Keep Gulf Coast Moving

Shell oil started a campaign recently involving the distribution of $10 gas cards to those affected by Hurricane Katrina. They call it "Keep Gulf Coast Moving". (It seems to me there should be a 'the' in there.... You know, like - "Keep the Gulf Coast Moving" ... Maybe they had paid someone to paint the phrase on their cool little mini-vans and the poor guy forgot to put in 'the' and now they're stuck with this ridiculous title because they didn't want to hurt his feelings?)

So we heard that they would be distributing the cards between the hours of 3pm and 6pm at the Shell station on Telephone Road here in Pascagoula today... but we had totally forgotten about it until we were on our way to Gautier to look into a replacement for our screeching flooded refrigerator. We ended up caught in traffic just around the Shell -- and that's when we remembered. A glance at the clock told us that it was just before 3pm - AND divine providence happened to have us stuck in the turn lane that would put us right into the line for the gas cards. Since it was fate and everything - we figured that we could at least pick up a card to pass along to one of the families we had met over the last few weeks.

We waited there in line - happily chatting about home repair and black mold (the usual local banter) until we moved up to the intersection where we were next in line to turn left to the Shell. Just then - a police officer who had been waiting at the side of the road walked out in front of us, pointed squarely at us and our car and motioned for us to go straight through the intersection. "Straight?" my husband and I mouthed in unison. The cop looked mildly irritated as he pointed again at the road behind him and motioned for us to move there. We figured they were planning on routing some of the traffic around the station and obeyed.

That's when we found ourselves trapped needing to turn left onto Telephone Road to go back around to the Shell station - but unable to do so because of the line of twenty cars on Telephone Road waiting to turn at the same intersection. Ten minutes passed and we waited. We noticed that no other cars had been sent behind us by the friendly traffic cop. As a matter of fact, he had allowed every car that had waited behind us to turn left and enter the Shell station. The kids were getting bored.

Dave finally decided to go ahead and turn right and then turn around somewhere up the road so we could head back up to the Shell station. A few minutes later we found ourselves in line behind the folks that had been blocking our turn onto the road a few minutes earlier. Another ten minutes passed and we finally edged up enough to turn left at the very intersection where we had waited before. This time the traffic cop allowed us to turn right into the Shell station.

There wasn't a line there. We caught a glimpse of some Shell-employee-looking people standing around in red shirts waving at people... and I heard one of them yell to another passing car, "Nope we ran out twenty minutes ago!" Just then it hit me that it was a pretty ridiculous endeavor to spend over twenty minutes worth of gas in an attempt to get a $10 gas card... Another instance of post-Katrina lunacy.

*sniff*

All is good though and we're glad that some folks were able to snag the gas cards and I hear that the Shell folks were even pumping gas for people -- a nice gesture. It's a cool campaign for sure - despite the neanderthal-sounding name.