This and That on a Rainy Day

Location: Buccaneer State Park (el. 10 ft); Waveland, Mississippi

All pictures taken with Nokia Lumia Icon 929 cell phone
(click pictures to enlarge)

The slow moving low pressure system that has caused record setting rainfall and flooding in Louisiana finally got here last night. I have been wanting it to move faster so it will clear of this area by noon tomorrow so I can move to another campground. It looks like it will be nip and tuck as to whether I will be moving in the dry or not. The move is just down the road to a campground real close to the beach, but I would prefer doing it in the dry if possible.

A beach shot from a couple days ago

Another shot from a couple days ago where I got lucky with the bird.

My favorite beach house located just down the road from the campground. I bet there is a story about why the left porch is square and the right one is octagonal, but there was nobody around to ask. It has to be less than 10 years old since all the places were wiped out during Katrina. I was talking with a woman at the laundromat who had owned a house that was destroyed during Katrina. I asked if she had re-built. She said the insurance paid to replace the house, but she couldn't afford to rebuild because the cost of homeowners insurance had went from $1,200 per year to over $10,000 per year after Katrina. That answered my question as to why there were so many empty lots everywhere. 

This picture is from yesterday and you can see how angry the Gulf is getting as the storms get closer. I will try to get another picture after the storms arrive.

I drove to a town that doesn't exist anymore in an attempt to find the grave of my aunt. Her name was Helen and she passed away in 1920 at the age of 4. I know very, very little about her. In fact, I didn't know she had existed until about 15 years ago during a visit with my father, his sister and his sister-in-law. All have since passed away except for the sister-in-law. My father and aunt were talking about their recent trip into Mississippi to find the grave of their sister. I thought that was odd, because I didn't recall any aunts buried in Mississippi. They then told me about my Aunt Helen who died 4 years before my father was born. I asked how she died, but surprisingly, they knew very little other than she had died of some sickness. They had found the cemetery, or at least the one they thought contained her grave. The headstone, if there ever was one, had long since disappeared which would not be unusual since the family had moved away shortly after her death. My father and aunt had different recollections as to the location of her grave within the cemetery. They planned to put up a headstone if they could verify where she rested. The last time they would have been there would have been when they both were early teenagers before the family moved to Texas during the depression years of the late 1930's. I knew the name of the cemetery from some papers I had and went to see if I could find it.

Ora Cemetery where I think my Aunt Helen is buried

It was named after the town of "Ora", but looking at maps it was clear that town didn't exist anymore. I was able to find the cemetery but could not find the headstone. It is a small cemetery and I was easily able to walk the whole thing in less than 30 minutes. I guess my father and aunt couldn't verify her location accurate enough to put up a headstone. As I stood there, I wondered what has happened at this place nearly 100 years ago. I then noticed a large sawmill nearby and remembered that one of the jobs my grandfather had was a lumber grader at a sawmill. I wondered if he had worked at that mill so close to the cemetery. I then thought that the original headstone may not have been a stone at all, it could have been a wooden marker from the sawmill. That would have been commonplace back then as it would have been considerably cheaper than an stone marker and would have decayed over the decades. As I turned to leave, I told Aunt Helen, "Hello and Goodbye". I knew there would not be any other Goza's returning to this place since I had not seen a single Goza headstone and could not think of any living relatives that may know of the place. Time passes by so quickly. It was a nice road trip into the past.

Ya'll take care of each other. I'll Cya down the road.