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| Front of house. |
It's 5 a.m. on Thursday morning. We get the boys up and leave our pastor's house quietly. The twenty miles back to the house is filled with horrifying sights. Water up to the Airline in places never before seen. Before getting back to Laplace we witness rescues taking place in the town of Reserve. Where does this end? We have to try several streets to get back to ours. It's 8 a.m. before we see our house with the sun rising over the top of it. Shock! I make a decision to send the boys to my Mother in Law's house to eat breakfast. I'm not sure when they ate last. In fact I'm not sure if anyone has eaten in the last 24 hours. I get a flat boat and I ferry my bride to our dream home we built ten years earlier. Remember that feeling last night? Well that was nothing compared to my descent into a watery hell I call home.
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| Breeze Way |
The water is past my waist on the driveway. I pull the boat around to the back door and get Penny out. There are snails in the water as big as my hand. I put my shoulder into the back door and open it to 14 inches of dirty water. The white tile shines through the dirty water to reveal "balls" of worms. Thousands and thousands of worms clinging together in balls all over the house. Is this what it's like to face an Egyptian plague? We walk through the house trying desperately to save at least one more thing. We stumble in the bedrooms. Did you know that carpet floats? Nothing is untouched by the waters. Every object sitting on the kitchen counter has an orange ring around it. To this day, I don't know why. Dear Lord, how many things did we not think about picking up. I realize that under our bed is electronic equipment and video tapes. Videos of my boy's first steps and words in this life. All sitting under 14 inches of sewer water. My wife is in the fourth bedroom. Her grandmother lived with us in that room. Penny stumbles on the carpet and hits a tub of her Granny's things and it falls into the water. The tears roll without stop now. We are in the middle of hell, 14 inches deep in dirty water, rolling balls of earthworms, and no clue what to do.
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| Left over worm debris. |
We make several trips during the day to retrieve things and let the boys see the house. There is little we can do. I just sit on the edge of the boat in total shock. Day turns to night and we venture back to our pastor's house to get some sleep. Friday morning comes, my house still has three inches of dirty water in it. My parent's home has drained. We stay busy that day ripping wet carpet out of their house. We have to keep busy, if not the weight of it all will crush our fragile mental state. Saturday morning comes and the water is barely out of my house. That's all I need. We work like animals to remove the carpet, padding and destroyed furniture. The pile in the front yard grows by the hour. Then a thirty pound weight rolls off a work bench on to my 12 year old's foot. Mind you, we are all barefoot in this slop. Then my 16 year old catches his foot on the wrong side of the carpet tack strip. Thick pasty blood rolls onto the sewer stained floors. Is it not bad enough that my dream house, that I designed and built myself is destroyed? Is it not bad enough that everything I've worked my whole life for is full of sewer water? Let's add injured teenage boys to my list of nightmares! This is truly a low point.
What can you do? I have two teenage sons. We can't give up or quit. It would scar the boys for life. We must rebuild and show them that all things are possible with hard work. Despite the harshness and brutality of it all, there is hope just over the horizon. The cavalry will show up on Labor Day. It's not who you would expect and definitely not the federal government. The question is can I keep it together until then? I'm unsure of everything at the moment. When Monday finally gets here, my faith in God, faith in humanity, and mental state will be recovered.
