Call Steve
I arrive at Camp Premier in New
Orleans for a week of volunteering to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Our camp is spread over several acres and housed over 1500 volunteers in
16-person army tents laid out in rows along the perimeter. It is completely
surrounded by cyclone fencing. We are greeted by Federal Marshals, dressed in
“SWAT” type uniforms and armed to the teeth. They direct us to our orientation
tent. They search some of the cars. It’s a little frightening, as they don’t
look too friendly with their short GI haircuts and mirrored sunglasses. We are
handed a copy of the rules and regulations and are informed that this is a
Federal installation owned and policed by Homeland Security. I head for the
tent thinking that I might get strip-searched any minute.
I am sitting with 60
other volunteers in a large army tent listening to our camp leader welcome us
as volunteers for Habitat For Humanity. There are 900 other volunteers in camp.
It was not as I expected. This camp is involved in the “gutting” of homes
devastated by Hurricane Katrina rather than the erection of new homes. There
are two other camps in the area that do this.
“Hurricane Katrina devastated the Louisiana and
Mississippi coasts last August. St. Bernard’s Parish, where you will be working
was hit particularly hard since several levees broke during the storm, flooding
the area. In addition, an oil storage tank from Murphy Oil has dumped a million
gallons of crude oil in many of the areas. Thousands of homes were
destroyed in this area alone and over 150 people are still missing.
Your job this week will be…”
Thousands of homes? How
many businesses? We drove for over fourteen miles south of New Orleans and saw
all malls and individual stores completely destroyed. I have no idea how much
further the destruction extended but you can look towards the horizon in any
direction and everything is completely devastated.
“…to prepare houses for either destruction or
rebuilding. Before either can be done the homes have to be “gutted” to the
outside stud work. Our primary duty is to remove bio and chemical hazards within
the structure as well as search for any bodies that may be under the rubble.
Unfortunately, K-9 units have been ineffective, until this week, in searching
for these bodies because of the…”
Whoa! What do you mean by bodies?
We might find a body? What have I gotten myself in to?
“It is very important that you wear the protective gear
that we will be providing. These sites are very contaminated as oil based
solvents, gasoline, fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, rotting food and
anything else that may have been in these houses have mixed with the sludge,
mud and sewage left by the receding water. This must be removed whether the
home is going to be demolished or rebuilt.”
You are kidding! You want us to
remove all of this from the house? Can’t we get all kinds of diseases? I
thought all we had to worry about was the black mold and fungus that has been
festering in the house these past seven months.
“When you return from your daily job you will be as
contaminated as these homes. It is very important that we don’t contaminate our
camp. You must remove your protective gear and clothing immediately and put
them into the bags provided. They will be sanitized and returned to you the
next day. You must then immediately proceed to the showers…”
What do you mean I’m going to be
contaminated? That doesn’t sound like anything I want to be!
“Although it is rare, you may encounter any one of the
following “critters” – the brown recluse spider, the black widow spider, Water
Moccasins and Cottonmouth snakes and rats. If you encounter any of them we
suggest that you kill them or call for help…”
Ok, ok this is a little bit too
much. I not only have to worry about contamination, disease and who knows what
but I might be bitten by something that could kill me. I look around for an
exit but am prevented from leaving because my wife has accompanied me on this
trip and she is sitting beside me acting as though this is just another
“adventure” she has planned for us. I don’t want to embarrass myself. After we retired she has decided that we have
to do something “scary” on occasion so we don’t fall into the trap of leading a
sedate retirement. I didn’t mind carrying fourteen pounds of rotting fish
through a marsh and up a forty-foot tower to feed some bald eaglets in a new
breeding program but this is a bit too scary for me.
“ If there are no questions please find your tent and
store your gear. Dinner will be served beginning at 5:30 in the mess tent”
Mess tent…even the lingo
reminds me of the Army.
“Hi, I’m Homer and I am from Seattle. Welcome to tent
2A.”
I gaze at the sixteen Army cots
crammed into my assigned tent. They seem to be all occupied. I find one in the
back that looks like it was first used in WW1. It smells like old moldy canvas
and is definitely too short for my lanky body. Well, not so lanky anymore. I
drop my bag on the cot and introduce myself to my tent mates.
I instantly forget their names. I
memorize where they are from and decide to just call them by their hometowns.
It seems easier that way. Some of them are college students. Some have given up
their vacation time. Some, like myself, are retired.
I think about this for a second.
I’m not sure I am hungry or nervous. My stomach growls in either situation. I
have no idea where my wife has ended up. There are too many tents and too many
people. I decide it’s hunger so I tag along with them.
“The food isn’t too bad here, in fact, it’s pretty
good. You can eat as much as you want.”
I look around the cavernous tent.
There are about 400 people either standing in line for the buffet or seated at
one of the many folding tables around the tent. I grab some food and sit with
my new roommates. They talk about their lives, where they live and what they do
for work. I eat and think about disease and snakes. My wife wanders in with
several other women, serve themselves and sit down several tables away. I wave
to her. I try to put a smile on my face but I’m sure my nervousness shows. We
finish dinner and head back to the tent.
“You might need a couple of blankets for your cot to
use as a mattress. They’re pretty uncomfortable.”
I think of saying something trite
like “been there done that” but decide to lay my sleeping bag out, lie down and
read my book. I can’t concentrate and after reading the same page four times I
get up and go outside. It’s only 7:00 pm so I decide to walk around and check
out the camp. Maybe I will find my wife. In a strange way I miss her company.
“Hey, where is your badge? You need your identification
badge or I will have to escort you off the property. You also can’t where your
hat backwards; it’s against the rules. Get your badge now and fix your hat!
I look around to see if this guard
is talking to me or some child that has entered the camp. I decide it is I. I
turn my hat around, or somewhat around since it was only askew on my head and
not really turned around backwards. I return to my tent where I had hung my
badge by my bed and return to my walkabout. It doesn’t take long as it appears
you either shower, visit one of a hundred Portalettes, eat or sleep. A group of
young kids are kicking a soccer ball around in a dust bowl. There doesn’t seem
to be any other recreational activities available. It seems like there is a
guard every fifty feet or so. They don’t smile. I decide to go to bed since
there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do.
“Where is your tent? Mine is right here.”
I bump into my wife. I smile at her.
Her tent is across from mine. I tell her about my trip around the camp. Several
generators start up and the camp is flooded with glaring banks of floodlights
that make everything look like a prison. I can’t think of anything else to say
so I kiss her goodnight and retire to my tent – alone. I expect taps but it
never comes and I soon fall asleep with my feet hanging over the end of the
cot. It’s hot so I sleep on top of my sleeping bag. I think I fall asleep
although it seemed like I spend the night tossing, turning and trying to avoid
the five-pound mosquito that had entered the tent.
“Hey, you’re up pretty early. It’s only 4:00am. You
know, the older I get the more difficult it is to get through the night without
a pit stop”
I nod at my greeter. I don’t have
the energy to tell him that I am a night owl and only used to sleeping eight
hours a night. I have already done that. I head for the “potty”, open the door
and am immediately overwhelmed by the smell. I gag, sit down and stare at the
spotlights through the ventilation strips in the ceiling. I sit and sit.
Nothing happens. I return to my tent. It is dark and I immediately trip trying
to find my cot. I crawl on my hands and knees feeling each cot until I find an
empty one. I climb in, hoping it is mine. I dig my flashlight out of my pack
for future use.
“Time to get up. We have to gather our protective gear
and get some breakfast. The bus picks us up at 8:00am”
I get up, dress and robotically
follow my tent mates to breakfast. They are serving chipped beef on toast, a meal
that carries another name and a food group that I had vowed many years earlier
to never even look at again. It looks and smells the same. I opt for some
powdered eggs and a large cup of coffee that I half fill with milk and three
teaspoons of sugar to take the chicory taste out of it. I finish quickly, grab
a sticky bun and head for the staging area to pick up my hardhat, respirator,
goggles and gloves. No one wears haz-mat suits anymore because they are too
hot. I wonder if this is such a good idea. I see my wife and she is not wearing
one so I decide not to – a decision that I hope doesn’t cause us to grow a
third ear. I get assigned to Gold Team 3 with my wife and eight other
individuals- three middle-aged women, an older gentleman, a teacher and three
teenagers. I think I am in for a whole world of trouble.
“Good Morning everyone. I am your team captain and I
work for AmeriCorps. Today we will be working in an area just outside of the
Ninth Ward. I just want to remind you about wearing your protective gear. If
you get injured, even the slightest little scratch, make sure you come see me
and we will get you immediate medical attention. We are just going to have a
wonderful day.”
The bus takes off and drives into a
neighborhood a mile down the street. A nice day? I want to go home. I want to
be anywhere but here. I look out the window of the bus and think that this
can’t be real. Everything is destroyed. Everything is rotting. There are piles
of broken houses, broken furniture and broken dreams as far as the eye can see.
I’m reminded of a scene from some movie about Hiroshima after we bombed it. No
people, no birds…nothing. This is not what I saw on TV or heard on the news
back home. There are paint sprayed markings on each home indicating the date of
first responder inspection, the responders initials and the number of deceased
people or animals found in the home. I notice one home with the notation, “Call
Steve…”. I wonder who Steve is and if he is alright.
“Here we are, Gold Team 3. This is your home. Hop off
the bus and I will show you what to do.”
Home? That’s not a home. Maybe it
was a home at one time but not now. I peer into the dark recesses of the house
and envision all kinds of disease, cockroaches, nasty bugs, rotting stuff and I
break out in a sweat. I feel a little nauseous. I look at my wife and she
doesn’t seem to be that affected. It must be her desire to do something scary.
I don’t want to do anything scary. I can’t believe the smell so I put on my
respirator. It doesn’t help.
“You guys have lucked out with this house. The first
floor is almost done with the exception of the appliances and some wallboard.
You only have the second floor to complete. Lucky you!”
I have never been lucky. I have
never won anything in my life. I can’t even win at Bingo. I know I’m not lucky
and I sweat some more.
“Just so you know; all utilities and gas are not
working in the house. So don’t worry about getting electrocuted or blown up.
And, don’t forget to drink at least six bottles of water today to prevent
dehydration. We don’t want that.”
I think that I might get
back on the bus, get in my car and go home. I put on the rest of my gear and
enter the house with my crew. Nothing in my entire life or even in my dreams
prepares me for what I see or smell. The downstairs doesn’t seem that bad but
the second floor is something out of a Stephen King novel. There is little
light. There is an overwhelming smell of…I don’t know what. I gag. One of my
crew notices and offers me some Vick’s Vapor Rub to smear on my upper lip. He’s
a two-week veteran – just a teenager on Spring Break with his mother. I lift
off my respirator to apply the salve – something I will never do again or so I
think. A bolt of white lightning surges through my brain and I am assaulted
with something far worse than the trip through the “Mace Tent” during basic
training. I try to run out of the house but the hallway is mostly blocked with
a rotting mattress covered in black mold. There is something green and slimy
hanging off the ceiling. I just know there is a dead body in the attic and I
can’t move. I’m rooted to the spot. I take out my Vicks and instead of covering
my upper lip I shove a good dose up each nostril, trying to block the
overwhelming smell, and put my mask back on. The smell of menthol is so strong
I no longer smell the stench but my eyes start tearing copiously, filling up my
safety glasses with salty water. It reaches my nose. The Vick’s is completely
blocking any passage of air. I think I might drown. I can’t go anywhere and I can’t
remove anything. I think I am also going to go insane and there is no place to
go – every house is the same, every neighborhood is the same. I turn and see my
wife enter a dark closet with a five-foot pile of rotten clothing, books and
memorabilia. She starts tossing this fetid mass out the front window.
Everything is stuck together, held together by something indescribable. I relax
a little, put on my macho visage and begin to help her. I crack my goggles and
let the water run out.
I stand up straight and tall. I put
a smile on my face and pretend that I am all right. I don’t need water. I need
someone to hold me and tell me it’s going to be all right. I need a hug. I look
for my wife but she has joined the others and has crossed the street for a
break. I realize that I am alone and I sweep the green stuff off the ceiling
overhead so I don’t run in to it, push the rotting mattress aside and bolt for
the front door. The sun and air feel good on my face. I can only smell the
Vicks that I blow out of my nose so I don’t smother while I drink. I take off
my respirator and take a deep breath. I look for a Portalette and find one down
the block. I open the door. It has not been cleaned in a hundred years. It
smells good.
“Hey, everyone, the homeowner is here. Come meet him.”
Jerry is a retired engineer. He and
his wife raised three daughters in the house we are gutting. They got out with
just the clothing on their backs along with some jewelry. His wife has been
crying for seven months and refuses to return to the house. He refuses to shake
our hand. Instead, wants a hug from each of us. He is crying. We
hug. We cry. It is awful. Everything he owned is either piled up in a putrid
decomposing mass on the sidewalk or still in the house. We learn that we won’t
find a body in the attic. We find out that the doublewide freezer in the
kitchen was filled with venison and shrimp. It is lying on its back in the
kitchen waiting to be moved to the sidewalk. He hugs us again, thanks us and
with tears in his eyes gets into his car and leaves.
I can’t go back upstairs. I cough
and cough again. I decide to grab the two teenagers and convince them that we
need to remove the freezer from the house before we get too tired to do it.
They agree.
“Don’t forget to wrap the doors closed with duct tape.
It’s lying on its back filled with water so we don’t want it to spill out when
we stand it up.”
Remembering what the owner told us
was stored in the freezer – seven months ago – I wrap the appliance with two
entire rolls of duct tape ensuring that the doors would never open. We use
levers and pry bars to stand the freezer upright. The water pressure inside is
too much for the tape and one door swings open and dumps its contents on my
boots. The instance it hits the floor one of
the teenagers rips off his respirator, which only makes it worse, and vomits.
He runs out of the house and down the street and vomits some more. The other
runs out into the back yard and does likewise. I go into shock. I want to vomit
but don’t want to take off my respirator. I can’t vomit into my mask so I run
down the street also. I can’t think of anything to do so I break open several
bottles of water and wash off the mess on my shoes. I gag and I cough. A shiver
runs up my spine and I start to get chilled. I wonder if I am about to pass
out. I decide to sit and as I do I notice the “second floor crew” running from
the house.
I can’t answer. I just wave them
off and sit there. I pour another bottle of water on my boots and scrape some
brown stuff off of my pants…and I just sit there. I cough.
“We have to get that freezer out of the house or we aren’t
going to be able to finish it. Let’s all of us just drag it out!”
I’d rather slice my eyeballs with a
dull razor rather than return to that freezer. I’d rather stick my head into
the opening in the Portalette. I’d rather…I see my wife walking towards the
freezer with the other women. I can’t sit here and watch. I must help. I remove
my respirator and fill my nostrils with Vicks. I put it and my safety glasses
back on. The goggles begin to fog and fill with tears again. I could never live
it down if I didn’t help my wife. I could never live with myself. I get up and
finish the task. I follow her upstairs to help with the closet. Some drywall
has been ripped down and we can now see what we are handling. I wish it were
still dark. There are many photo albums stuck together with mold. We pry them
apart. They are filled with completely blank photos. The water has destroyed
them. We find a sterling silver cake cutter in a moldy box. We clean it off. It
is engraved with “Jerry and Patricia” with what we assume is a wedding date. It
is salvageable so we add it to the meager pile of memorabilia that we have set
aside. We find a wedding dress in a bag still filled with water that has now
turned black. We throw it out the window onto the growing pile that now extends
from the sidewalk up to the front of the house.
I drag myself across the street.
The wind is at my back, blowing a cool wind off the levee keeping the odor away
from us during lunch. Group Black 1 joins us for lunch. They are working on a
house a few doors down. They make a remark about the bad smell. We shrug as if
it means nothing to us.
I cough and cough again. My throat
tickles and I wonder if there is a black mold growing there. I shiver. Black 1
tells us they have found a collection of porn videos, magazines and two bottles
of Viagra in the master bedroom of the house they are gutting. We all laugh. We
all cough. I look around at this assemblage of people from all around the
country. What brought all of these people here? What brought me here? What good
are we doing? In four months, only
991 houses out of 25,800 have been gutted. It will never end and it can only
get more vile and difficult as the summer heat and humidity arrives…and I
wonder. We return to work and the afternoon passes without incident except
maybe the collection of firearms we find, some loaded, that we have to call the
“Feds” to pick up. The bus arrives and we return to the camp.
“Ok, get your clothes off; put them in the bag and get
into the shower. Take a cold shower first to close your pores so nothing is
absorbed into your skin especially the fiberglass insulation”
Close my pores? My
clothing prevented anything from getting next to my skin didn’t it? There is a
line for the showers and it irritates me. It reminds me of the Army saying
“Hurry up and wait”. I decide that when it is my turn I’m going to get into the
shower and scald my body. No cold shower for me. I’m going to burn anything
nasty right off of my body. No amount of pain is going to prevent me from
getting rid of the contaminates. I wait. I cough and then it is my turn. I jump
into the shower and turn it on. It’s cold, freezing cold. I turn the dials and
am unable to warm it up even the slightest. My pores slam shut. I worry about
how I am going to get clean. I wash anyway. I scrub and I wash again. I cough.
I finish, put on clean smelling fresh clothes and return to my tent.
“Boy, it sure looks like everyone put in a full day of
hard labor. Look at the cots. Everyone is sleeping. It’s not even dinnertime
yet. I feel good. I think I will go for a jog around the camp.”
My tent mate turns and exits the
tent. I say something under my breath that would have made my grandmother cuff
me on the ears. I’m so tired I can’t stand. I don’t want to lie on my cot
because I believe that I am still contaminated and the thought of sleeping in a
contaminated sleeping bag makes me gag. I’m still constipated so I head for the
closest “Potty”, which is in a row along the Samaritan’s Purse tent area – a
church group sponsored by Billy Graham. A group of about fifty members are in a
prayer session. I sneak around the corner and enter the first unit and close
the door. I sit and the group outside begins to sing Rock of Ages and my
Portalette starts to rock as the group sways with the beat of the music. It
does wonders for my bowels. I sit there humming to myself and finally feeling
good. I sit. I listen to several hymns
and I cough. The music ends and the crowd disperses. I turn and find there is
no toilet paper at all. I start yelling but no one hears me. Am I going to
spend the night staring up at the floodlights? I yell again and a tent mate
hears me and tosses in a soggy roll – the only one he can find in the 10 stalls
in this area. I don’t think about why it is soggy and I use up the whole roll.
I feel better.
“ Hey, let’s go get some chow before the line gets
long.”
For the second time I enter the
Mess tent. There is a line. There is a long line of fresh sparkly people newly
scrubbed people, some in flip flops, some in pajamas and one lady in a
ballerina's tu tu. I decide that some of these people have missed the last
train out of Dodge. The line at the vegetarian buffet is twice as long as the
meat and potatoes line. I throw five meatballs on my tray; add some pasta and
grab a big slice of pecan pie. No, I grab two slices and then hit both with
half a can of whipped cream. I’ll restart my diet next week. I look around and
find my wife sitting with a gorgeous blonde woman. I see Homer, my tent mate,
sitting at another table. I decide to sit with the blon…my wife.
My wife has never called me
“Sweetie” in thirty-three years of marriage. I wonder if this was said as a
means of “marking the territory”. I smile at my wife. I smile wider at the
blonde. I lean forward to introduce myself, covering my clean uncontaminated
shirt with whipped cream. I don’t notice.
“ Susie came in from San Francisco late last night. The
livery service only had a stretch limo available so she arrived at camp in it.
The chauffeur was even dressed in a black suit. I guess the FEMA Gestapo
thought they had some rich debutante trying to smuggle in arms and drugs
because they searched her car and luggage. She had two bottles of Knob Creek
that they confiscated. Isn’t that hilarious?”
The Homeland security
personnel had earned the name, FEMA Gestapo, because of their manner and total
disregard for anything remotely defined as courteous. We believed they thought
they were running a lockdown for Arab terrorists and at any minute we might be
bound and gagged and thrown into a cold shower…or worse. I thought about the
Knob Creek. I don’t drink that much but the thought of guzzling some good
scotch and the fact that it might do some good relieving my scratchy throat
seemed like a lost opportunity. I cough
just thinking about it. I finish my dinner and start in on my slices of pie. I
notice that the whipped cream is missing from one and I glare at my wife. She
has a habit of never ordering dessert in a restaurant and then ends up eating
half of the one I order. I just know she has scooped it off the dessert when I
wasn’t looking. This is of course is very possible since I haven’t taken my
eyes off the blond since sitting down. We all finish dinner and head back to
our respective tents.
“ Would you like to join us in a bible reading? We need
the power of Christ to give us the will to help the victims of this terrible
tragedy.”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve
never been a church type of person believing that I have my own set of morals and
values that I live by every day and don’t need to be reminded of them every
Sunday. I cough. I cough again trying to think of something to say. I beg off
saying that I have to take my steel- toed and steel-shanked boots down to the
boot wash to disinfect them. They still smell like the freezer so I think this
is a good idea. They mumble something about “Go In Christ” and wander off. I
think that if there is a God why would he let this happen. I push this thought
to the recesses of my mind and wander off, grabbing my smelly boots.
Hey, are you heading down to the boot wash? When you
are done would you mind helping some of us wash the hardhats?
Our AmeriCorp captain is dressed in
her official tee shirt and pants. She is carrying three bottle of bleach and a
bag of what looks like scrub brushes. I don’t really care about washing the
hardhats but I think that if I can get hold of some of the bleach I can douse
my body with it and get it clean enough to get into my sleeping bag. I tell her
I will be there shortly.
The sign reads, “Please remove your boots and dunk them
into the first tank. Use a scrub brush to remove debris and then dunk the boots
in the second tank.”
First of all, the tanks are little
kiddie’s pools. Secondly, the scrub brush is lying in the first pool that has
turned into the same brown fetid sludge that I was trying to get off my boots.
Thirdly, I am in flip-flops and standing in mud created by the overflow of this
first pool. It stinks. I grab for my Vicks but remember I have left it in the
tent. I put my boots back on, throwing my flip-flops in the bushes. I jump into
the pool and do an abbreviated version of an Indian war dance to get the sludge
off of the boots. Some of the putrid water splashes inside. I gag. I cough,
jump out and spy a hose lying on the ground. I spray my boots and fill them
with the luke warm water. I don’t notice that the water is coming from the
canal along side the camp. It has an oil slick on the surface. I head for my
hardhat cleaning job hoping that there is still some bleach left. My boots
smell like disinfectant and oil.
“Thanks for coming. You volunteers are such wonderful
people. We love you so much. These are the hardhats we need to clean.”
I don’t know how wonderful I am. I
only want bleach. I look at the hats. There are six bins, each measuring about
six feet by six feet by four feet high. They are overflowing. I ask how many
there are and am told about 4000. I cough. I cough again.
“Boy, it sounds like you picked up the Katrina cough. I
told you lovely people to keep your respirators on all the time. Now you have
the cough.”
Many visions instantly passed
through my mind. The first…strangulation. The second…beheading. The
third…spending the rest of my life in an iron lung. They never mentioned this
malady. I jump into the bucket of bleach used for cleaning the hardhats and do
my Indian dance again. I don’t look at her. I can’t look at her. I have found
nirvana – that place in my mind that says that everything will be all right as
long as I stand in the bleach. Nothing else matters but killing the germs. I
will conquer this fear.
“Did you hear that FEMA is closing this camp and two
others on April 11th. Isn’t that a bummer? The word is that they
don’t want to fund the camps any more.”
“Bummer”. I haven’t heard that term since I took Mary Lou to
the drive-in, in 1962, and she spilled a milkshake on me. El Capitan is only
about 20; where did she pick up that term?
“FEMA is also withholding the funds from most everyone
until they have a full accounting of the money already sent. I don’t
understand. It doesn’t cost much to run this camp. They just have to feed us”
I look beyond the boxes
of hardhats at the 36 brand new air conditioning units that are just rusting
away in the elements. I look beyond the fencing at the 1000 or so unused one
bedroom trailers that FEMA paid $60,000 for, sitting there with black mold
growing up the sides. I remember the conversation I had with a contractor whose
job it was to bulldoze the streets of debris and houses to make passage for
rescue and recovery vehicles. He got paid $375 per hour. I think of the FEMA
Gestapo who are getting paid $10,000 per month for this duty. I look at my
“captain” and wonder if her full scholarship she had at college could remotely
be based on academic potential. I decide not. I think that FEMA ought to look
at themselves before blaming others for spending money. I remain standing in
the bleach and begin to wash hardhats. At first we scrub and scour intently. As
time passes we sort of pass the hats over the bleach solution hoping that the
fumes will sanitize them. I remind myself to come back and let my hat sit in
the solution over night. We finish several thousand and I decide to head to my
comfortable cot. My boots have been bleached white and my hands look like white
prunes. I get to my tent and everyone is asleep. I perform my crawling act
again, having left my flashlight by the cot, and get into bed.
“Good Morning! I see you have the same problem I have.
We met last night at the same time.”
It is 4:00 am again. I say nothing.
I decide he must be related to El Capitan. I find my favorite Potty and sit
down to stare at the floodlights again. There are now at least thirty rolls of
toilet paper stacked up on the shelf. I steal two and head back to my tent. A
well-endowed woman rounds the corner dressed in pajama bottoms and a bra. I
stare at her. She looks down at herself. Her arms cross her chest to cover
herself. It doesn’t work. I look around to make sure my wife doesn’t see me
staring at her. I stare some more.
She turns and skittles off flapping
her arms like a loon trying to take off. I laugh. I cough. I decide I have met
the whole family now and my day is complete. I have my dry brand new toilet
paper hidden beneath my tee shirt. I go back to bed and lie there till
breakfast. I get up and eat my powdered eggs and three humongous sweet rolls
and head for the bus.
“Good morning. This is day two of your wonderful
adventure. Are we all happy? Now you children didn’t listen to me yesterday
when I told you that you had to wear your respirator all the time. We don’t all
want to get the Katrina cough now do we?”
I think dismemberment might be a
better solution. My vision returns to the iron lung. I vow to quit smoking. I
cough and cough again. What does she think we are going to do? Eat our PB &
J sandwich with the respirator on? The thought of this meal mixing with the
Vicks, which I have shoved up my nose again, makes me gag. I look at my
hardhat. I have forgotten to soak it overnight. There is something vile and
green and slimy smeared on the top. I don’t look at it and begin to think happy
thoughts – times romping on the beaches in Bermuda with my three children, my
older son getting married to his childhood sweetheart – a nurse. A nurse! Wow,
why didn’t I think of this earlier? I’ll call her…oh, I can’t. The cells towers
have blown into Mississippi and haven’t been replaced. I’ll call her when I get
home and ask if an iron lung will still allow me to play video games on my PS2.
I begin to feel better. Ready for a new day!
“Gold 3, here is your stop. You should be done about
noon so I will stop by to pick you up and drive you to your own brandy new
house. Isn’t this fun?”
I no longer think about gutting
houses but maybe just gagging her. How can she be so happy all of the
time? The thought of all the things I
could do to her make her disappear takes my mind off the task at hand. I walk
into our “home”. I forget to put my respirator on. I forget to put my work
gloves on and…I slip and fall on my backside into the rotten shrimp and venison
that has attracted a million and two flies. I kill a dozen or so when I land.
To keep myself from going face first into this soup I stick out my hands for
balance, right into a pile of rotten venison. I get up and run for my life. I
find the water bottles across the street and empty three of them onto my hands.
I find some hand sanitizer in the first aid kit and squeeze the entire contents
onto my hands. I get a stick and scrape the muck off of my butt. I convince
myself that it will rot off my body. I wonder if you could lead a normal life
in an iron lung without a butt. I want to cry. I want to be anywhere but here.
I will vow to live in a Portalette the rest of my life if I can just leave this
place. I see my wife. She is laughing hysterically.
I think that it would be entirely possible to make her and El Capitan
disappear. I start to say something that I know I will regret the rest of my
life when I look down at my shirt and notice a dried white streak. It’s the
whipped cream. I must have leaned into it when I was making my introductions to
the blonde. I look up and my wife, and several of the team who have now joined
her. They are all laughing. I begin to laugh. I know that eventually I will be
going home. This will be over and the world will return to some vestige of
normalcy – until the next scary adventure. We all return to the house to finish
our job.
“Here I am. Have you finished the house? Ready for the
next one? We can eat our lunch on the bus.”
No thoughts this time. I just want
to get on the bus, squeeze the Vicks out of my nose, enjoy the air-conditioned
ride and eat my sandwich in moderately clean air. I look at my hardhat as I
remove it. There is now a large clump of brown next to the green slime. I
decide this is a symbol of everything that I am doing and decide to leave it. I
kick it under the seat in front of me and eat my sandwich, pudding and Oreo
cookie. I cough and drink two bottles of clean sparkling hot water.
“This is it. Isn’t it cute? It’s only one floor so you
can finish a whole house by yourself. Aren’t you excited?”
I would rather have been kicked in
the groin by a mule, flogged by lengths of barbed wire or had all of my teeth
pulled out without benefit of any type of medication. Cute? Excited? Hardly. I
was looking into the open garage that was filled with debris four feet high. In
addition the homeowner had stacked two courses of sandbags around the perimeter
of the house thinking that fourteen feet of water and sewage would not enter.
The sandbags retained two feet of water, within the house, that couldn’t get
out when the water receded. I am convinced that these well-intentioned
homeowners decided they were safe and rode out the storm…and they were still in
the house!
“You should probably
remove the sandbags first to let the water drain out before you gut this house.
How groddy is that anyway? Well, have fun. I’ll be back.”
Groddy? Not another… I’m going
to…no; I’m only going to think about happy thoughts. We remove the sandbags by
the garage and the fluid drains into the street. The only bird we had seen in
three days falls out of the sky at our feet. I think I hear it coughing so I
take some Vicks and plugged up the little holes on either side of its beak. Its
eyes start tearing. I wasn’t about to
give it my respirator so I picked it up and placed it in a small box across the
street.
“Whoa, that was pretty bad. What is mixed in that
sludge anyway? It’s bright pink.”
I looked down and sure enough the
effluent was bright pink. I look into the garage and see a hairdressing drying
thingy standing on end. It must be hair dye I thought. I liked it. I did my
Indian dance again and covered my bleached white boots with the pink sludge.
They turn pink. I decide I just had to find out how bad this house was so I
literally wade through the garage into the kitchen. My new pink boots must have
scared the cockroaches because they scattered as I walked. I reach the kitchen.
I look around. Unbelievable! No refrigerator! It must have floated out of the
house. There was the space for one but it was missing. I begin to believe there
must be a higher power watching over me. I do another Indian war dance.
Katrina sludge is a mystery to even
scientists or so we were told. It is a mixture of real honest to goodness canal
mud, sewage, oils and gasoline, pesticides and insecticides, rotting food and
debris and…in our case, a mixture of hair dyes and solvents or whatever awful
stuff woman put in their hair to make it curly, straight or shiny. The
scientists have no clue what this mixture is or turns out to be. This is not a
comforting thought since I was standing in a foot of this stuff. I just
expected that at some point in time my laces and soles would disintegrate, my
feet would get covered and instantly rot off my body. The idea of now being in
an iron lung, buttless and footless, makes me gag and cough violently. I like
my new pink boots though so I go with that happy thought.
“Oh boy, is this stuff heavy. I bet each shovel full of
this dripping muck weighs about twenty pounds.”
Twenty pounds! Have the fumes fried
your brain cells? It weighs at least a hundred pounds and my knees and back are
surely going to break. I have never worked so hard in my entire life. Three
hours, six bottles of frozen water – too many complaints about the hot water
yesterday I guessed – and at least a thousand wheel barrows full of debris
later we finally finish the garage. The kitchen is next and it doesn’t look too
bad. It didn’t have a refrigerator after all. It did have a pantry though which
I opened with some tugging, pulling and a little help from a teammate.
Generally I’m not a person who
prejudges people I have just met. I don’t believe in judgments made by others. I don’t
criticize how they look, how they behave or what they do for a living or how
intelligent they are or are not. However, in this case, I wanted to know whom
the moron was who thought it was all right to leave food in a pantry that should
have been in a refrigerator. This swill. This fetid, putrid, foul, rank,
squalid, smelly, decaying and rotten mass of stuff suddenly flowed out of this
pantry across the tops of my boots and along the floor and into the clean
garage. My immediate thought was that the rotting shrimp and venison at the
previous house really didn’t smell that bad and that I should return there and
languish in its sweet aroma. I looked around for help. The cockroaches around
me are all lying on their backs with their little feet wiggling in the air.
Every mosquito and fly fell out of the air buzzing musical death spiral. Life
around me, if you could call it that, had ceased to exist. The teammate who
helped me open the pantry bails out through a window – a feat I could hardly manage
since his waistline measurement began with the number 2 and mine began with a
3, well, a low 4…like just 4 zero, nothing more. I may have gone off my diet
but I didn’t gain that much weight in three days…or was it three weeks? I
didn’t know any more. I didn’t know anything any more. I was totally and
completely numb from the top of my green and brown smeared hardhat to my pink
boots.
I think I cried. My safety goggles seemed to
fill up more rapidly than what the Vicks could possible have caused. I suddenly
shot straight up into the air, levitated much better than David Copperfield
could have ever caused and floated above the earth to a happier place – down
the street about a hundred miles! I looked down at my boots and thought what I
saw was something resembling a moldy cucumber. It kind of looked like a
cucumber but different in an odd sort of way. It was greenish. It had the shape
of a cucumber and it kind of jiggled in the sunlight. It appeared alive!
Flashes of the movie “The Blob” zipped through the peripherals of my mind, the
only part still functioning. The flash entered that dark recess of my brain
that houses all of the bad things, the nightmares, the icky nasty things you
don’t want to think about. You stuff them there hoping they never get out. They
did. All at once! No one could hear my screaming. The Vicks shot out of my nose
and covered the inside of my respirator. The salty water that had now filled
most of my safety goggles squirted out the bottom, poured over my shirtfront
and mixed with the dried whipped cream. Every hair on my body stood erect in
perfect unison, even my eyebrows, which I’m sure, had curled up into a twisted
mat from the smell. I think my eyelashes fell off. I tear my pink boots off and
run barefooted back down the street
looking for the first aid kit. There surely must be something in there to help
me…maybe some chloroform. I tear it open and find a bottle of Advil. I chew
four of them and they stick in my dry mouth. I gag. I grab a bottle of water in
one hand and the new bottle of hand sanitizer in the other. Simultaneously, I
drink the water and squirt the contents of the sanitizer on my head. I have no
idea where my hardhat had ended up. It probably sprouted a pair of little
plastic feet and is heading for the coastline. I want to go to the coastline. I
want to be fly-fishing in the cool waters of Key West. I scrub my whole head
with the sanitizer, which quickly dries, in the foul wind. The hair on my head
now permanently stands erect. I look down at my bare feet and noticed one
single beautiful wild flower growing out of a moldy couch lying on the street.
It is pink. It matches my boots. I smile and travel to a happier place. All is
good again. My wife walks up to me.
I assure her that everything is
just fine - I just want to cool my feet off, as they were getting hot. I point to the flower, that represents, in my
mind, the one oasis of beauty in this devastated world. She looks at it and
tears come to her eyes. I try to mash my hair back down because I can’t think
of any excuse why it is ramrod straight up in the air. I hug her. Life is back
to normal again and it is wonderful. I don’t know where all of the nightmares and
"nasties" from the dark hole in my brain go but my guess is that they
decided it was too scary to live there anymore and they joined my hardhat on
the coastline. What a great feeling. You see the worst and everything else from
that point on is better. I have changed. I am not the same person who arrived
three days ago.
The next few days were somewhat of
a blur. I actually reach the point that I feel like a veteran. I actually join
in with our leader with a round of “Good Morning. Good Morning…” today. I realized
that the best way to conquer adversity was to either crumble into a blubbering
heap on the floor, withdraw into a catatonic vegetable state or make light of
it with humor and upbeat positive thinking. I decided that El Capitan had
decided on this course and I decided it was the best course for me. I actually
began to enjoy myself.
“ Hey, it’s our last night all together so we should do
something. A lot of people have flight out tomorrow night so they won’t be
around.”
Visions of “contaminated” people
boarding a flight to Seattle surged into my mind, which had now returned to its
normal state – somewhere just above a mule. If they were not corralled by the
shower Gestapo wouldn’t they contaminate the whole plane? Then the next
passengers would get contaminated and it would spread, and spread and soon the
airline industry in the whole world would be shut down. Well,
that was Homeland Security’s problem not mine. I decide to join my tent mates
on a trip to the Hippie Village – a traveling band of hippies who travel the
country running a soup kitchen.
“Wow, this really is a Hippie Village. Will you just
look at this.”
I was standing at the entry to a
compound dominated by a large circular white tent and several smaller scattered
around a couple of acres. I kept looking for Jerry Garcia because surely the
deadheads who follow the Grateful Dead around the country were now standing
around me. I had stepped back to the sixties and I was having severe
flashbacks. They still exist! This is wonderful! I thought the “tune in/ tune
out” culture had died out when it was no longer cool to be a nonconformist.
“Will you just look at this spread. There is everything
you can think of.”
One look at the buffet style spread
and one could tell that this was something unusual. The vegetables looked fresh
and cooked to a light crispness. The salads were varied and included some
covered in fresh crumbled blue cheese and others that were a varied mix with a
light balsamic vinaigrette. There were several chicken and beef dishes and,
believe it or not, Tiramisu in abundance. There was a donation bucket at the
beginning of the line for those who could afford it. There wasn’t very much in
it even though they served over a thousand people a night. I took all of the
bills out of my wallet, almost $60, and shoved it into the slot. My tent mates
followed suit. The meal we ate that night rivaled some of the best restaurants
I have ever been in. If you needed a shower they had several crudely built with
paint stained plywood. They could house about 200 people who might not have a
place to sleep. To this day I don’t really know who these people were or who
funded them but they put a smile on everyone’s face and they renewed my faith
in the goodness of mankind.
“This is your last day aren’t we all happy campers?”
Yes, Oh yes. It is a
wonderful day and I am ready to tackle the worst job there is and I will love
every minute of it. This has been truly an experience I will have for the rest
of my life. Habitat and the other volunteers are good caring people. You could
not have asked for any more. I dove, not literally, into my work and sang
Grateful Dead songs to myself all day. When the day ended I wished I had signed
up for a second week. My wife and I vow to return next year for another scary
adventure.
I have taken the liberty to
embellish this story for the sake of readability and to satisfy my warped sense
of humor.
Cockroaches do not flip over on
their backs and die because of a bad smell. They actually love it. You can’t
even kill one with a sledgehammer. There were no birds falling from the sky or
flies and mosquitoes doing likewise. It’s a mystery why they do not exist in
this wasteland but they don’t. The blond, although the sweetest and most caring
individual you could ever meet, was good looking not drop dead gorgeous. You
cannot shove Vick’s up into your nostrils. You would run the risk of your
eyeballs exploding or at the very least burning out your sinuses. You can,
however, build up a half-inch layer on your upper lip. This still makes you
weep uncontrollably. The green blob on my boots didn’t really resemble a
cucumber. It looked like a big fat green newt. I didn’t want to get into an
argument about where this newt came from so I called it a cucumber. There are
no five pound mosquitoes. How could you believe that? They only weighed two.
My grandmother would never think of
cuffing your ears. It could do damage. She was a wonderful lady who would get
your ear between her thumb and forefinger, twist and lead you around the room
while she told you that you had a “potty” mouth.
The AmeriCorp volunteers were not a
whiney, sickly sweet group of folks. Our leader had to spend two months gutting
houses before she was allowed to guide us on our adventure. She was very
professional and took very good care of us. I just get very cranky in the
morning without a good cup of coffee. These kids will spend ten months here,
unless the camp closes, for a small stipend and help with tuition. They are
wonderful caring individuals and a testament to what is right with this
country.
I cannot lift one hundred pounds in
a shovel and we only made 996 trips with the wheelbarrow.
The rest of the narrative is true.
It is based on our hands-on experience, our observations and the first-hand
information told to us by others.
Finally, I did try to call Steve. I
needed to know if he was all right. The line was disconnected.
