Before August 29, 2005, my grandmother enjoyed the finer things in life – bingo, poker keeno, a subscription to the National Enquirer. Any number of things would make her laugh. A dirty joke. The Porky?s movies. My love life.
My grandma doesn?t laugh a lot now. Maw Maw lost everything in Hurricane Katrina — her home, everything in it and two of her friends.
On the one-year anniversary of the levees collapse, nothing has changed. Maw Maw?s house in St. Bernard Parish, flooded for weeks past the roofline, still slowly rots in the August humidity.
When I tried to salvage something from her once-pink brick house in November, I realized how foolish I was being. The ceiling had collapsed, bringing the filled-to-the-brim attic raining down on every room.
Mountains of broken furniture and ceiling tiles made walking through the house a little like mountaineering. Flood waters filled the still standing cups in the kitchen cabinets, mold painted fantastical murals on the walls and the faces in family photos – some still attached to the walls – had melted off.
I “rescued” a large ceramic cat. That was it.
Since then, when I call my grandmother to check in, the conversations normally cover her failing health and what we should do about her wrecked home. Maw Maw now lives with my uncle, his wife, their two daughters, a son-in-law and two cats in a trailer in rural Mississippi. She doesn?t want to rebuild anything. She doesn?t care.
But when I talked to her Saturday about the latest celebrity news out of Access Hollywood, it peaked her interest. She asked me if I heard that David Hasselhoff was getting a divorce. I said I had.
“I talked to him once, ya? know,” she said.
Years ago, she can?t remember exactly when, but I personally believe it was around the Hoff?s “Knight Rider” heyday, Maw Maw and a few of her friends went to Vegas for a girl?s gambling and buffet weekend.
They stayed “at that Starduster place,” and as they waited to see a show that night, David Hasselhoff came strolling down the red carpet in front of the hotel “with a lady on each arm,” Maw Maw told me.
“That?s, that?s?oh, I know his name,” my grandmother exclaimed as David walked by.
The Hoff heard. He came back, introduced himself to Maw Maw, and she told him she would have remembered his name eventually.
And then she laughed just like she used to. “David Hasselhoff,” she said ruefully.
“Was he good-looking?” I asked.
“Ooooo, yes, was he ever,” she chuckled.
by Jenna Bordelon
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