whats the matter with purvis?

as i was driving down highway 59, en route to new orleans, i decided to stop at purvis, mississippi.
i had stopped there before, with my friend sigrid exactly a year before and i remembered that as we drove up to one of the most snaggle-toothed little po-dunk gas stations slash general stores i'd ever seen (and ive seen a lot) i wondered if it was open. it was just 10 minutes to 5pm.
sigrid stepped out of my large, older, gas and oil sucking cadillac. the cadillac has vermont plates. sigrid is a tall, gorgeous swedish woman with long blonde hair. at that time she was wearing a short, white fur coat. as i got out of the car i thought to myself, "o my, what a bunch of dangerously criminal yankees we must look.
there were soft, dry, rustling noises from inside the small building in front of us. sigrid stepped onto its listless little porch just as the "open" sign was swung into its reverse position. "closed".
from the small window i caught a glimpse of a rat faced man with weasel eyes. then he was gone.
o my. no gas for us, at least here. i took pictures as a way of memorializing this awkward moment in north-south cultural relations. sigrid strutted on the porch and asked me, "did he really just close... just for us?"
yes, im afraid he did.
we both thought that we might just stay parked right there. the building was free standing. barring underground tunnels the ferret-human inside would have to come out eventually. we wondered what we could say to him when we finally came out, hours later. "hey buddy, we're selling crack, where's the nearest junior high school?"
so, fond memories of true southern hospitality drew my steering wheel like a magnet to purvis.
this year though, i found an entirely new scene. the gas station was totally renovated. same size, same porch, but now all painted up and fancified.
surrounding the tiny gas station were more white fema trailers than any of us have ever seen in our lives. trust me.
i drove up to the sign and took a pic. i drove up to the gate thinking to ask a few questions. find out the low down. all these trailers must be earmarked for needy people. governmental altruism made my heart a little bit glad. a human interest story of rebuilding and rebirth could be blogged.
i was surprised at the actions of the attendant in his fema uniform. trembling with anxiety he asked me to remove my car, immediately from his lot of 10,000 white trailers. i just wanted a few pictures, i explained. "y-y-you cant take pictures here," he said. "well," i said, "i guess i can take pictures from the road." then he threatened to call the police. i decided it would be best to skee-daddle out of there.
apparently the feds have lots and lots of trailers both in mississippi and missouri but they refuse, for reasons known only to them, to install them in new orleans or gulfport, or some other place where people are still living in tents.
there are tents under the claiborne street bridge in new orleans. there are tents in city park. right now.
o well. i took the pictures anyway. and ill never, ever forget purvis.
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*Follow up to 22 feb post:
Apparently the fema trailers discussed in my discursion are being settled, perhaps too slowly, into sites in the gulf. The trailers are manufactured and shipped by bechtel corp. only 35,000 — total — are in use to date. when they first arrived at their sites in new orleans they had no keys.
The bechtel corp has a website: bechtel.com. There you can read the company’s strident denials about everything from boston’s big dig, the bin laden family, bleeding the taxpayer dry in iraq and of course the “rebuilding” of new orleans. if you’re in the mood to laugh to keep yourself from crying, go to this website. click on “news”.
--wlh, 24 feb, 2006