Trying to balance the bad with the good....
I mentioned my friend Tessi as one of the bright spots in the days following the storm, and I wanted to tell a little more about her. Tess and her husband had moved to the Coast not long before the storm struck. They had used all the money they had just too get down here and were not able to do a lot of stocking up before the storm. After the storm struck, Tessi had to venture out as soon as possible to find supplies for her family. Every time she would find a source for food or water, she would go around and tell all of the other neighbors where to find it, and also offer anything that she had to anyone who needed it. She proved so resourceful in finding supplies, that she started asking the church, or wherever she had found supplies, if she could get some extra things for others. Then she and her husband would drive down into the hardest hit areas, and give the items away to the people that were unable to drive to find stuff. She also started picking up sheets of metal that people were dragging out to the road with the other debris to be picked up. She was able to sell the metal to a recycling center that she found, and make money to help her family. Her husband works up North and had been unable to fly up to his job since the storm, therefore they had no money coming in.
After my husband left and I discovered that I had more damage to my roof than we knew about before, she offered to climb up on the top of my very steep 12 pitch roof and patch the new area for me. I would not let her do it, but she was absolutely ready. Professional roofers charge a lot of extra money to work on my roof since it is so steep.
Another neighbor found herself standing in a Red Cross line and was told the wait was over 6 hours. She walked up to the front of the line and told the workers there that she wanted to be trained to help them fill out the forms to get people what they needed. She was told to she had to get "others" to take take the training class with her because they would not just teach one person. She went to her work and brought back 10 people to take the class. The Red Cross was surprised to see her and then stated that when they said "others", they meant more than 10. She asked how many, and they said 50. She went back and managed to get 50 people to sign up and then took them all to the Red Cross. They gave them the class and then she and all of the others took the forms and instead of sitting in the center to wait for people to somehow find them, they went out to the people and filled out the forms.
I have already told you how my neighbors brought us the pizza one night, but there were many other gestures like that from people all over. Ice was very hard to come by and I had just gotten used to drinking warm water and soda. Calvin hated drinking the warm drinks and one day he was feeling really bummed out about it. Sometimes it is the smallest things that are depressing. Anyway, out of the blue, this man comes up to us in a parking lot and ask if we wanted a bag of ice. This is equal to someone coming up to you in the parking lot of Wal-mart and asking if you want a bag of gold. We looked at him wide eyed, but said we could not possibly take the ice. He insisted and said he had more than he needed. He tossed the bag to Calvin. I can't even begin to describe how important these small things meant to me. They really made an impression on my son too. He will never forget the ice and the pizza, even those were two very small incidents during a really rough time.
If you are not familiar with people down here on the coast, you may be surprised to see how many of us laugh when something like Katrina happens. We will cry when we need to, but we love to find something funny in the most awful situations, and laugh about it. Tessi showed me a video tape that a friend of hers had made during and after the storm. He had set the movie to some twangy music that sounded like something from "Deliverance". The video tape showed how the guy drove over to his sisters house as soon as the winds died down, and found her house completely destroyed, but his sister was fine. He had put some outrageous "Batman" like captions describing how she lost everything but they had managed to salvage a lot of her clothes and wash them for her. It was sad, of course, but it was also hysterically funny. This was not done to blow off his sisters loss....it was simply done in order to find the humor in a situation where you could do nothing else.
Another funny moment came when Tessi's Mother saw on the news about the looting and crime and disease down here, and how we could not get any food or supplies. She tried to get somebody to drive down here with her, but nobody could take off work. She was worried sick about Tessi, so she made up a "dummy" with a cowboy hat and some stuffed clothes and put in in the passenger seat for protection. At a time when truck drivers were refusing to drive supplies in here because they were afraid, "Mom" gathered up a generator, a bunch of food and water and she and the cowboy drove over 14 hours straight through to get here. She was the one who had gotten an email through to Brad for me when he first went to Chicago, and she had been worried about me even though we had only met once, briefly. When she and the cowboy got here, this crazy woman pulled out, among other things, a blender, some ice and some stuff to make Margaritas. You can imagine what a surreal moment it was for me to open my door late one night to find a tall frozen Margarita along with an invitation to come meet "Mom". As I listened to her story, I laughed harder and harder until tears were running down my face. I have kids and there is no doubt in my mind that the 14 hour trip was a pure agony for Tessi's Mother, yet she told the story in such a funny way that my sides hurt from laughing. (The margaritas may have helped a bit too!)
After my husband left and I discovered that I had more damage to my roof than we knew about before, she offered to climb up on the top of my very steep 12 pitch roof and patch the new area for me. I would not let her do it, but she was absolutely ready. Professional roofers charge a lot of extra money to work on my roof since it is so steep.
Another neighbor found herself standing in a Red Cross line and was told the wait was over 6 hours. She walked up to the front of the line and told the workers there that she wanted to be trained to help them fill out the forms to get people what they needed. She was told to she had to get "others" to take take the training class with her because they would not just teach one person. She went to her work and brought back 10 people to take the class. The Red Cross was surprised to see her and then stated that when they said "others", they meant more than 10. She asked how many, and they said 50. She went back and managed to get 50 people to sign up and then took them all to the Red Cross. They gave them the class and then she and all of the others took the forms and instead of sitting in the center to wait for people to somehow find them, they went out to the people and filled out the forms.
I have already told you how my neighbors brought us the pizza one night, but there were many other gestures like that from people all over. Ice was very hard to come by and I had just gotten used to drinking warm water and soda. Calvin hated drinking the warm drinks and one day he was feeling really bummed out about it. Sometimes it is the smallest things that are depressing. Anyway, out of the blue, this man comes up to us in a parking lot and ask if we wanted a bag of ice. This is equal to someone coming up to you in the parking lot of Wal-mart and asking if you want a bag of gold. We looked at him wide eyed, but said we could not possibly take the ice. He insisted and said he had more than he needed. He tossed the bag to Calvin. I can't even begin to describe how important these small things meant to me. They really made an impression on my son too. He will never forget the ice and the pizza, even those were two very small incidents during a really rough time.
If you are not familiar with people down here on the coast, you may be surprised to see how many of us laugh when something like Katrina happens. We will cry when we need to, but we love to find something funny in the most awful situations, and laugh about it. Tessi showed me a video tape that a friend of hers had made during and after the storm. He had set the movie to some twangy music that sounded like something from "Deliverance". The video tape showed how the guy drove over to his sisters house as soon as the winds died down, and found her house completely destroyed, but his sister was fine. He had put some outrageous "Batman" like captions describing how she lost everything but they had managed to salvage a lot of her clothes and wash them for her. It was sad, of course, but it was also hysterically funny. This was not done to blow off his sisters loss....it was simply done in order to find the humor in a situation where you could do nothing else.
Another funny moment came when Tessi's Mother saw on the news about the looting and crime and disease down here, and how we could not get any food or supplies. She tried to get somebody to drive down here with her, but nobody could take off work. She was worried sick about Tessi, so she made up a "dummy" with a cowboy hat and some stuffed clothes and put in in the passenger seat for protection. At a time when truck drivers were refusing to drive supplies in here because they were afraid, "Mom" gathered up a generator, a bunch of food and water and she and the cowboy drove over 14 hours straight through to get here. She was the one who had gotten an email through to Brad for me when he first went to Chicago, and she had been worried about me even though we had only met once, briefly. When she and the cowboy got here, this crazy woman pulled out, among other things, a blender, some ice and some stuff to make Margaritas. You can imagine what a surreal moment it was for me to open my door late one night to find a tall frozen Margarita along with an invitation to come meet "Mom". As I listened to her story, I laughed harder and harder until tears were running down my face. I have kids and there is no doubt in my mind that the 14 hour trip was a pure agony for Tessi's Mother, yet she told the story in such a funny way that my sides hurt from laughing. (The margaritas may have helped a bit too!)
posted by Nancy at 11:15 AM
1 Comments:
I would love to see that movie! And what an amazing story about the margaritas. I think you deserve one or two!
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