There was mixed news at the dentist. The bite is just fine, it's that this is at least the third time this particular molar has been drilled into and there is some chance that the nerves and veins, the pulp in the tooth, is just going to die. There is some chance it will just heal on its own, but the experienced dentist here said that he thought it less likely than it failing eventually. The good news was that the X-Ray showed no deterioration along those lines, yet, and I've done this before, where the dentist was sure it was going to die, but it came back with time and being careful to not mess with it too much. It was oddly good to know that there really wasn't anything I could do for it other than wait. And it was really good to get confirmation that my dentist at home is entirely competent and that I can trust him with whatever does happen next.
We headed out because it was supposed to be raining all day, and the turquoise house in the photograph was across the street from the post office, and was so striking I wanted a picture of it as a painting of it seems to be on the fridge at our apartment. It's different, but it struck me as similar. *laughs*
We did see a couple of streets near the back of the neighborhood, by the school, that were being repaved with new everything, including sewage, water, and power lines being buried under them. But it felt like too little too late, more than fifteen years later. But maybe it's all moved on and there are better things to be done to improve the lives of those who are still here.
We wandered through and then headed further East along the usual drive we'd taken between Biloxi and New Orleans, most of it along the coast. I fell asleep through much of it, but John went along the shoreline and we got to see the old stilt houses.
There were some pretty fancy houses out there.
We went through a neighborhood we knew we'd work in and found one of the houses there, now surrounded by a fence; but all the neighboring houses still gone. The nearest other house was half a block away, and there were open-toothed gaps between the houses there as well. The businesses were doing pretty well, there were more of them, and the downtown area of Ocean Springs was bustling with people, new coffee shops, and other shops. There was a Vietnamese bakery and the familiar sight of the Ole Tater Nut, a donut shop, with a Closed for 3/8 and 3/9 on the door. They always closed for absolutely no describable reason for a few days. Given the cold weather these few days, though, perhaps it was entirely understandable. Business would be slower.
We kept going out the other side, toward the east and then northish to The Shed. The last time we'd been there a fire had run through it all and they'd just reopened the kitchen.
It kept growing, and now has a performance stage for Blues and Jazz bands and folks that come to play while people eat, and the bathrooms are on TOP of a little two-story addition so that the sewage actually has some elevation so that it'll flow somewhere, as the grounds are a few feet below sea level. It's right by an RV park.
We headed out because it was supposed to be raining all day, and the turquoise house in the photograph was across the street from the post office, and was so striking I wanted a picture of it as a painting of it seems to be on the fridge at our apartment. It's different, but it struck me as similar. *laughs* We headed over the bridge to the Lower Eighth Ward to look around as we used to do after rebuilding other houses in Biloxi. It was a gauge for us of how things were going in New Orleans. Sadly, while the bits of the neighborhood that were close to the main road were rebuilt with the fancy Brad Pitt houses, the rest of the neighborhood was still pretty forlorn. Lots and lots of completely empty lots. Lots of promises that were never kept, or people just fleeing a situation that couldn't be remedied, sadly. There were several really well maintained, beautiful small houses, but with so many empty lots around them, the neighborhood seemed like a ghost of what it once was.
We wandered through and then headed further East along the usual drive we'd taken between Biloxi and New Orleans, most of it along the coast. I fell asleep through much of it, but John went along the shoreline and we got to see the old stilt houses.
Some still for sale! And lots and lots of water still.
A great deal of the area had been thoroughly cleaned up, though. The steadily decreasing wreckage had all gone. There were no more shattered signs, derelict shells of abandoned anything anymore. Shaggy's, a waterfront restaurant we used to go to on the way to Biloxi was still there, hanging cheerfully out by the marina. The prices had gone upscale, and the menu had gone far more mainstream. LOTs more cocktails than local beers, and the food was more typical TGIFriday food than before. There were no boiled crawfish. The only boiled shrimp was an $18 thing for just one pound of red shrimp that I'm not entirely sure if it said it was local or not. The corn and crab bisque I had was super salty, fatty, and there wasn't the spice there had been in their soups before. John got a wedge salad, as he was pretty disappointed by the menu too, and we headed off into the rain.
It was a little haunting to drive through Biloxi.
The weather may be in part to blame, but it was odd to see all those empty lots now covered in green, where there had once been the scar of old concrete foundations. The live oaks were as they'd always been, scraggly, covered in moss and vines.
The Shed started as just someone's backyard shed, where they did BBQ. Then they started building off of that, in ramshackle fashion and people brough more picnic tables and benches and it grew and grew and grew... and it's just take-out with no code for indoor seating, whatsoever. You have to bus your table yourself and you get to take your food from the server that brings it out and set yourself down wherever on the grounds.
When Katrina roared through, it washed most of the Shed away, but the owner found some of the tables and chairs. The smokers were tumbled but it takes a lot to actually do much damage to those, and they got back to work within a week, feeding the people who needed feeding. This time John and I shared a baby back rib plate, thinking back to when they used to have the spareribs, instead, as that was cheaper and much tastier with the slow smoke methods they could use on site. We didn't see the Jeep Smoker or the other odd smokers they used to have propped up everywhere working on the food. I suspect they might have had to move at least some of it to a commercial kitchen somewhere else... but seeing the old race car shell smoker was fun at least. The gift shop has gotten pretty enormous as well, but that may have always been true.
We headed back soon thereafter. Memory Lane was grey and a little sad. The underlying poverty and problems of the region are just still here, and there is no magical cure for it all. Having oil prices bounce up may help out this area considerably, though it'll be lining the pockets of the company owners more than the everyday worker.
That said, a funny thing happened along the way, which was that I looked on Google Maps for local gas prices, because we were low on gas, and saw this one station sticking out with a price of $3.59 a gallon when nearly everything else was $3.99. So we went there and found the station just swarmed with people, some of whom were complaining about how slow the pumps were. John got his started, and the guy that was working the pumps came up to explain that the lady before John had had trouble getting the pump to stop, so he was supposed to put an "Out of Order" bag over it.
The pump was slow enough the guy ended up telling John three jokes while just standing there waiting for our tank to fill. And about ten minutes into it, the prices at the pump suddenly jumped seventy cents a gallon. Turns out that the owners had set the price that morning, and only just learned that their price was actually below that of the Walmart station up the road. The station soon emptied of people. But we got our price! Once the fill started it kept the sale at that price.
So we got lucky. And maybe I'll be equally lucky with my tooth healing in the long term and just figuring out life with the new crown. I'll give it the time to settle.
We got some chicken breasts wrapped around sundried tomato and other spices at the market down the block, baked them in the oven and added roasted potatoes and brussels sprouts from the same for the last fifteen minutes, and it was all hot and satisfying before our evening church meeting of our Small Group. It was good to be able to get together with everyone even across the distances.
A HUGE cockroach trundled across the kitchen floor during the meeting, but it's the first we've seen. The can of lemon-scented roach killer under the kitchen sink came in handy when it came out again, and John got it thoroughly. With the cold coming in, I guess they're all trying to find shelter in the warmth. It's supposed to be freezing here Saturday morning, so we'll see how it goes. We have all our cold weather gear from Colorado, so we'll be fine and we found the heater in this place, which is nice. Thursday is supposed to be nice, so we're headed out for a Plantation Tour then, and other than that, we'll take it easy and enjoy what we can.
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