HUCKLEBERRY BEN

The most remarkable event of this day was that a refugee from Katrina came into the store and asked for directions back to New Orleans. He didn't know how to read a map, so he asked me to write out detailed instructions on a piece of paper. This meant I had to go over to the map section and study a road atlas. 635 turns into I-20. Follow it east for most of the way, until you hit Shreveport. Then it's I-49 south to Baton Rouge. Then, from there, stay the course on I-10 until it leads you to New Orelans.
I asked the guy, "Are you sure you don't want to wait a bit before you go back?" He explained that he was from Jefferson, a suburb of New Orleans (from what I could make out), and that his area wasn't that bad. He seemed like an extremely nice, polite fellow, and was very grateful for what I was doing. I hope my directions don't get him lost. He also bought a large stack of CD's, presumably to play on the journey. This made me very pleased. At least he bought something! That's better than I can say for a lot of directionless direction seekers we get at Borders (or myself sometimes).
I felt a little angry, after that, at some people who send me emails, occasionally (none of whom are reading this), and have put out some pretty negative stuff, recently, saying that "all the right people died" or "that town needed an enema" or "why didn't all those dummies just leave when they were told to?" or "it was God's judgement ... just like the tsunami" or (my big fave) "why are there so many black people on the TV coverage and not more whites?".
So ... I sort of imagined that nice Louisianan and myself as Jim and Huck, rafting down the Mississippi, laughing at the Duke and the Dauphin, and all the other stupid white people we meet along the way...