Patrick's Story

[newman]

(As a brief aside, I considered seducing someone just so I have some place to sleep other than my terrarium of a tent. I decided that that would violate the Use These Powers Only For Good rule).

Patrick is a tall, rangy, guy in his mid-50s. He has a trim white beard and smokes a cigar. He has the air of an old salt, ranch hand, soldier, or any of the other manly occupations. His wife Catherine is a well-preserved blonde woman of similar years and type. Stressed, short on sleep, and begrimed, she was attractive. Under ordinary circumstances, she'd turn heads. Twenty years ago, she stopped traffic.

The lived and will again live in a big house on Vacation Lane, about 100 yards from the beach. It backs on 6 acres of wetlands, which Patrick also owns, and is on a rise which makes it about thirty feet above sea level. Patrick said that when he bought the house he said 'If my house ever floods, Waveland is fucked. Well, it flooded...and Waveland surely is fucked".

We helped them out this afternoon. This is Patrick's story.

Cathy owns a store up by the K-Mart, up by the highway [about two and a half miles inland]. We took shelter up there after it became clear this weren't no ordinary storm. In the middle of the night, my son wakes me and says 'Dad, the K-mart is flooding'. I say 'Oh bullshit' but drag myself off my air mattress anyway. Across the parking lot, I can see the K-mart is under three feet of water and rising quick. The store next door is under construction and I bust their window and grab me a bunch of two-by-fours and start lashing 'em together to make a raft. I start working on that ground, and I'm working fast. but by the time I'm putting the finishes on it, I'm up to my neck and water and my wife and son are sitting on the roof of my pickup truck. I through my rope, my axe, and my family on the raft, and tie one oend of the rope to the pickup truck, to use as an anchor. When the hurricane comes through, we're in the lee of the building, so up until the eye we're OK. After the eye, the wind's coming from the other direction and we're getting battered against the buildings by waves. Debris 'n' all sorts fo construction stuff is flying through the air. I dive down into the water, break a window on the far side, and we all swim through to the other side of the building where it's calmer [I guess they drag the raft through too; he never said]. We spent two days on the raft until the water receded. After the first night, Kathy fell asleep. Eventually we landed on the roof of the building.

We're going to spend tomorrow morning helping them out until it's time to pack up and head for NOLA.

Comments

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

FYI, I found out that the reason your posts aren't appearing on my friends page is that you've been backdating them (or so it appears). So it's possible nobody else is seeing them either. You may be better off not doing that, and just noting that something happened last night, etc., so we don't miss out on reading about your adventures. :-) Just a thought...

[new-man.livejournal.com]

The terminals at Waveland were set about 10 months begind for some reason, so I had to adjust the dates manually. Sorry for the confusion

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

It's OK, it was a minor inconvenience. Just thought I should mention it in case you were getting no responses and thinking "nobody loves me"... :-)