She called everyone she could think of, including President Bush. Help didn't arrive until Sunday, though, three days after the storm.

``It's been a little better,'' Hammond said Monday. ``For a while we were getting nothing, just promises, promises, promises.''

Residents of Century, population 1,750, were lining up at city hall on U.S. 29 for water, ice and food. Most drove cars, but some pulled wagons or walked away with what they could carry.

The goods were being distributed by a team of Seventh- day Adventist volunteers led by David Canther of Mount Dora.

``We're different than all the red-tape groups,'' he said. ``We just go out and do it.''

The first relief station in northwest Escambia County opened at Northview High School about 10 miles west of the town.

``People don't have gas,'' Hammond said. ``They can't get out there and back.''

After Ivan made landfall in Gulf Shores, Ala., it sliced northeast across Century and Escambia's smaller hamlets such as Bratt and Davisville.

This is forsaken Florida, a place like the back corner of a closet shelf that elbows into Alabama. The area is the geographic and cultural opposite of Key West.

Northwest Escambia is a rolling landscape of cotton fields, pecan groves and piney woods. No boats, beach houses or palm trees.

``There is a population of low-income people here who cannot buy plywood and generators and supplies,'' said Diane Norton, a school psychologist who lives in nearby Byrneville. ``A lot of them do not have the capital to stock up.''

Last month Escambia was declared the county with the highest poverty rate in Florida, about 6 percent more than the statewide average.

Jobs are tough to find. The Alger-Sullivan paper mill closed for the second time in 2001 after briefly reviving from an earlier shutdown.

Pensacola, the county's only other municipality 42 miles south, always gets the attention, Hammond said.

``This is not something that just happened since the storm,'' Hammond said. ``From Nine Mile Road [about parallel to Interstate 10] north we are just forgotten. I'm sorry they are in the position they are in, but my town is tore up, too.''

Bush made a point of saying federal relief supplies would reach inland and rural areas after he toured Pensacola on Sunday.

However, just getting help from the county is difficult here, Hammond said.

Janice Gilley, the commissioner for the north part of Escambia, was one of four commissioners appointed in May 2002 when the incumbents were charged with a variety of crimes. Her term expires in November, which could mean more political upheaval. Gilley could not be reached Monday.

``We don't live side by side like in those populated areas,'' Norton, 56, said. ``People may live on 10 acres or 2 acres, so you don't get the same visual effects'' as the crowded coast.

``But the tree damage is amazing,'' she said. ``Our landscape is forever changed.''

On Nakomis Road west of Davisville, Judy Blackmon and her daughter, Wendy Wilson, used a handsaw to cut tree limbs that had fallen on Blackmon's mobile home.

``The money people are always the ones that are taken care of first,'' said Blackmon, 65. ``You don't need to be a country person to know that.''

She wasn't bitter or holding a grudge. She waved to a utility crew from Colorado.

``God bless them,'' Blackmon said.

Power was restored at the Grey Goose Bar and Package store, which could be the Sloppy Joe's of northwest Florida, a stone's throw from Atmore, Ala., on State Road 97.

Manager Barbara Smith of Perdido, Ala., reopened the bar Sunday night.

``It was mostly our regular crowd, people coming in to make sure who was all right, who lost what, things like that.''

Back at city hall, Marion County deputies were directing traffic on U.S. 29, which has become a detour from storm-damaged Interstate 10.

Canther, running the relief crew, said he expects to be in Century at least three weeks.

``We want to go to a place where there's a huge need,'' he said.

Reporter Mark Holan can be reached at (727) 815-1082.