In Rural Texas, Blessings and Culture Shock

One morning last week, the Texas sun beat down as Oscar and several of his family members drove out to an unofficial drop-off donation site at Seguin Canvas and Awning, a business owned by the same couple who'd offered the Jacksons their ranch house. Rania Lange waved Oscar and his relatives toward a cluttered landscape of clothes, household items and food, donated by Seguin's residents.

Lange pointed to a box of dusty cowboy boots. Oscar smiled. "No, girl, I ain't all the way there yet."

Oscar's family waded through the clutter, assembling their future. There were five boxes of Tuna Magic. One box labeled "Books, Baby Sitters Club Series." Cans of beef stew. Old coffeepots. Curtains. Sodas. Lamps. Bags and bags of clothing. Someone had carefully written on one box, "All the clothes is washed."

Oscar's sister-in-law spied a tall industrial ladder propped against the wall of the shed. In New Orleans, she used such a ladder on her job washing windows and cleaning hotel chandeliers. She asked Lange if the ladder was for the taking. It wasn't.

Oscar's cousin picked up a gold picture frame, looking at the collage of strangers, and in his pile it went. Photographs of strangers were better than no photographs at all. "At least I'll have some pictures to look at," he said.

In the car on the way back, Oscar's sister-in-law, the one who'd asked about the ladder, was worried about breaking into a new town. She said her son had told her that morning, "Mama, you gotta sell yourself like you are on a job interview."

Oscar drove the ruler-straight two-lane highway. The windows were rolled down. The vouchers for gas would not come for another day. A trailer passed, carrying three cows.

"Give me a tractor, I'll plow," said Oscar's cousin, who refinished floors in New Orleans. "A man said he was looking for people to dig, laying telephone wire."

Oscar took his cowboy hat from the dashboard and put it on. "We could open up a restaurant and call it Strictly New Orleans."

Slice of New Orleans

By their sheer numbers, Oscar and his family were re-creating New Orleans in a corner of Seguin. Their jobs were gone, their schools, their churches, even their family pictures were gone, washed away. They often lapsed into talk about food, which doubled as conversations about home, and what was left behind. Oscar's mother was known for her raging pots of red beans and rice, and Oscar had once worked as a chef. Oscar's sister said she craved shrimp. Someone else said rice and gravy.

"You know what'll be good, Mama, to cook with shrimp?" Oscar said. "Okra. I put a little fillet in mine, and sausage, onion, celery and bell pepper."

Most nights, Oscar and his relatives were fed dinner by His Way Community Church. In addition to nightly meals, pastor William Butler helped provide resolution when tensions over money arose. The situation was ripe for exploitation. Another evacuee in town -- unrelated to the Jacksons -- stood in front of the Wal-Mart with his sad story, pocketing $800 but giving the four women in his group only $25 each.