Free lunch

There are all these places you can eat free in disaster zones. There are Red Cross mobile kitchens, tent cities and cruise ships that the government has chartered and even a giant tent rumored to be run by the Rainbow People. Most of them provide free meals to anyone who walks up.

My first comment is that contractors, who are being paid upwards of $300 a day, have government provided lodging and get $49 a day for meals (regardless of how much they spend), do not need free meals!

But beyond that...

I was writing the ferry back to my apartment last Sunday and some homeless guy named the "The Brain" walked one with a huge box of MREs. (Incidentally, he volunteered that his real name is the The Brain. His mother was a hippy and his sisters are named Autumn and Summer. In any case...) I asked him where he got them and he said some lady hooks him up. (Back in the early days when the city was just beginning to return to normal the government was giving out MREs left and right.) He offered me one and I accepted.

There are a number of things you should know about MREs (army food rations).
1) The whole concept is pretty cool. Every thing is in little aluminum packets. You take the sealed packets and put them in a heater bag and add a couple of tablespoons of water. The water reacts with a chemical and heats up and warms your food. It works very well.
2) The food is decent. Not great, but all things considered, pretty good.
3) There are tons of calories in those things. They pack them with calories because soldiers burn so much energy, but any normal person that ate them regularly would end up rotund. I am not sure if the availability of MREs fully explains the girth of people in Mississippi, or if there are other explanations.

But back to eating free. There is some debate about whether or not people still need places to eat or if they should cook. FEMA wanted to close one of the kitchens on the theory that residents now have trailers with kitchens and refrigerators so they can cook for themselves. One recent exchange went like this:
FEMA representative: We gave you trailers with kitchens. Why can't you cook for yourself like you used to.
Citizen: Before the hurricane, we used to have cars, which have been flooded and washed away, to drive to the grocery store, which is now closed, to buy food with money we used to have because we used to have jobs and when we got home we would put the food in the refrigerator, which in our old kitchens was large enough that we did not have to choose between keeping our beer or our food cold.

While I was impressed with the wit and passion of the citizen, the facts are more ambiguous.
1) There were two food stores in county. One has reopened, so it is not that far to go to get food.
2) Most citizens here today have cars
3) There is tons of work here doing recovery. Many people lost their jobs and are still out of work and are so busy dealing with life and gutting their house and their children that they don't have time for work, but many others are working.
4) There is a free food place across the street (run by hippies) that serves thousands of meals a day.

Wouldn't it be so easy to be a pundit and choose one side? Ah, the subtleties of life.