James Ayres, the UT Austin professor of English who founded the Shakespeare at Winedale program (which I’ve blogged about here) lives in Round Top, Texas, about halfway between Houston and Austin (and thus possibly in the path of Hurricane Rita). On Thursday he e-mailed several of his former students, including me, about what it’s like down there in Southeast Texas, and with his permission I am sharing an excerpt of his e-mail below:

Yesterday I made the mistake of going to Walmart and HEB in La Grange. Should have known what I was in for by the parking lot jam. Inside people were stripping shelves. Bread, crackers, cookies, water, soda pop, beer, toilet paper, paper plates, charcoal, lighter fluid, canned goods….all gone. Checkout lines went down the aisles to the other end of the store. The frenzy is what bothered me the most. The sight of people pushing three piled-high carts. Walmart sold out of all plastic containers, everything that could hold water. They had an attendant at the door saying if you came for water or anything to put water in, we don’t have it. All gas stations in the area have lines of cars….

I got on the road this morning at 6 to go to Austin to teach. An hour and a half later I was in Smithville. That’s about 16 miles from La Grange! As I crawled along–at 5 mph, I saw families sitting on the roadside, waiting for something. Trailers, mobile homes, RVs. trucks and cars pulling very expensive boats. Everyone at 5 mph. Then stop and start. I turned around. Called James [Loehlin]to teach my classes. Houston folks I met today in Round Top told me that it took them 8 hours to get here. At lunch today, JoAnn and I met a family who had left Houston at 4 a.m. They arrived here at 1 p.m. 9 hrs! And they knew the “back roads” they said, the short cuts. JoAnn’s kids in Houston cannot get out because they cannot find a gas station to fill up and are worried about running out of gas during the 8 hour drive it takes to get here.

The good news I suppose is that, learning from Katrina, they are evacuating and that there is not a hint of lawlessness. But there is much of … fear–not of the hurricane–but of strangers invading the community…. Kids are happy: no school. I went to Winedale this afternoon. They have boarded up all glass windows. But alas done nothing to protect the [Shakespeare-at-Winedale] theater] barn. I’m not really worried, though. The barn withstood [Hurricane] Carla in [1961] and though it fills with water during even an ordinary rain, everyone of course knows that hope floats.

Of course, this is nothing, nothing at all like the situation in New Orleans. Nowhere even close. And all of this is well before the storm. That comes tomorrow or Saturday. And I hope everyone will be safe. But I am troubled by how folks are behaving. And also wondering where all of those cars on 71 and 290 are going. Our governor said on TV that “We have 1.5 million to move out of Houston and we’ll do it,” he said . “Be patient.” Sounds a bit like Balthasar in The Comedy of Errors. Or Bush. So where are they to go?

The saddest thing I heard today was an Austin TV reporter say “we have some really good news, the hurricane is moving closer to Louisiana.”