This wasn't the two months' exhaustion of blank-eyed relief workers, washed out by weeks of devastation at every turn. Nor the emptiness of an evacuated city, still blinking neon lights forlornly at those who dared to return to a broken town.
These were the people who had the finances and the flexibility to choose their cities of refuge. And their pace was frenzied.
Most of the scheduled tourists were gone: the big UT - UA (University of Texas/University of Arkansas) football game was cancelled, along with several professional sports games. I found a luxury hotel at rock-bottom prices because all the high-end visitors pulled out at the last minute. But that didn't mean there was a shortage of middle-class folks ready to spend anything to forget their problems back home.
Sixth Street in Austin collected all the college-age (and the wannabe past-their-primers) out for a good time. The Paseo del Rio in San Antonio was likewise overflowing with revelers. Any question yelled by bartenders or river guides about evacuees was answered with a deafening roar. The evacuees kept the rounds coming as we blinked, bleary-eyed, at weathermen blown off the screen on enormous plasma TVs.
I didn't even have to pull the "I'm a Coast Guard hero" line to get free drinks. The evacuees were all too willing to treat everyone in sight. Nor were they in any hurry to get home - schools and businesses were closed and power outages (read: no air conditioning) were widespread. And for all the drinking, the two church services I attended this weekend (including an amazing mariachi mass in San Antonio) were overflowing, with prayers for hurricane victims frequent.
PS. For a state that repeatedly reminds you of how large everything is ("Texas-sized Ike")...the Alamo really is quite small.
3 comments:
Sounds surreal. And fun, in a wierd kind of way. Only in America?
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