Destruction and dejection.
Everywhere one looked Friday afternoon in Bogalusa, the scene was the same. More than four days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall twice - first between Grand Isle and the mouth of the Mississippi River and later, along the Mississippi Gulf Coast - Bogalusans were still struggling.
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For some, little hope.
"What do we do?" a woman wandering among the hundreds of people gathered in the Wal-Mart shopping center asked.
The crowd had gathered in part because of the precious cargo hauled in on two 8,000 gallon tank trucks. Water.
"How much is it?" a young woman with an infant in her arms asked?
"Nothing," she was told by another woman in the parking lot. "It's free ... you can get all you got things to hold it in."
And while it would be hard to imagine any place looking any harder hit than Bogalusa, it was clear that progress had been made since Katrina changed everyone's life forever.
By Friday afternoon, navigating the streets was easier. Yes, there were still the occasional power lines that hung low or trees that leaned precariously close to the highway, as did one huge pine on Highway 10 just on the northern outskirts of town - held up only by a set of electrical and telephone lines - but by and large, the streets were cleared.
On Tuesday, getting around town was a needle-in-a-haystack effort ... starting down one street only to have to either turn around if there was the luxury of room or back out and look for another route.
Still, the lack of the basic necessities impacted everyone - but hurt those most who could least afford it.
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