God Bless Texas

The Garage. Note that big red compressor. Knocked over as if it was a toy.

Notice that recliner over there by the washer and dryer. Used to be in the living room. And the upside down kitchen table. 

This chest of drawers just floated around the room, I guess, until it came to rest on top of everything else, kind of like Noah's Ark, coming to rest on top of Mt. Ararat. 

That's the fridge on the floor there, in the kitchen

I had already removed most of the bells in front of the slipper when it occurred to me to take a pic

Two AM. I should be asleep. Wide awake in the dark, images of the past week are bouncing around in my head. I am sick to my stomach. Waves of pain come and go. I try not to make too much noise, as the Mr. has to be at the airport early. Eventually my stomach settles, but the images are still there behind my eyes every time I close them.

It's taking time to process the past week. All I want to do is talk about it. Everybody else seems to have moved on, but after seeing what I saw,  I am deeply, deeply affected. I'm having a hard time.

My Dad and Stepmom, Joyce, have lived in the same house for 14 years, an hour away from  Galveston. From time to time there would be a hurricane to worry about. I would call and tell him he had a place here if he wanted to "run" as he called it. He always turned me down. One time they had gotten out, and the trip back had been horrible. People stranded on the highway for hours. Rudeness was the rule of the day. People were terrible to them. It was difficult. He swore he wouldn't ever leave again. He would always "ride it out." The thing that always worried me about this was that he lives on a tiny peninsula next to the San Jacinto River. He lives in a flood plain. But year after year went by and there weren't any problems. 

I called him when I heard the warnings about Hurricane Harvey. We joked. He reiterated his belief that he could ride it out. I called again the next day. And the next. He never changed his mind. 

Then I really started to worry. He lives 50 miles north of Houston. The water was creeping up that way. I heard that the water was rising on his street. He wouldn't leave, though. He went to a hotel. I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. It would be all right. 

Then all Hell broke loose. The hotel he was in began to fill with water. The owners were packing up to leave. Dad had nowhere to go. He tried to go back to his house for clothes but the street was waist high in water. He had nothing, other than what he was wearing, no food, other than some bologna and bread, and no way out. 

But he had his truck. And he had his phone. My Dad is one tough nut. Raised on an Arkansas farm to a poor family, he knows how to harness his resources. He is a master of  "making chicken soup out of chicken poop" as my husband likes to say.  I called him to see where he was at. He had just been turned around at a closed off road, and wasn't sure where they were going to go. I began to Google while talking to him. Found out which roads were closed and which were open. I was able to direct him while talking to him, on how to get out of there. He wasted no time. With nothing left of his life, except the clothes on his back, he turned that truck to Dallas and never looked back. 

I could hear the relief and joy in Joyce's voice as they cleared all the flood waters. "Blue Skies!"  She exclaimed. 

I hung up the phone and cried.  So happy they made it out of there. So happy they didn't end up on their roof, like 2000 of their Houston neighbors. So sad that they lost every thing. 

I had to see him. I drove to my sister's house, where he was staying, and "hugged his neck" as they say around here. 

The next day, he decided he needed to get back down there to take a look. He hadn't been sure how high the water had come in his house before this. He knew it was bad, but this day he got news from the neighbor that the water had been over the roof. He called me. The heartbreak was in his voice. My Dad doesn't cry. But this particular weekend would bring the tears to the edge, again and again. He asked if I would go with him, so I did. I was beside myself with worry that we would get down there and not have the gas to get back. Was beside myself with worry that the water was still high and that we would be in danger. Neither turned out to be true. There was plenty of gas, and to my astonishment, the water was completely gone! Where the water had been at roof height three days before was just a little water in the bar ditches. 

We came to the house. My cousin Jim and Aunt Mary met us there. We walked around the house. Slipped in the slimy mud outside on the porch. Couldn't get in the door. Dad had to break a window and climb in the spare bedroom. All I could hear from outside was a loud "God ALMIGHTY!" There was trash strewn all over the yard. The big AC unit was completely off it's concrete pad. Five hundred gallon propane tank...nowhere to be seen. Dog house sideways up against the fence. 

Dad wrenched open the front door and we went in. First thing to hit me was the stench. I have never smelled anything like it and never want to again. It was eerie. Nothing was in it's place. Everything large had been moved. The furniture had been thrown around, but all the tiny things remained.  Joyce's bell collection was intact on the top shelf of the built in book case in the living room. I noted with amusement that one of Dad's slippers had floated up behind the bells and had come to rest there, without disturbing any of the fragile collectibles. Dad's bed had floated across the room, but a tiny hand mirror sat on the shelf on it's pedestal base in the bathroom as if it had been glued there. The fridge had fallen to the floor in the kitchen, but the grand kid's piggy banks, that had been on top had fallen harmlessly to the floor. I walked around the sodden house taking pictures for the insurance, and trying not to cry. The pictures I had drawn for Dad in high school, that he had placed proudly on the living room wall were in ruins. wrinkled and wet. Photos were falling out of their frames. The computer room was still ankle deep in water. I knew all the old precious family photos were in there, so I stepped in and started grabbing all the albums I could see. Anything that was salvageable we stacked on the bar. Photo albums, soggy and dripping, and stinking. All of the depression glass that had belonged to Joyce's mother, full of muddy water in the top of the china cabinet that had also been her mother's. Her parent's dining room table, a relic from the forties, lay half across the hallway and into the computer room. Water damaged and broken. Chairs strewn everywhere. Curtains wet and sagging. And the endless stink. 

Sweaty and muddy, we stopped for a break and went to the local bar for lunch. The NoWhere Lounge was serving free food for the entire subdivision. We sat down to ribs, chicken, sausage, potato salad, baked beans, watermelon, and sweet tea. Everywhere people were talking and laughing, and shaking hands. Spirits were high, despite the destruction that was everywhere. We drove down the streets around his neighborhood. There was a fence panel on some one's roof across the street. There was some one's house, clean off it's foundation. There was a collapsed roof. And everywhere people were stripping their houses. Each yard had a mountain of trash, furniture, and sheet rock on the front lawn, as high as the rooftops. But the same camaraderie we had seen at the bar was evident here, as well. People were standing in the yards talking, laughing, slapping each other on the backs. Helping each other. Supporting each other. It was the most horrible, and yet the most amazing thing I have ever seen. 

We loaded up the truck with what we could save. Some quilts my Grandma and Great Grandma had made. Some old records. The glassware. The photo albums. And that was it. We headed back to Dallas. 

Over the next week I managed to save the quilts. I washed them, and then had to wash my washer. I washed all the old records, and I think that's what made me sick. Should have worn gloves for that. Scanned and reprinted my Dad's handmade cookbook. Still have to wash all the mud from the glassware. Pictures are in the freezer (inside sealed garbage bags) and hopefully I can just peel the pictures right out of there, when I get around to it. 

And always I'm wishing there is something else I could do. But there is nothing. The house has been stripped down to the studs now, and the paperwork has been filed with the insurance company. My Dad and Jo, as we call her, will be moving closer to us in the near future, but for now they are pretty much homeless, although my Dad's sisters have graciously offered a place in their homes until they have a place of their own again. Family has been fantastic. All of my cousins and their families, and churches have come together to financially support him, and and also to completely empty his house for him, so he doesn't have to worry about it. 

I can't stop thinking about all this. It rolls around in my head while I am fixing dinner, doing laundry, vacuuming, driving. I can't stop talking about it. In my head I walk around his house seeing all the old treasures that I couldn't save. Jo's wedding ring was in there. Papaw's Bible. Some of Mamaw's paintings. Jo's mother's china cabinet. I guess that's what haunts me. I'm a fixer, and I can't fix this.
But they are just things, I tell myself. Even the old family photos that couldn't be saved, precious as they were, were just things with no eternal value. My Dad and Jo seem to have to come to grips with their losses. They are starting over. I can't imagine doing that at 72. I can't imagine doing that at my own age of 49. I applaud their strength and fortitude. And God Bless Texas for the love and support they have poured out on my parents. The "Stars at Night" that are "Big and Bright" in my humble opinion are the people that live here, deep in the heart of Texas.