**Pass Christian**

Exclusive to NLTCP
by Judith A. Smith

My dad always wanted to fly those hot little Air Force jets - he'd been a cargo pilot from World War II(and in the 1950s, flew B-52s and other assorted aircraft), but the little T-jets were always enthralling to him. Throughout the mid to late-1950s, he kept applying for jet school, but was turned down repeatedly due to his age.

And then, imagine! The summer he turned 40 in June, he was assigned to Keesler AFB (Biloxi) to train on those little jets! Mom and we kids took the train from Washington, D.C. (we'd been living in Delaware for three years) to the Gulf Coast (and our new home in Pass Christian) in late May, and as little Yankee children were enthralled with the beautiful waters of the Gulf. Daddy rented a lovely, big two-story house that was one block from Highway 90, the coast highway that runs along the water. There were no houses closer to the beach on our side of the street, as the full block was a sanctuary for birds (and I suppose small animals.) Each morning, Mom would parade her four little ducklings (with those wraparound duck floats - ! - around our waists) down to the beach to swim and play.

Many years after we left (this had been the summer of 1960), Mel and I took Michael to New Orleans on vacation, and drove across the bridge from Bay St. Louis to Pass Christian - you've seen the total destruction this week of the newer causeway there - just to see how different things were post-Camille (and this was nearly 20 years after Camille.) Well, there was simply no reference point whatsoever. The new coastline created by Camille had just obliterated the old. Nothing remained of the Pass Christian of my childhood.

I've wondered why I haven't heard the words "Pass Christian" (pronounced chris-chee-ANN, if you're not from down that way) this week. After all, we've heard about Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, and Biloxi a lot, and PC is between BSL and Gulfport. A friend at school yesterday said it was simply gone, but news is a lot rumor these days. Finally, this morning, I found something in the article about Bush's "flyover" on his way back to DC (hope it didn't take too much of his energy to fly over on AF One.)

Further along, with Air Force One back at 2,500 feet, the other most devastated area was in the area of the Mississippi towns of Waveland and Pass Christian, where there was not much water but many miles of wooden houses were completely smashed, left looking from the air like nothing more than piles of matchsticks as far as the eye could see. “It’s totally wiped out,” POTUS said at this point, according to McClellan.

Long story, gang, but as much as we love New Orleans, and are shocked at the damage, our little town is gone once again. It was no longer the town of my idyllic ninth summer (I had just turned 8 before we moved there), of the pungent fragrance of oleanders, of "prickly heat" on our little necks, of sand in everything we owned, of Friday night trips to the pier to buy fresh shrimp off the boats, of using the first laundromat I'd ever seen, of popsicles melting faster than you could eat them, but it was still a part, at least in name, of a unique way of life, the small-town Mississippi coast way of life.