Katrina: 10 Years Later - The Players Tribune
Living in New Orleans, you had to. My mom made sure she had the birth certificates, important documents and pictures. I made sure I grabbed my videocassettes. My mom used to record all my basketball games since I was four years old, all the way through high school. She would record them and put them on these little cassette tapes. They were these little tapes that you had to actually put inside a VHS tape if you wanted to watch them. If you’re born after 1990, you don’t even know what I’m talking about right now. I wasn’t going to evacuate without those shoeboxes. As long as you have shoes, you can ball anywhere you go. If you’re from New Orleans, you’re used to evacuating. Hurricane season really is an entire season. During hurricane season, you’re watching the weather reports and if it’s a mandatory evacuation, you go. When they hit, they hit non-stop. As a kid, I remember hearing stories about Hurricane Betsy, a devastating storm that hit New Orleans when my parents were young – in the 1960s. There were high flood waters. Being from New Orleans, hurricanes were part of your childhood like ghost stories. But to me and my siblings, we had never really been through a bad one. Ten years ago to this month, I was about to enter my senior year of high school. My high school was the two-time defending Louisiana state champion. Source: www.theplayerstribune.com
