SS Hurricane Camille and Gift Shop before Katrina (postcard)

For the first couple of years after Katrina, I could not take a ride down Highway 90 without my eyes misting over.  You don’t realize how much you love a place until it’s hopelessly gone.

SS Hurricane Camille after Katrina

The SS Hurricane Camille seems a quirky place to be sentimental over, but I can’t help it–I miss it.  As a child growing up on the west side of town, I made frequent trips to the gift shop with its garishly painted tugboat posted by the front door.  The tugboat, blown ashore by Hurricane Camille in 1969, remained on land and became a giant lawn ornament for a souvenir shop.   The shop had a selection of seashells organized in bins across the middle of the store that could be purchased for 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, …depending on the shell.  At ten-years-old, I considered myself a “shell collector.”

Even as an elementary school child, I visited on foot, several blocks from my home, to add to my collection.  I remember buying a strawberry top, a sundial, a pink murex, a tiger cowrie, an alphabet cone, a whelk, and more over time with my pocket change.  I saved up at one point to buy a Nautilus, a large spiraling shell with beautifully intricate chambers.

The first issue of "The Nautilus," school newspaper of Gulfport High School

Gulfport High School no longer has a school newspaper, but when I entered in 1977 (the first class of Admirals), a new name for the paper was being sought, and my suggestion, “The Nautilus,” was accepted.  I even drew the logo using my shell as a model.

I was showing Nathan my old shells, the same ones I purchased from the gift shop all those years ago.  He liked them okay, but he is a “candle collector”–buys scented candles from

the Hallmark store whenever he gets a chance.  He has about twenty with scents like vanilla cupcake, juicy

Shells I bought at the SS Hurricane Camille Gift Shop: tiger cowrie, whelk, strawberry top, sundial, alphabet cone

watermelon, red apple wreath, fresh cut roses, and sparkling lemon.  He put my strawberry top to his nose–I don’t think he was impressed.  Still, he said he’d like to have them one day…some things are more appealing when we get a little further down the road.

[The SS Hurricane Camille was demolished in May of 2008.]

See also:  Hurricane Camille – Forty Year Anniversary.

West Ward Elementary School; Gulfport, Mississippi; 1968

Would you believe I can name almost every one of my second grade classmates?  Mind you, I’m fairly pathetic when it comes to remembering the name of someone I met yesterday, but I’m semi-remarkable when it comes to 1968.  I’m the tall girl in the back row of this photo, first one on the left.  And that might have been the last year I qualified as “the tall girl.”

The school, West Ward Elementary, overlooked the endlessly cresting waves of the Gulf of Mexico (in fact, we’re facing the gulf as we pose for this photo), and like Gulfport High School, it was fittingly the home of the Commodores.  The building survived Hurricane Camille in August of ‘69, but did not survive progress.  It was bulldozed in the 90s  and replaced by the Island View Casino.

The principal, Mr. Walt Ewing, is standing in the back.  He ran a tight ship, so most of us were supremely terrified of him.  We all told ghastly tales of rumored paddlings for minor infractions–the paddles got larger with every story and evolved into torture devices with holes that sucked up pieces of butt with every stroke.  I think I was more afraid of my second grade teacher,though– Mrs. Krass, the lady with the interesting genie hairstyle.  She switched my open palms with a ruler one day for pulling out my Crayolas too soon.

It’s funny to look at that little second grader (me) and then look at Nathan who is now a second grader himself.  Thankfully, paddles and palm-whackings are a thing of the past (I think I’d have a stroke if someone tried to hurt him).

Alright.  Let me prove my mental acumen:  (Top, L to R) Karen Parker (me), Denise, Greg Gilstrap, Teddy Gaston, Robin Jackson, Karen White, Mike Cook.  (Middle, L to R) Sonia Guyton, Dennis Cospelich, Kenny, Mark Pell, Deborah Ladnier, Thomas Cook, Beth Harrod, Darryl Moore.  (Bottom, L to R) Dawn, Tina Serrato, Karen MacMillan, Shari Cornell, Carl Couch, Conrad Hawthorn, Betty Jean, Phyllis, Shari Davis.

So how’d I do?  If you recognize yourself or a friend, I would enjoy hearing from you.

Related posts:  Mrs. Hutto’s Sixth Grade Class,  West Ward Elementary Revisited.

My Nest - Bryan, Michelle, Natalie, Nathan, (me), & Steven (Adam has flown the coop)

Someone stopped me in the park yesterday and asked, “Can you believe graduation is almost here?”  Like me, she also has a senior at Gulfport High School and is making preparations for a child to embark on a college education.  Unlike me, she is close to experiencing Empty Nest Syndrome.

This will be my third child to “leave the nest,” and another will be heading out in a couple more years.  But ENS–if I may refer to it so flippantly (why not?)–won’t touch me until I’m close to sixty.  That’s a long time to wait for an adult escape to Europe or an elegant Alaskan cruise.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expressing any regrets that a child appeared in my more mature years.  I’m just wondering how difficult it’s going to be transforming a Disneyphile into a more sophisticated traveller…