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.