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It’s quiet.
Except for the coal trucks. Pineville
rolls up and plays dead on weekends – when folks “go to town” to
shop for the week (like to Beckley some 40 minutes away).
The quiet is provoked
more, however, by the absence of incredible teenagers from Indiana and
Ohio. I walked around the
rooms they used – which were well swept out, even mopped, figuring
I’d have at least one or two bags full of forgotten things to donate
to the Warehouse, but found only a pair of gym shorts.
Our challenge was to
leave this place cleaner and better than we found it – and we
certainly did.
So
it is time for reflections, impressions, and stories.
- Said
one city youth: “It
makes what we take for granted seem like real treasures when we see
how little these folks have.”
- Another
observed happy children, playing with very little in the way of
“conventional” toys and “stuff.”
- Nineteen
projects this week – most of them completed – some that will
never get completed.
- The
old man who needs two crutches to stand and walk, patiently hosing
down the roadway shoulder outside his flower shop at the top of the
river bank – washing away the endless coal dust that blows off the
400 trucks a day that go by his establishment.
- A
work group’s solemn humility when in appreciation for their work,
the homeowner for whom they labored this week brought them a prized
family treasure: a lump
of coal from the mines with a beautiful fossil print in it.
They insisted the group take it - it was all they had to
“pay” for their friendship and work.
The next day, the same family begged them to stay overnight
with them instead of coming back to the junior high school to sleep
on the dirty floors and well-used mattresses! Isn’t
“hospitality” one of the central concepts of our faith?
- The
local youngster who came out to talk with one of the volunteers who
wasn’t feeling well and stayed to play cards with her to while
away the time.
- The
respect and cooperation between youth and their grown up friends
- The
offerings in addition to the labors of love:
a group bought $270 of building materials for a family,
Another donated $500 for “supplies and whatever else is
needed.” Still
another, after saying no one would ever again need to buy screw
drivers in Wyoming County because they brought along so many, left
$440 for professional tools to add to the tool trailer.
- Several
pick up truck and car trunks of donations for the Recovery
Warehouse.
- The
group growing fond of the head cook-who was born in Crawfordsville,
IN – asking for her address so they could keep in touch and
exchanging phone numbers so she could call to say “Hey!”
(that’s the “rat” way to say it!)
Perhaps the major work
project of the week was turned in by 16 workers, mostly teenagers. They
tore off a laundry room and porch and its roof, painted the exterior of
the mobile, cleared away debris from under the place, dug post holes in
rocky ground, made footers, sunk the posts, designed and built the
framing for the deck, porch and steps, and installed the decking – on
a mobile unit sitting halfway up a step hillside, with as much hill
below it as above it.
It’s
in a place where the owner says she never worries about garbage disposal
because of the 350-pound bear who comes down to the trailer every night
to clean it up for her. Sure enough, we could see his (or her) trail
through the underbrush. She
also pointed out the long steep drainage culvert which runs up to the
back of her property from the roadway far below, which she knows is
working because the raccoons use it as their own private covered highway
every evening as they travel between her woods to the woods on the other
side of the road.
The work group had some
regrets about having to leave when they did, but they know they put the
property in great shape to be finished up by volunteers who will come in
the next weeks.
Our week taught us how
to pronounce words. For example, where we are staying is “Panvul”
(Pineville). You say it the same way
you say “nan” (9). This
is an area where gabion baskets are made of specially treated corrosion
proof “whar” (wire).
When the cook asked me
to buy things for the kitchen, I couldn’t imagine why we needed me-ints.
When I brought back several pairs of oven mitts, she informed me that I
had translated correctly.
Yesterday we made calls
to line up jobs for next week. It
was a study in contrasts. When
I came in from checking out a volunteer project, there sitting in the
Recovery Office, surrounded by most of the staff, was a filthy dirty
hardly communicative man who looked like he was 80 years old (he’s
only 69). He sleeps in his
flooded out trailer – which someone said in a masterful understatement
was “a sight.”
His wife has a mild
case of Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home. He goes to see her every
day. His stepdaughter lives
maybe a mile away but hadn’t been over to his trailer in months –
since mother went into the nursing home. A son lives next door with as
much trash, litter, debris, discards and general filth in his yard as
Dad has in his trailer and yard. But the house on the other side of them
is trim and neat, pretty as a picture.
The staff wanted to
figure out how to get him into a cleaner safer place.
He refused an offer to put him in a motel for few days so we
could clean out his trailer. He
wouldn’t go to the homeless shelter.
He wouldn’t stay with his stepdaughter or son (I’m not sure
they asked him, too, either).
So we decided to follow
him and his rickety old truck to his place to see what we could figure
out. Picture a rusted out washer, automobile parts – probably from the
8 trucks and cars parked around the yard, wrenches, bottles, spoiled
canned goods (some home canned, others commercially canned) in soaked
cardboard boxes sitting around willy-nilly, a pile of coal, cats and
dogs by the litterfulls, weeds, soiled mattresses, broken box springs,
discarded TV, the bed of a non-functioning truck heaped with rain-soaked
animal-invaded trash bags…. and that’s just outside.
Inside – the first
step is precarious because of the rotten flooring. There are two
mattresses on top of each other right inside the front door where he
sleeps in a jumble of gray blankets and coverings. There is an old coal
stove for winter heat but with an opening in the wall twice as big as
the flue pipe. There is every unimaginable kind of litter in the trailer
- most of it piled as high as mid-calf at least, and a toilet which he
says he uses except the water that comes out is red. We couldn’t
imagine how you can even get close to the toilet –not just for the
stench, but for the piles of “things.”
It is clearly one of
the most despicable sights one could ever describe.
He just sits in his confusion – lost without his wife – the
both of them having lived here all their lives.
The options seem to be
to shovel out the main room –wipe it down with Clorox and get him a
clean mattress or two – while we try to figure out how to clear the
lot for a small package house – if the county will approve it.
Then you have to burn the trailer – and plan how to clean up
the burn debris. The closest dump won’t take anything that is not
bagged – and what do you do with large scraps of sheet metal and
fiberglass?
The step daughter said
she’d round up the family and start picking up the yard this weekend
to help out. Our bet is that
if we go out there next Monday, there won’t be more than two or three
trash bags filled when it will take a hundred or more to make a little
dent in all the rubbish that lies in the yard.
The man had open heart
surgery about a month ago – and how his surgical wounds have healed so
nicely when he eats only teeny bits of food all day, amidst the decay,
mold and general corruption of his environment, is a minor miracle in
its own right!
Neither he nor his wife
read nor write. He has a
small black lung disease pension. They didn’t trust and couldn’t
read the FEMA materials or he could surely have qualified for a FEMA
trailer for while. No one in his family helped with that process either.
It is a sad, sad travesty on how we care for one another.
Two deep and lasting
impressions grew out of the visit – neither of them having to do with
the sordidness of the property. One
had to do with the sensitivity and compassion of the Flood Recovery
staff. These folks – most
of them suffering from the flood just like their neighbors – have been
on the job since July, 2001 inventing ways to establish an office, do
case work, access funding sources, deal with suppliers, manage
volunteers, and respond creatively and practically to a major disaster.
They all – aides, case workers, volunteer director, and
director of the office – had time – took time - to sit with this
man, in spite of his filth (I don’t think he had washed since his
surgery a month ago!) to consider ways of helping him.
When I thanked a case
worker for her efforts, she said, “Oh, I HAVE to do that.
Otherwise, my faith wouldn’t amount to much, would it?”
Second, when I told the
volunteers about this incident, they were awfully quiet. Someone finally
reflected that when one in the “family” suffers, we all suffer. It
was starting to get real for them.
We went from that place
to a brand new doublewide trailer that was immaculate and beautifully
furnished. See what I mean
by “contrast?” A well
dressed couple met us and bid us sit with them in a gracious, spacious
living room highlighted by a large fish aquarium.
Both are older; he has one leg prosthesis.
They need a couple of decks built to finish their rebuilding
project.
They have lived in this
spot for over 30 years when they bought a small frame house and together
mixed the cement, bricked it up, decorated it, added on rooms over the
years – and made it into a really nice looking property. But the
floods came.
The bridge in front of
their place became a dam when logs and propane tanks and other floating
debris jammed up the bridge and diverted the water in a monstrous rush
right into their house – which had never flooded before.
They were still inside!
When the water started
rising, they started to gather up clothes for overnight, but by the time
they tried to get out there was a raging torrent all around their house.
Folks up on higher ground couldn’t get in to help them.
They were trapped. They
hung on to anything that wasn’t floating – standing in water waist
high – terrified as they heard logs and a car float into the sides of
their home. Then the waters
undermined their foundation and footers and the house started to tip –
bricks falling off one end, rafters popping, paneling splitting – can
you imagine the terror!
When it was over, they
had lost it all.
Now they are starting
over. He lost a good bit of
his retirement money in a failed mining venture.
She lost her prized piano – but she saved her fish!
She gathered them into a picnic cooler and clung to them through
the worst of the flood. They
now swim in peace and tranquility in their new aquarium and new home.
(more about their story
later)
From there we visited a
grandmother whose hair is now gone from cancer treatments. She wasn’t
feeling well that day because of the chemo.
She and her family have rebuilt her trailer, which had 3.5 feet
of water in it. Looking at it today you wouldn’t believe it ever
happened. She has lived
there for years and even in previous years when floods damaged houses
across the road from her, she never lost anything. - until this time.
The water, she said, had never even reached her porch steps
before.
She managed to grab her
3-year old granddaughter when the waters came up through the vents.
The granddaughter was with her because the rest of the family was
at a funeral – but the procession has stalled by rising waters and
washed out roadways. Folks
in the procession and folks at home had no way to know if the other was
safe. She and the child
waded out through the back door, slipped and slid up a small hill till
they got above the water, then clambered up to the hard surfaced road
where they could walk to a place that was safe.
Since July, 2001,
they’ve worked on cleaning it all up, but now she’s sick and out of
money.
The flood recovery
office will pay for building a porch. The volunteers will build it with
sturdy railings that she’s never had before, but needs now because she
is weakened by the cancer.
So many stories – so
many tragedies – so many tales of heroism - by firemen, for instance,
who spent the day helping people get out of their houses, get off their
roofs, find shelter – and then came home to find their own homes gone.
Just plain gone! Not there
any more.
On Monday we asked
volunteers to share their first impressions.
We got words like “hot” and “dirty” and “strange” and
“it’s hard to understand some of their words”.
On Friday when we asked, we didn’t get words, we got paragraphs
and stories and observations. One
fellow said, “I
think we sometimes want to know more about people so we can judge them.
I’ve learned this week not to do that.
Another said that even
with all the chaos (the kindest word we could find), the Flood Recovery
staff has done an impressive thing this week – and they were certainly
glad they came. Others
commented about the beautiful sensitivity of the flood recovery workers
to the plight of their neighbors. Several spoke about wondering if there
would be more work to do next summer and could we come back.
Everyone praised God
for blessings – not just the largesse to which we return but for the
privilege of coming to know much more about an almost forgotten part of
West Virginia, where people make a living in, on and around the steepest
mountains in the state – where the economy and the life style are
pretty grim by suburban standards, and where the hopes of ever living
any other way are dimmed by a sense of being trapped.
Yet, here and there – often, in fact – we saw people
triumphing over circumstances and limitations that would frighten most
of us into a kind of spiritual rigor mortis.
God is good – and
does not desert us – even in this time and place.
We know that, because in part that was the heart of our mission:
We are not God, but we are here because the God of loving concern
and compassion compels us to be here.
We’ve come to work here for awhile so that these children of
God can know they are loved and cherished.
What more could you say
– and what more would you ever want to hear?
Shalom
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