Culture after the Hurricanes: Rhetoric and Reinvention on the Gulf Coast

6. Hurricane Rita and the New Normal: Modified Communication and New Traditions in Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes

166 HURRICANE RITA AND THE NEW NORMAL Modified Communication and New Traditions in Calcasieu and Cameron Parishes KEAGAN LEJEUNE “How’s your house?” “Okay. Yours?” Days, weeks, months after Hurricane Rita, this dialogue remained a familiar conversation starter in the areas of southwest Louisiana hardest hit by the storm. As they waited in line at the post office, gas station , or grocery store or returned to work or school, Calcasieu and Cameron Parish residents often encountered old friends, neighbors, schoolmates, or co-workers they had not seen since Hurricane Rita made landfall in late September 2005. Stuck in long, boring lines, people struck up conversations. When they did, they began them with this standardized greeting, a simple question about the status of a person’s family or property. Expressing concern , this opening into the conversation immediately established a relationship . The response that followed usually downplayed the damage: “Nothing much.” “My fence, some shingles.” “Well, we had a tree that came through the kitchen, but everyone’s safe.” Next, the other person would return the question—“And yours?” or “How did you do?” Even though the phrasing in certain parts of the exchange undoubtedly changed from one conversation to the next, the structure of the communication event remained the same. Understanding the potential for discomfort in answering these questions, residents employed phatic communication (the small talk people use to establish a mood of sociability) as a safe way to discuss painful experiences and a polite way to reach out to other human beings without seeming too intrusive. With this talk, people could be neighborly without being nosy; if appropriate, these stock exchanges could build to deeper discussions concerning community members’ lives. These brief conversations about homes 167 Modified Communication and New Traditions exemplify people’s desire to deal with confusing emotional issues through familiar practices, such as a normal phatic conversation. As such, phatic conversation stands as a powerful cultural tool (Malinowski 1994). Insiders demonstrate cultural knowledge and communal concern as they exchange patterned responses that convey a meaning much deeper than a literal one; as a result, a handful of words can address a host of complex social and psychological issues. To communicate communal concern and feelings of solidarity and togetherness , many residents embraced other patterns of behavior, or traditions , and modified them to make public announcements about the peculiarity of their shared hurricane experience and the local culture’s ability to withstand the chaos Rita brought. People turned to the past for a few reasons. Predictable and tangible, traditions proved reliable in this time of flux; personal and adaptable, they also proved capable of commenting on the incongruity of the “new normal” created after Rita.1 Second, residents had previously faced and overcome adversity. When people settled southwest Louisiana, they called home a landscape others considered uninhabitable , made delicacies out of food others considered inedible, and expertly managed situations others considered impossible. People did so by relying on cultural traits of ingenuity and perseverance—traits many consider hallmarks of the region’s current population (Edwards, Kniffen, and Pitre 1991). Finally, residents believed that their way of life could be maintained if they used ingenuity and perseverance to remake the old to fit the new. By employing and adapting traditions, often for ironic or humorous effect, residents coped with the anxiety and tension Hurricane Rita caused and made a concrete statement about the culture’s ability to weather the storm. This embrace of tradition manifested in four primary forms: (1) signage occurring around the storm, (2) modified holiday decorations, (3) an arts and crafts movement, and (4) adaptations of certain key cultural events. Drawing from conversations with community members, personal observations, and field notes concerning larger communicative events, this chapter analyzes how visual presentations of these modified traditions existed as powerful statements of community spirit aimed at both community members and visitors to the area.2 Even though research concerning larger concepts discussed in this chapter exists, substantial research on residents’ particular modifications to traditions after Hurricane Rita does not. Scholarly work on tradition, a large concept central to this chapter, dominates folkloristics. Traditions exist as complex, established connections to the past or perceptional interpretations of connections to the past in the present. Repetitive and laden with symbols, 168 KEAGAN LEJEUNE traditional rites symbolize a group’s continuity and purpose over time and space. Scholars have also thoroughly discussed another broad concept underlying this chapter’s discussions, humor...