Jim Taylor in Bay St. Louis
Jim Taylor’s cell phone message begins “I don’t know where I’m at,” but he was luckier than most. His property in Bay St. Louis, MS sits near the St. Stanislaus Catholic school, high enough to leave him with eight feet of water in his house after a storm surge as high as forty feet elsewhere. Jim is a tugboat captain. He was discharging cement in Tampa when I caught up with him this afternoon; he’s not worried about his own industry.
Casinos? As far as I’m concerned, the devil owns all of them, hell, we’re hauling cement right now, there’s going to be a big demand for the construction trade, all sorts of cargo necessary for rebuilding. As far as the Mississippi river goes, I was just talking to a river pilot last night; the grain exportation is going strong, that’s all going to make a rebound real quick.
Jim Taylor
Jim can’t imagine that anything will be able to replace the 180 year-old houses on the shore in Bay St. Louis.
It’s not going to have the character of what’s gone. We used to say the one good thing about the bay, you can go away for eight months and it’s exactly the same. What’s going to re-emerge? Who knows? If I knew that I’d go to the race track.
Jim Taylor
It seems like the people that lost the most, all those old residents, they’re mostly still in shock. It’s such a devastating loss; those houses are irreplaceable. I dont’ think they’ve come to grips with what all has happened.
Jim Taylor
Working people like me, we got no intentions of going anywhere. You grow up on the Gulf Coast, that’s a mindset, you’re not going to let some chickenshit hurricane scare you up to Arkansas.
Jim Taylor
Jim and I wasted some air on the Tulane football team — he was born in New Orleans and I went to school there — and he left me with an oddly hopeful point.
Edmond Fahey has a funeral home here, he always says ‘If you die in the bay I’ll cart you away, if you die in the pass I got your ass.’ Funeral home got flooded, but they’re still standing. Fahey’s back at work.
Jim Taylor
That’s Pass Christian, Mississippi, across the bay from Bay St. Louis.
