Next morning, I took a cool shower and dressed for work. I carefully checked the frozen stuff, which was nearly salvageable still, and all the refrigerated stuff was still fine. But it was obvious we wouldn't get power anytime soon, so I started making plans to toss the frozen goods. The boss came in and we discussed what to do. She'd heard from our supervisor about plans to transfer food items to the stores in our chain that still had power. The assistant showed up, we tossed out all the spoiled food we found and washed dishes for a while. Then we closed up and went home.

Well, I lucked out. Power came back on later that afternoon! It turns out that most of my street is on the same power circuit as St. Peter's Nursing Home. But not my job. It was two more days before we got power back there. I still went in the mornings to check on things and hang out for a few hours, though. And got paid for all of it. Whee!

So, after learning that most of our frozen and refrigerated goods had been moved earlier on the fourth day, I had to go back and return it all to the freezers that evening when power came back. Turns out most of the stuff had spoiled or melted too much to use anyway. When we finally opened again, we got slammed by folks who needed to eat but didn't have power yet. We did records sales, with a reduced crew.

For the rest of that week, Memphis slowly climbed out of the wreckage. I found that WREC radio was mostly taking a "top down" approach to news. They were reporting offical word from city and government agencies, or taking news from their WPTY television affiliate. It was repetitive and not really helpful, to be honest.

Over on black-operated WDIA, it was a very different story. They had taken a "bottom up" attitude, opening their phone lines to callers. All day long, they fielded news of where to find generators and who was price gouging, where to find ice and water and fans, reminders to check the elderly and infirm, reports of working gas stations, etc. It was community radio of the best sort. It was community survival radio. Almost a week after storm day, they found out about a ten-floor retirement building on Camilla that still didn't have power, where the residents were forced to walk the stairs and spend the day outside in the heat and swelter, and spread the word. They were truly heroes of Memphis for their tireless work in collecting and spreading important information.

The city slowly got back on its feet. Memphis was functioning with some normalcy within about three days, and by the next week was generally working again with some large pockets still hurting, like a patient out of bed and on crutches, but still wobbly. It became something of a game to figure out where power was going to come back, and when it would happen. Jealousy and complaining quickly reappeared, which is always a sign of returning health.