This Month's Story

“It’s not a bay ferry, Paul, it’s a river ferry; it draws too much water! Each trip if there is a north wind they have to go a mile offshore out of the Bay otherwise they’ll run aground”

All this is from Ames. Here it is several months after Hurricane Katrina and the Government (FEMA) had decide that a ferry was the best way for the people of Bay St Louis to get to Pass Christian as opposed to using the debris laden road connecting the city to I-10. The fact that there was no real passable road going straight from I-10 to Pass Christian helped them make such a discussion. That there wasn’t much left standing in either Bay St Louis or Pass Christian made the ferry inane anyway according to Ames.

I’m having lunch with him at the Mocking Bird, a coffee shop in the Bay that had somehow escaped severe damage. I oppose what he says by telling him that Stella and I had ridden the ferry and enjoyed it. This makes him visibly upset and he starts a long tirade about the practicality of there being a ferry at all.

“Its winter,” Ames points a finger at me forcibly. “In winter we have a high pressure system that goes through about every six or so days. When this happens, the northerly wind pushes the water out of the Bay so far that if ferry stays in the Bay it runs aground and Bingo! they shut the whole thing down! Then when the high moves east, it’s followed by a southerly flow and that means fog! Since the ferry does not have radar, they usually to shut it down anyway. Imagine a commercial vessel without a radar! There’s more! Since there is no radar, they can’t run after dark so late workers can’t use it! The result is that we have a ferry that is out of service half the time during the day and can’t be used at all at night.

“Look, Paul, let’s be practical, the bridge across the Bay is scheduled be completed next spring. Sure the way things go it may be late summer or fall. But till that time, we will have paid about 5 million dollars for a ferry service that involves a ferry capable of running only three or four days during the week! That’s a lot of money for almost no service.” Ames has other arguments and he goes on about them. But I’ve heard them all before. But I listen and the coffee is good and besides deep in my heart I’m not altogether sure he is right. Now my reasoning for this is not as practical as his, so you may not agree with me, but for what it’s worth, here it is.

First of all: the money. Sure, 5 million dollars is a lot of money. But to me, it’s too much money to grasp. It’s like the amount of money we spend each day in Iraq. Or, on a more local level, the amount FEMA is paying to put a FEMA trailer park in an industrial area in the Bay that is extremely crowded and because of this, has so far is filled with undesirable people. Or even more locally since I am living in one of those FEMA trailers on my own property, I’m told it costs FEMA to put a trailer there is $75,000. I have been told by people who know these things that you can buy an identical one off a lot in Slidell for less than $25,000. All of these represents a lot of money. My problem is that it’s not just more money than I can grasp, Its money that I, on a personal level, have absolutely no control and at least I and my wife have a place to live.

But there is more! I can take a ride on the ferry to Pass Christian any time it is running and it won’t cost me a dime.

In fact, we rode it the day after they inaugurated the service. We parked the car on the Bay side and rode the several miles to the Pass in about a half hour and then rode back. It was a very pleasant cruise; full of sea birds, mostly gulls, all around us, a really nice distant view of the picturesque shore of the Bay (from afar it seemed as if nothing had happened). We even looked for porpoises, but saw none. When the ferry docked at the Pass side of the Bay, it was as if for a few brief valuable moments the coast was made whole again. It was a wonderful feeling. For a few one or two hours, we were far away from the drab sourness that made so much of our daily lives So, although our ride may have been prohibitively expensive, on the level of fiscal responsibility that is Stella and my level, that bright sparkling day was wonderful psychological and physical fun and worth whatever price it had cost.

A lot of people were with Stella and me when we did so. In fact, we’ve done it several times since. It was nice each time.

After leaving Ames, I began to feel guilty about it all and stopped by the Historical Society where I mentioned it all to Dale, a valuable font of local Hancock County information. She promptly whipped out a recent copy of the society’s newsletter, “The Historian.” It told that years and years ago before there was even a bridge across the Bay, there was a ferry boat service. This service ran between the two towns of Bay St Louis and Pass Christian much like the one that does so today. What I found delightful in the article was the following quote:

“…on Saturday nights on the midnight return trip from the Henderson Point ferry slip, they’d put down anchor. They had a band on board, and every one on board partied until daylight when they would up anchored and proceed to come ashore at the Bay ferry slip. For a brief time on a Saturday night the ferry became a wonderful floating night club from midnight until six in the morning.”

Now that’s what I call using corporate irresponsibility in a very practical way. I’m going to tell Ames about that.