times over the years and never thought once about. It meant something to me now: the faux-calm call to Sally to unlock the code spray-painted on the side of the hotel by the military, hoping no one died there (they didn’t); the hotel room over mine that was now converted into the combined office and home of the family that owned the hotel; the demolished waterslide next door, scraped down to the bright-blue curves it cut into the sandy dirt.

There was nowhere to eat, really, other than fast food places, and they’re starving for help: a sign hung by the highway announced that McDonald’s was now paying $8.75 an hour. I drove over to Gulfport to go in the Super Wal-Mart. I normally avoid the places but they always have plenty of fake meat for hungry vegetarians. The place was like a Tower of Babel: a bizarre new millenium mash-up of race and language, everyone worn-out looking, everyone too tanned, even with our little world just now edging closer to the sun.

They had Dairy Fresh chocolate milk, though, which is my favorite, and I stayed up too late drinking beer and eating Bugles and watching Law & Order and Cold Case and plenty of other junk. Then I got out and drove up and down 90. During the day it’s still heartbreaking, nothing but broken timbers and trash flapping around, stuck in the trees. At night you can’t see the wreckage, and Biloxi can be beautiful, lit up and sparkling by the full moon rising over the Gulf.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Gorjus, In Mississippi, Poetry, Polaroids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.