New Orleans – Debbie Shifter faces the daunting task of whipping up Thanksgiving dinner for 18 in the tiny kitchen of her FEMA trailer.
Shifter, who lives in Bay St. Louis, Miss., had to drive 45 minutes to find a Wal-Mart that survived Hurricane Katrina.
Downsizing the ingredients to fit her compact oven, she will serve a 13-pound turkey instead of the usual 20-pounder. Because of a lack of counter space, she will do the chopping and dicing on two wooden TV trays in her living room.
Guests will eat outside at a plastic table on her lawn, or in shifts at the kitchen table. Dinner will be served on paper plates with plastic utensils.
“We done lost everything we owned, just about – except for us,” she said, standing next to the ruins of the larger trailer home she once called home. “We’re going to stick together at all of our holidays.”
For many people across the hurricane-stricken Gulf Coast, this is going to be a grim Thanksgiving.
In New Orleans, where death and destruction still hang over the many empty streets and ruined neighborhoods, Eldon Robinson’s thoughts are on his five pieces of storm-damaged property, not a Thanksgiving spread.
“I can’t afford to buy no turkey,” said Robinson, a 64-year- old landlord, as he picked up bottled water from a food-distribution point. Instead, he will work on his damaged roofs, kick himself for dropping insurance on his rental property before Katrina struck Aug. 29 and wish his family could be together.
His wife is going to north Louisiana, where their daughters live.
Some hope the holiday season will help people in this hurricane-ravaged region reset their moral compasses.
“We need to be back with our families to give that good Southern hug,” said Glenn Mistich, a butcher who supplies the Louisiana Thanksgiving specialty known as turducken: a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. He got his operation fired up again and was rushing to fill orders this week.
