Jon Swerens

Blogger.com, which hosts this weblog, has a spell check.

The word “blog” is not in its dictionary.

Over supper, I met Batch and Holly — Batch is the guy responsible for the Latin-rific Simul Justus et Peccator blog.

It was never intended to become Katrina Central for the PCA, but there it is.

(And I took my camera with me and never took a picture of them. My brain sometimes.)

Batch and Holly lost their house to Katrina. That of course was very difficult and draining.

But now they’re in a new difficult and draining portion of the disaster: Trying to figure out what to do next.

Do you stay? Do you rebuild? Can you afford to rebuild? Do you really want to live in the same spot? Can you find a job? Can you afford to stay and find a job? Should you move to find a job?

And all the while, you’re calling and meeting with representatives of layer upon layer of government and insurance bureaucracy.

This is a time when prayer is most needed for patience through this particular trial.

Read more on his blog.

I understand that this sign on Pass Road just west of Keesler Air Force Base was one of only two original McDonald’s signs in the country.

When I drove by the small sign on Pass Road that proclaimed, “Sears is now open!” I wondered, where’s Sears? Where is there even a mall?

I had driven over a lot of the main roads of Biloxi and Gulfport except for one: U.S. 90, also called Beach Boulevard, which has been closed to the general public since Katrina.

And that is where you can find Edgewater Mall.

It’s a big one, too, a bit smaller than Fort Wayne’s Glenbrook Square. (Glenbrook has 175 stores, Edgewater has “more than a hundred.”)

But the mall is right beside the beach and has been closed since the storm. And Sears, despite having doors that face the ocean, is the first store there to reopen.

Security guards directed shoppers around the mall through several construction crews trying to restore the rest of the mall. But what caught my eye was this:

I wondered if this O’Charley’s had been in the middle of demolition when Katrina struck. Here’s a closer look:

There isn’t enough rubble for this to have been a working restaurant, right?

But it was. A resident drove up to take a look around and I asked him about the place. He said this was one of the most popular places to eat on the beach.

“You’d have to wait in line to get in,” he said.

Of course, nowadays you have to wait in line to eat anywhere.

Evidently, anything that could float, including tables and chairs, was washed out to sea.

Think of it. The floor of the restaurant couldn’t have been more than ten feet above sea level. The storm surge was 30 feet. The math is frightening.

Over my shoulder was this:

And past the auto center were two other buildings that I found out were BellSouth offices:

Notice how the second story of this building looks practically intact, while the first floor is completely washed out.

Unlike this one.

But then I startled myself with what was right in front of me: This huge, glorious tree survived. There is nothing but a road and the beach between the tree and the gulf.

So now I can end with a couple of shots of the Gulf of Mexico itself.

It’s always there, calm enough to be sleeping, not even a surf to talk about.

Can you imagine the size of a storm that could bring water thirty feet above sea level? A storm surge of thirty feet. The mind boggles.

This is the latest post in a series on Ocean Springs, Miss. Scroll down for the others and click the photos for enlargements.

Local resident Jean told me to keep going down Front Beach Drive, and it will swing around into an inlet where some boats have found themselves in places boats don’t belong.

His neighbor to the right also had unwelcome visitors. Note the little green boat right of center; it seems to be resting on top of several posts.

And then, lo and behold:

Sun Herald photo by David Purdy

Here’s another photo from The Sun Herald’s package of aerial shots. This is an aerial view of what you see in my photos above. Note again how little cleanup has happened in a month.

And then I go up a hill, turn to the left, go up another short hill, and on the corner we have some boats, pushed up quite a little hill to rest on this residential street.

Thus concludes our tour of Ocean Springs. Be sure to check out all the posts below.

This is the latest post in a series on Ocean Springs, Miss. Scroll down for the others and click the photos for enlargements.

Katrina has a crazy variety of ways to destroy your home: Winds, storm surge, rain. And then, like in this case, Katrina would simply dig the dirt out from under your house.

Wherever you find a line of trees or a fence, you find a scene like this, where bags and clothes were caught mid-flight.

Jean told me that right behind that tree, where you can see a layer of concrete blocks on the ground, was once an old home. The brick house in the background looked as though it may have survived Katrina’s wrath …

… until I walked 30 feet and saw the front. This home was owned by a woman who had just completed renovations so that her elderly mother could live with her. A local businessman has helpfully posted an advertisement for demolition services on a post in the foreground.

You may have to click on this photo to get a good view of the homes on the rise. These houses look like Katrina shoved these houses into themselves, the way you’d shove away a dinner plate at the table.

More steps to nowhere.

Too bad hurricanes can’t read.

This is the latest post in a series on Ocean Springs, Miss. Scroll down for the others and click the photos for enlargements.

This was an apartment complex.

There would have been no way for me to know, except that in that Sun Herald aerial photo package I mentioned yesterday, there was this picture:

Sun Herald photo by David Purdy

Caption: Two apartment complexes on Beach Front Road in Ocean Springs were reduced to rubble.

The aerial photo was taken almost a month ago. No rebuilding has taken place, and who knows when it will. Too many questions remain about insurance and the future of the casinos, which employed 17,000 people.

This is the latest post in a series on Ocean Springs, Miss. Scroll down for the others and click the photos for enlargements.

Somtimes during my travels around the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I would not be sure if the splinters and slabs before me were ever some sort of building. So, did Katrina do this, or was it a wreck anyway?

On this trip to Ocean Springs, though, I had a worthy tour guide in Jean.

She told me this was a fish market. The little spit of land was too small for a building, so the owner poured huge amounts of oyster shells to enlarge the area. And despite reservations from the city of Ocean Springs, he built his business right there on the beach.