Week Three, Day Six

Friday ...
Today is the last company work day in Biloxi, MS for 2006.

While there have been some glitches along the way here and there, I haven't heard anyone say anything but positive things about us being here and I'm VERY encouraged by how many folks are talking about returning next year however they can. I hope that the time we’ve spent here and the volunteers that have made the trip in 2006 will be enough to convince management that we should return in 2007.

Dan, Deb, and I drove to the Village for our last day with the crew there. Deb goes back to her sheetrock job, which she seems to really enjoy. It's always nice when you find something that you're good at and that you like doing - especially when it's outside of your usual comfort zone. I know I’ve mentioned that I'm klutzy - so doing finishing painting was a REAL challenge plus I wasn't very good at it. Turns out "klutzy" is great for demo - and I like doing it. Heck, anytime a Louisville Slugger can be used as a tool of progress, good times are bound to follow, right? Am I bruised? Of course I am. In fact, there's a bruise on my left arm that probably will be with me a month from now. (I connected with a beam that was tougher than I was.) Were the bruises, sore muscles and aching feet worth it? No question. Sadly I’m guessing that when I return in 2007, there will still be demo to be done. Jim was right – this work will continue for years to come.

The other teams will be wrapping up today too, of course – wrapping up as much as they can so that the next week’s volunteers can pick up right where they left off. Most of the crews come to the realization that they won’t be “finishing” whatever their assignment is, so you just want to tie it up as much as you can before the week is over. It is commonplace at the camp to have Friday crews miss dinner because they just don’t want to quit until they’re really, truly done.

Dan and I join Arlen and head to our house - 157 Keller Street. We start out by draining the water heater and clearing out the bathroom and by 10am, we can safely see that we'll be done by Noon. I've dropped Jim a note requesting a few minutes of his time during the afternoon for a possible tour of the area and during a break, I check my email and see that he's agreed to do this. I'm always surprised by his ability to juggle his many responsibilities, his willingness to take on even more things to do while managing to keep his sense of humor - it's a skill I would like to develop further myself.

Jim drops by around 10:30am and we get a thumbs-up on what we've accomplished. By 11:30am, we load up the wheelbarrow one last time, gather our tools and take a LOT of photos of what will probably wind up looking like a whole bunch of nothing ... but it'll like a finished job to Arlen, Dan and I.

At lunch, Deb joins us and the three of us are assembled for Jim at 1pm. He asks me what I've already taken them to see and I'm surprised at how I refer to these places so much like the rest of Jim's team. I know addresses and the families that will occupy these sites, I make sure to call them homes, not "houses", plus I actually know the layout of the town and how to get from A to B (something I'm embarrassed to admit I cannot do in the city where I work). I've only been here three weeks - and not even consecutive weeks, at that - but clearly this place and these people have made a deep impression with me.

Jim takes us to see the Biloxi Bay Bridge or, rather, to NOT see it.
We also visit the Hurricane Camille Memorial (which has Katrina damage).

Jim drives us through a graveyard that was damaged
(and he points out the headstone of a decorated veteran of the Indian Wars, if you can believe it).

Of course, we also visit the Reddix home (which you saw at the start of this weeks’ journal). We review the plans for the Reddix home (since we won’t be around to see it completed),
check out the framed interior walls that will soon be ready for insulation and sheetrock,
and inspect the windows and porch to make sure they past OUR standards.
We also go to Mr. Lee’s home, which is ready for electrical inspection and sheetrock
– and to Miss Dickson's home, which has had the interior ceiling sprayed for texture and is being taped to prepare for primer).

Jim kindly gives us 2 hours of his day and we say our goodbyes in the parking lot as he's off to another meeting. I'll see him in a few months because honestly I can't think of a better, more rewarding way to spend my sabbatical (and yes, I know it's *6* weeks, but I'll commit to 4 for now and see how I feel about giving more than that in a month or so). I can't believe that I've only known Jim, Nancy, and their team for less than 2 months. We joke and talk to one another like old friends and already exchange e-mails at least weekly.

Since I'm writing this at 5:07pmCT, I can't really end this journal "nice and neat". I am happy to tell you that Miss Iona will be moved in to her new home next week, prior to Thanksgiving – just as Jim and his team planned it.


I'm sure that the remaining volunteers will be back at camp shortly and that we'll get together and do something on our final night here.

The other reason I can't end it is that this isn't ending and I’m reminded of that as I drive through the streets of Biloxi. There are an abundance of homes that need attention.



Plus, there's nothing "nice and neat" about Biloxi. The work we've done ... the work being done ... will still be happening in 2007 and in 2008. Will we remember these people and their stories then? They'll still have a need to be remembered, and there will still be a need to respond - at any level possible. I'm happy that the company remembered and responded in 2006.
**************************************************************************************
I'm proud and absolutely honored to list our 2006 “Biloxi-bound” Volunteers:

Bruce B. ........... Paula B. ................ Jaime B. .............. Marcio C.
Eva C. .............. Patricia C. ............. Michael D. ........... Mark D.
Bruce D. ........... Danny D. ............... Rebecca D. (and her new dog, Billy)
Emily F. ........... Kevin K. ................. Kerry Ann L. ........ Deb L.
John L. ............ John M. .................. Karen R. .............. Tim S.
Silke S. ............ JJ S. ...................... Scott T. ................ Dan V.



… and Jules

Take fun. Have Care. Be good.

Week Three, Day Five

Thursday ...
(I'm writing this at 5:30am on Friday because I didn't have the energy to do it yesterday.)
Danny is gone and Jaime is gonna work with another of our teams to get a feel for the other work going on. As our group walks to the car for the drive over to the Village, Rebecca comes in from her morning jog with a very happy black dog following her. She has no idea where she picked up her running partner, but by the end of the day (and a long story that I'll let her tell), she'll be adopting him and driving home with a pretty grateful new buddy.

We drive to the Village and get our assignments. With the four of us and an assist from Arlen, a volunteer from a different volunteer team, we'll return to 157 Keller and maybe even finish. The morning goes by pretty quick actually - Karen continues in the front bedroom, and Deb is keeping up with getting the materials out of the house and into an outside pile for garbage collection.

With Arlen busy tearing out the back bedroom, Dan and I find lots to occupy ourselves with the kitchen. (I spend a LOT of time in kitchens ... but not doing this sort of work.) We rip out the cabinets, the counter top, get rid of the oven and refrigerator ... we can do most of it with crowbars and hammers but we'll need a power saw for some of the bigger stuff so we move into the bathroom to begin to get through the blue board there. We find a need for a saw there too - so I make a call to Jim with a delivery list and we're good to go in a matter of minutes.

I can't say that I've ever used a power saw in a kitchen or bathroom before ... but I admit that I was pretty stoked to give it a try. However, I'm really klutzy so after a couple of attempts where I made a little progress, I hand it over to Dan and we get to serious work. It would have been easy to have continued to try to work with it myself, but ya' gotta know your limits and I have nothing to prove to myself or anyone. I'd rather go home with all 10 fingers. (Plus I can actually *hear* my mothers voice in my head telling me to “stop being so stubborn and put that ridiculous thing down before you kill yourself”.) Anyway, you probably won’t see it in the photos – but I’m smiling big-time underneath my respirator. (I have named this photo "Moron with a Sawzall".)

At lunch, Deb decides she wants to work on a sheet rock crew for the afternoon so I drive our team back to our house - but first I stop by a bottling plant I found by accident on Tuesday afternoon. It's funny how you can be a fan of a product without ever knowing where it comes from - Barq's Root Beer is from Biloxi, MS.

We make really great progress throughout the afternoon. By the time 4pm rolls around, we don't have much left in us or the house. We need to drain and remove the water heater and clean out the attic and finish the bathroom, but I really think that we'll be able to finish by Noon tomorrow.

We drive back to camp and the team heads out to The Shed BBQ in Ocean Springs for dinner. (Don’t worry – you’re SUPPOSED to sign the ceiling when you’re done – so that photo I took is not of not John L. committing vandalism.)

By the time I drive us back to camp, it's all I can do to walk up the stairs ... and it's only 9pm. Karen has decided she'll work on the framing team that Jaime was on yesterday, so it'll be up to Dan, Arlen and I to wrap up 157 Keller, but I think we can do it.

The 17th will be our last day here. I'll be returning for 4 weeks during my 2007 sabbatical (Jim says he's happy about this - gosh, I hope he's not just being nice!) which I think will be the end of March and most of April so who knows what will be waiting at that point. One thing tho' that I know I'll be able to count on ... I'll be busy.

Week Three, Day Four

Wednesday ...
Hmmm ... maybe it *always* rains on the ides of each month in Biloxi. I recall during the second volunteer week it rained with thunder and lightning, too. Last night it rained hard and the water hitting our camp roof sounded a lot like we were inside a plane waiting for takeoff.

There's almost no wind and it's warmer out, even at 6:45am as we slowly drive to breakfast. Highway 90 is flooded in both directions. I wrote to Jim last night to let him know we'd see him after breakfast and I'm not surprised when he writes me back to tell me he'll be holding his team indoors for the morning. I call him at breakfast and tell him we're coming over anyway. There will be work for us to do at the Village and if we wind up waiting for the storm to pass, it'll probably be a little nicer in the Village than at the camp, IF we can get in the parking lot.


After pushing water ... LOTS of water ... out from the back doors of the Village, I can tell my 5 co-volunteers are getting antsy - but with multiple storm warnings, working today is seeming less likely. At 9:30am, I drive the team back to camp to see if anyone there is up for a visit to a nearby Barnes & Noble. Mike takes us up on the offer and while we’re there, Karen and I find a bunch of jigsaw puzzles. I pick up 6 of the hardest ones we can find and plan on delivering them to the Village with a note to enjoy them on the next rained-out day.



It's rough on all of the crews here to "hurry up and wait" like this but rain happens at any construction site. There are days you can work and days you just can't so it's up to you to find something productive to do.



Part of our team heads over to the SPCA for dog walking duty (which we can do in-between the morning and afternoon rains) and a different part of the team drives to their work site after lunch to do some staining work. Another portion will try to find some framing to do.

Our team drives Danny to the Gulfport airport and we say our goodbyes and head back to camp. Silke is there and her team is out on a job, so I turn around and Karen and I drive her to the same airport. As the three of us are en route, Silke gets a call that her flight has been canceled. We continue on our way anyway and she decides to see what other options there are. More goodbyes ensue, and Karen and I head to the Village for our puzzle delivery.

We're literally driving by camp on the way to the Village when my cell rings. It's Silke saying that she's on an 11 o'clock flight - tomorrow morning. She kindly agrees to take a cab back to camp, saving me a third trip to the airport in less than 90 minutes, which I greatly appreciate.

So - basically, today was a rough day for everyone. The weather report says another storm will blow through tonight but tomorrow is clear so hopefully we'll all get a chance to accomplish a whole lot more.

Week Three, Day Three

Tuesday ...
This may be a short entry because of a VERY long day.

I'm wide awake at 4:15am, and give up getting back to bed when I hear the breakfast crew getting started downstairs. I hop in the van and drive over to a local coffee house (PJs) for my morning coffee … and decide to pick up Danishes for my van-mates. When I get back, the crew is assembled and we’re off to the Village.

The entire team will be divided among about 8 different jobs today.

Some will continue to clean and seal up a floor, some will be cleaning out the interior of a church, some will be at a local park, some are continuing on de-molding work, some are finishing final interior paint, some will be loading roofing onto various sites, etc.



There's no lack of jobs to do ('tho some of them are pretty much guaranteed to make ya’ a little messier than others, as proven by Tim S. when I see him during lunch break) but I can only write about what I've been doing, and report on what I'm told the others did later - so here goes …

Jaime and I finished our touch-up final painting work around 10am and head back to the Village for a new assignment. We drive to our new location and find 3 or 4 other volunteers there already with two long-timers. When it's raining (it's only just starting, but it'll be raining all day), the indoor sites tend to get crowded. I've never refused an assignment but, at lunch, I ask Jim to re-assign me because it felt too crowded in that house. It's not that there was a lack of work, but we were kind of tripping over ourselves and I wasn't feeling like I was accomplishing anything. The teams regroup at lunch and we talk about what we’ve been doing.


At the end of lunch, I take the other two of our vans on a quick tour to the sites in Biloxi that will stay with me the longest ... the house with the collapsed porch, the FEMA-marked house (so I can explain how the spray-painted sign is decoded), and of course the dry dock.


There’s a mild breeze and we can hear the beams banging together, creating a giant eerie kind of a wind-chime. We spend the longest time here because it takes a while for what we’re looking at to actually sink in. I keep thinking that I’ll be able to figure out how wind and water could do this kind of redecorating to a supposedly strong and stable structure. I’ve seen this site each week I’ve been to Biloxi and, honestly, I’m no closer to comprehending this than I was when I first laid eyes on it over a month and a half ago.

After lunch, I check in with my van mates to make sure they're ok where they're at and I head to my new spot - joining Karen, Danny, Deb and Dan in a gut job.


Question - did your parents ever tell you and your siblings something like "You kids are making so much racket - it sounds like you're tearing the house down!"? Mine did ‘cause my sister and I were pretty rowdy kids (that’s a big surprise to y’all, I’m sure) and I now know that they had NO idea what they were talking about because, as it turns out, actually tearing a house down is really loud.

157 Keller Street has been untouched since Katrina. The carpet is still in the living room, the kitchen and bathroom are both intact, complete with filled (but very jumbled) cabinets and we find all kinds of everyday items that remind us these folks probably left in a pretty big hurry. Because water filled this home, the smaller stuff probably floated around inside before settling in to new locations, where we discover them 15 months later. For instance, I find a small wallet between wall studs in the kitchen. Inside I find a doctors order for a prescription, a dry cleaning pick-up slip, a few movie stubs, a receipt from a gas station that I know no longer exists, and a hand-written note – probably a reminder that the owner of the wallet wrote to themselves.

Larger items are left inside too – things that we’ll need to disconnect before we rip them out – like the water heater and yes, the refrigerator. Don't worry - we're smart - we don't open, touch, or deal with ANYthing unless we're wearing our protective gear and, even then, you NEVER open an abandoned refrigerator post-Katrina. (I’ve had the opportunity to open several abandoned “Katrina” refrigerators and I gotta say, I haven’t even been remotely tempted to do so.) Funny thing is with the white protective cover-all, respirators, and eye protection, we can barely tell each other apart - which is ok actually. We can't understand each other when we speak with the respirators on anyway. The only clue we have as to who is who is that the brims of our baseball hats peak out from under the hoods of the white suits we wear.

(This, for instance, is either Karen or Danny. I honestly don't know.)

We work hard with breaks about every 20 minutes. The crow bars and tile-removers that we use during tear down are heavy (they need to be to be effective) but after about 10 minutes of swinging them overhead, it's hard to move your arms at all.

Earlier the other three volunteers unearthed a lot of personal items, including a baseball bat - which I *eagerly* take up. Now THIS I can work with!!!

We call it a day around 4:15pm - it's starting to get dark out and this neighborhood will change quickly as that happens. Back at the Village, I pass by Jim with a smile on my face. "Hmm”, he says. “I gave you the worst job we had, and you’re happy?" "Well," I reply, "I wasn't feeling like I was doing anything at the other job. Tearing all that down felt like real progress." I know this is an ironic statement ... but it's true (plus me and irony go way back).

All the us meet up at camp, and we caravan to Aunt Jenny's, where we'll have a good comfort-food meal, great conversation ... and yes, lots of deep-fried dill pickle slices.

After dinner, we caravan back to base camp. I would love to stay and chat with everyone as we re-gather in the common area downstairs, but my van-mates have decided we must experience breakfast at Waffle House tomorrow morning ... so sorry folks but I've been up for 18 hours now and I'm pretty beat.

Oh - PS: Danny and Silke will leave tomorrow at the end of the day so I just wanted to thank them for signing up, showing up, and being such terrific teammates.

Week Three, Day Two

Monday ...
The team I'm on started caulking and filling nail holes at 266 Lamuse Street, home of Charles and Bessie Mae Tanksley.

This is the very first home that Team #1 worked on (inside & out) on our first day in early October, ‘tho it looks remarkably different from when I saw it last. Every room is painted and most of the trim is on. The large, gaping hole in the floor that we all nearly fell into at some point (*ahem* especially me) has been replaced by a very solid sub-floor and it's possible that some of us will be involved in this house throughout the course of the week.

Mid-morning, Jim P. pulls Jaime and I off the project and asks us to do finishing painting and touch up work at 244 Nixon, home of Paulette Phillips. The building permit says it was issued for “storm building repairs” only ... but the permit expired on June 17, 2006 - clearly the definitions of what those *actually* mean aren't "law" because ... well, this house was very obviously gutted and rebuilt. (The walls are straight, the corners are tight, and the floors are stable. I guess after having been here for a couple of weeks and having been in a decent amount of these homes, I feel like I’ve learned what to look for).

Another portion of our team is working on mold-removal detail. Even though the temperature has dropped by about 15 degrees from 2 weeks ago, wearing a Kevlar suit with respiration equipment can make things feel downright tropical. This is work that takes about two or three days, and I know during our team meeting at camp tonight, the crew will have the opportunity to change to another, more motivating (and probably easier) task. Most new volunteer crews don't feel they should switch jobs after only doing something for one day ... but I remember Jim saying that this isn't something we'll be done with in a day or even a week ... so prior to the meeting, I sign them up for an outside job restoring a park tomorrow. It'll be a nice change of pace for them.

The 3rd part of our crew is cleaning bricks this morning ("oh, about 20,000 of them", says Patricia C. when I ask her how many bricks there were). I’m relieved to know that everyone still has their sense of humor.

Later in the afternoon, this crew will prep a building for sealing the floor of a business building.


It's an involved process of getting to the point of actually sealing a floor. It needs to be cleaned, sanded, power washed, had "Killz" applied to it, re-sanded, and swept - all a number of times over the course of weeks or even months, depending on the state of the rest of the building and the other work that needs to be done. And if someone walks through with shoes that haven't been treated? The process has to start over. This *also* can be a job that diminishes enthusiasm, so I sign up that team for an interior painting job.

How enthusiastic are my 16 teammates after doing this kind of work for a day? Well, they refused the fairly cushy re-assignments and will be doing the same labor-intensive work tomorrow.

The company has a LOT to be proud of.