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Brothers Katrina
How disaster united two rivals
In the bed of Kevin’s truck were several large oil drums filled with gasoline, dangerously exposed, a necessary risk — enough fuel to get us there, run a generator for five days, and get us out. He knew there wouldn’t be a gas station open from middle Mississippi southward, and across three states. To the truck he hitched a covered trailer packed with a generator, power tools, tent, sleeping bags, tarps, rope, cooking equipment, large plastic containers filled with five days of freshwater, a refrigerator stocked with food and beer, first aid kit, and a selection of his knives and guns “to protect our property from looters.”
Some years earlier, my older brother Kevin had the unusual side job of impersonating the conservative American actor Chuck Norris with whom he shares a remarkable likeness. He even got an agent after being a finalist in an Atlanta look-alike contest which got him a Harley Davidson commercial. Kevin, as the terrorist-fighting “Invasion U.S.A.” and “Delta Force” film-version of Chuck Norris, his two micro Uzi’s strapped over his shoulders, posing with donors at a charity event. One Uzi in each hand, just like the movie poster. Now it had become real.
Dressed in camo, he timed leaving his rural home outside of Chattanooga with picking me up at the Birmingham airport, the farthest south I could…
