Reports & Reflections 
from Pineville, West Virginia
by the Rev. John Gantt

Continuing entries in the journal kept by John Gantt in Pineville, West Virginia,
working with Disaster Response Team volunteers.

Sunday, June 16 is Father’s Day and it seems awfully quiet – remarkably so, after the hurry and scurry of Saturday’s getting vans loaded, doing a last minute survey of the sleeping rooms, and finally hugging everyone and waving goodbye.  In fact, Saturday seemed pretty quiet, too – so much so that I’ve decided the town of Pineville (Panvul) rolls everything up nice and neat around 10 pm Fridays – and doesn’t unroll it again until about 6 a.m. Monday mornings.

Weekends, particularly weekends close to the first of the month, “everyone” goes to the cities (usually Beckley, but sometimes Princeton) to do major shopping, take in a movie, see other friends, or whatever.  In fact, when I tried to shop at Wal-Mart for things our volunteers needed, it was Wall-carts (or, if you prefer, wall-to-wall carts.).  Same thing at the movies (although I discovered there it was wall-to-wall munchkins escorting their parents to see Scooby-Do.)

I attended worship at Cook Memorial Baptist Church which voluntarily hosts work camp groups.  We will have two groups staying in their building this week.  It was my way of saying “thank you.”

While studiously focusing on the one-page bulletin, a woman sat down beside me, introduced herself, and asked if I was with the recovery people.  Then she asked, “Are you the one driving that Subaru Forester?”  She caught me so off guard that I admitted it – even without knowing if I had been misbehaving in some way and got caught at it. 

She explained that she works at the Board of Education, where she has the best seat in town and then I knew.  We turn at the Board of Education going from the main street back to the junior high school – and I go through that corner at least 10 times a day as I run errands for the volunteers.  She allowed as how I was doing fine except for the time I took that curve a mite fast (I’ll have to watch out, because the police department is right next door to the board of education!)

Today I expected groups to arrive by 3 pm.  and 6 pm!  Well, the first group arrived at 7 p.m, and the second closer to 8:45.  But it was a good way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon – sitting in the Subaru in order to host them when they arrived. 

They were all settled and getting acquainted by 9:45 pm so I wandered over to my little kitchen to finally have supper and write daily logs!

Bright and early Monday – at our 7 a.m. breakfast – we gathered and discovered some ways this week will be greatly different from last week.  Last week it was just UCC'ers in the junior high school –74 at one time. This week, we UCC'ers dribble in – some Sunday, some Monday, some Tuesday, some Wednesday, with some leaving by Thursday, others by Friday and some on Saturday and some on Sunday.  You can imagine how much chewing over the schedule it took to make a guesstimate for daily meal counts.

In addition, this week we share the building with about 60 folks from Christian Outreach International.  Their schedules and ours don’t match up at all – which mostly makes for good news, but causes one or two pinch points. 

And since the building space will be over-taxed, two of our groups will stay in the Cook Memorial Baptist Church, but eat their meals with us at the school.

This morning, we discovered that the COI volunteers were to get their breakfast food in an old home ec room, then come into the cafeteria and sit down with us to eat it.  However, before long, our nice hot breakfast of French toast, sausage patties, and cereals seemed more attractive than their fruit and cereal, which enticed several folks who didn’t know each group had different arrangements (or chose not to remember the difference) were in “our” line. Now, we practice hospitality and good manners, right?  Right – until we start to run out of food, and the cooks anxiously look around as if to say – “are you going to let them get away with THAT?”

But we operate on the same principle or parable as church potlucks and feedings of the multitudes on hillsides in ancient Galilee.  There is always plenty to go around.

We formed three teams and assigned guides. Since I have been in the area for two weeks now, I was considered experienced enough to escort two teams to their locations. It should have been a snap.

We started out stopping.  Nearly every vehicle in our caravan carried donated goods from back home. Since the Recovery warehouse was right on our route to the work sites, our vans, pick up trucks and a van with a trailer tried to crowd off the two-lane highway onto shoulders already parked full with cars.  It was important not to tempt fate by leaving any portion of our vehicles hanging out into the highway where quick-shifting lumber and coal trucks were intent on not losing momentum on the hills and curves!

After untying loads, separating donated tools from those needed on these jobs, asking for other tools from the tool crib, toting blankets, dishpans, cleaning supplies and lampshades into the warehouse to be snatched up by folks who still need home furnishings, we loaded up the volunteers again, and got on the way to our assignments.

Two teams of Wisconsonians – experienced work campers all – were asked to build three decks at two locations. They picked up additional information and insight as they worked with families whose stories appear earlier in the journal. 

For example, the lady who clung to her fish to save them from the flood said she and her husband climbed onto the dining room table to stay above the floodwaters until they were rescued – and, one of the fish died. She still mourns its death.  And the lady who saved her 3-year old granddaughter while the rest of the family was at a funeral and couldn’t get home because of the flooding told her crew that the child had nightmares whenever it rained, or with every clap of thunder for nine months or so. 

The third group went farther north to work on a house that was very nearly gutted, across the street from a daughter and son-in-law whose house has been raised maybe 7-8 feet to get it above the high water mark.  These families – both of them – are still living in trailers and campers – 11 months after the flooding occurred. The grandfather gave up his place “in line” so to speak in order to get some basic work done in the home of his family so the five grandchildren can get out of the trailer as soon as possible. They are terribly cramped and unhappy, and there is a tremendous amount of work to be done on those two houses. They are working hard as they can themselves, but the task is so enormous, the funds are so limited, and the energy fails so quickly that they need our help.

In fact, the older man essentially had to quit his job in order to help his younger family get back into a safe and sanitary condition as quickly as possible.

By this time of the morning, I just knew things were running too smoothly.  The two deck crews (with three decks to build) found no materials at the site.  Both families had exhausted their loans/grants and the Recovery Office is providing enough money to build the decks and steps with railings.  But nothing had been ordered.

After creating quick sketch-designs at each place, the respective crews met each other at the local lumberyard – to purchase supplies for various sizes of decks. But it was Monday morning – and everyone in town, it seems,  was trying to crowd into that small parking lot immediately off the two-lane highway – meaning there isn’t much room to maneuver – and the contractors in the group were in a hurry to get their stuff and get to their paying jobs.  It was a scene that could benefit from two traffic police, and a double dose of Bayer’s.

Now that we had loads of lumber, screws, and nails we discovered that all the tools were in one van, and the second group had nothing to work with!  That took a little scurrying around, but finally there were enough hammers, pry bars, drills and saws to remove old steps and start laying out a new deck system. 

Creative problem solving seemed to be the hallmark of the day.  For example, in order to haul the lumber, one group unbolted four bench seats in their rented van to make it into a huge cargo van.  And while the kids were waiting for the grown up purchasing agents to return, they set the van benches up as a four-sided conversation area under a large shade tree and worked on their devotions for the evening!

Another bit of creativity solved the problem of removing a single flight of steps into the main doorway of the doublewide mobile home in order to build the porch.  The problem:  the mobile sits up maybe 5 feet in the air, and a new porch with stairs properly attached would surely not get finished on this first day of work. What to do?  They cleverly moved the stairs around back, removed one board, and fitted it into the back door so the owners could get in and out of their house while the work continued.  Good thinking!

In the cafeteria for dinner, following a thoughtful devotion about God’s artists and paintbrushes – one deck crew spoke of digging post holes and striking ground water.  That indicated to them how saturated these grounds really are- even a year later.

This evening we were guests of the Wyoming County Long Term Flood Recovery Office at the local swimming pool.  Since it has been cooler this week (we’ve been blessed with very cool evenings– and in fact, a mid-70s afternoon) one quick-thinker from up north said we’d better watch out for ice on the pool as well as on the bridges which freeze first.  I think he’s lived too many winters in Wisconsin.

On the administrative side of things, today we learned that some funders are tired of spending money on recovery efforts, and want to invest in relocation funding instead.  But for our two cents worth, we wonder what happens to these folks who are still not in safe, secure, sanitary places? If it takes the next 3-5 years to build relocation communities, where will they live in the meantime? And when the costs of property purchases, development of complete utility infrastructures, construction of roadways, grading of home sites, and finally, construction of housing units is accomplished, how many of these folks will be able to afford all those costs when they are added into the cost of a house?

Picture this: the community of Pineville which is typical of most towns in this mountainous area - is only 100 yards wide in many places.  That 100 yards is shared by businesses, houses, the river, a railroad track and a highway.  The rest is rocky cliffs and steep hillsides.

Now if you were to follow the conventional wisdom of people who don’t live in places like this, and follow their advice to “move on up higher” – you first have to find land you can purchase. The coal companies own 93% of the land beyond the “bottoms”.

We learned that many folks are not even eligible for home insurance, let alone flood insurance so even if they could afford to insure, policies aren’t available to a majority of property owners. 

That’s enough larning for one day, except for another pronunciation lesson.  Add to Panvul (Pineville), and nan (9), and Whar (wire), that sometimes you just have to bah (buy) things at the store when you can’t do without them.  And when it floods, things get “as tough as a woodpecker’s lips."

Imagine that! 

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Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Remember yesterday’s remark about 100-yard wide communities, shared by railroad, highway, stores and homes?  Today, take the narrowest portion of that football-field “bottom” and above it shave off the cliffs on one side so you can widen the roadway – and then spend the day resurfacing of the roadway itself – and you’ll find that monumental traffic jams occur in far less urban settings than Manhattan’s Times Square and Los Angeles’ interstate highways. 

Today we are joined by 10 folks from South Berwick, Maine.  It didn’t take them long to observe that here towns don’t grow in concentric circles – with core city spreading into suburbs. Here towns grow like a string – stretching out for maybe 5 miles (this little town of maybe 5000 people is like that). There are at least 7 major curves on “Main Street” of Pineville.

Today one group announced that they didn’t want to pack sack lunches tomorrow.  I thought they were already tired of the great variety we offer:  peanut butter, jelly, turkey, ham, and beef slices, chips, apple, and dressings for the meat sandwiches.  I couldn’t imagine that they had already tried all the combinations.  I’ve only seen them once spoil a perfectly good peanut butter sandwich by putting jelly on it – and to my knowledge no one has yet tried a turkey peanut butter cheese combo.

Turns out, they whispered to me, that the woman they are working for baked a chocolate cake today, and wants to feed them pizza tomorrow.  It’s her way – and her need – to say "thanks.”  They’ve built an 8X10 deck with railings and steps.  It is very solid, and they are about ready to finish it up.  Instead of the conventional style around here of putting such decks on concrete blocks, they dug holes, made a footer by pouring in a half a sack of gravel mix (we call it Sacrete), dumping on some water, dropping a wooden plate on top of it, setting in the wooden 4X4s, back filling and tamping it terrifically tight, and letting the ground water do the rest of the mixing of the concrete.  They deserve the pizza.

Another deck crew had a bit different challenge. When they use the owner’s bathroom, they also have to chat a few moments with the lady of the house – who loves to tell them her stories. She showed them her prized recipe for “tea” – a tea syrup, which is mixed with ice-cold water – and by all reports, it is simply delicious. She’s baked cookies, and she and her husband have raved about “their” workers to the neighbors.   Now here’s the catch:  they appreciate the work so much they have asked for the same size deck to be built on the other side of the mobile home so they can sit and look at the creek (yep – the same one that caused them all the grief in the first place). 

Trouble is, their project has far exceeded the allowance of funds, so the Recovery Committee has to rule on whether or not enough funds are available for the second deck.

(NOTE:  it was approved, and the second deck was also built!)

Today was our first really big disappointment. A crew working on a house that needs practically everything done inside, labored to fit dry wall round window openings, and to make straight lines against a wavy ceiling and a buckling floor.  Of course, they weren’t done – expecting eventually to tape, mud and sand it to make it all smooth and whole.  The owner however, arrived early this morning, was dissatisfied with their approach even though he hadn’t been there to tell them what he wanted done – and asked them to tear out a good bit of their work.  He wanted as few seams as possible, meaning just hang the dry wall and then cut in windows and doors.

Things were a bit testy for a while – as volunteers tried to recover from the surprise of being told their work was unsatisfactory. When everyone calmed down, the work crew started doing things his way, but found it increasingly hard to make it look good, again because of the unevenness of the ceilings and floors that remained.  The owner was still displeased, so the crew will get a  new assignment on the assumption that whatever they do will likely be unacceptable since they all got off on the wrong foot.

Later we learned how anxious this man is because he has had to reapply for unemployment, and because some medical tests revealed his need for a pacemaker which was hastily installed. When he saw the work being done on his house, all these things, including his bemusement about what the pacemaker means for his long term health, the pressure he feels at not being able to finish his own house and his daughter’s house after all these months, and his financial extremities, all came to a head with resulting unhappiness for both parties. 

With a fresh start tomorrow other work will continue.  By the way, a report from the group after they returned home says:  “We walked down to have lunch on his picnic table under the shade and he came out to talk to us. He was very friendly… His daughter brought out two horses and he insisted that one of us take a ride. They played with the horse for quite awhile.  No hard feelings among the group and our enthusiasm is not affected.  It was mostly the surprise that caught us off guard.  His daughter confided, ‘He’s just that way sometimes!’”

We have two houses to finish painting so carpet can be installed, and the Maine group will be assigned to a new house, which replaces one so damaged in the flood that it had to be torn down. 

The deck crews will finish and have new assignments for the afternoon.

Two of our four groups will go rafting on Friday, meaning that the rest of us – less than half, will have the building and the dining room and the cooks to ourselves!

Devotions this evening focused on the words “hope,” “hopelessness” and “hopefulness.”

During the devotions we were asked to share prayer concerns – of either distress or joys.  One asked for joy prayers for three seniors who graduated, left immediately following the graduation parties and drove 18 hours to get here. Others expressed prayerful joys at being able to help these grateful folks, and at the chance to meet new friends, and learn how to translate the dialects from New England, West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Sometimes in the cafeteria, it sounds like a mini-UN session!

But the most practical prayerful offering acknowledged that the most joyful people in the community are the lumberyards and the paint companies. 

In fact, we have invented a rule of thumb:  that no more than 30% of a paint job is allowed to be somewhere besides on the project. One lady who feels she was at maybe 29% today, said “Oh well, I didn’t like that shirt, anyway.”

It occurred to me to observe how committed and supportive of disaster relief ministries the Indiana-Kentucky staff members have been. Dr. Gray and his son made a trip with their church to WiWiLi, Nicaragua two years ago, and Mike Gray came to this area of WV during spring break in 2002 (in the next county at Northfork); Jim Dewey, director of planned giving for the conference and his wife Marda, editor of the conference newsletter, went to Whiteville, N Carolina in October. And this week Dennis Frische-Mouri, education specialist for the conference, is in WV with his pastor-wife and their daughter Sarah. We have  had some high-powered help!

This evening groups that found the local DQ store for an after-dinner treat reported local folks are just so friendly.  Of course, driving around in their big rented vans means everyone knows they are in town to do something other than mine coal and saw down trees.  There are many horn-honked greetings, “thank you smiles” and thumbs-up signals of “well done.”

It is another week of tremendous ministry – in word and deed.

We are working together as a servant people of a serving, loving God, in whose name we have come and for whose people we labor.

Shalom.
   

What have we learned?  We’ve learned that in these West Virginia mountains, 

• there is nothing straight (as in curvy winding switch backing roads)

• there is nothing flat (as in moving up and down from 200 to 1400 feet of elevation all day long)

• there is nothing square (as in trying to install drywall, trim pieces, or window frames in
  damaged, warped, and flood-twisted houses with wavy floors and ceiling), and 

• there is nothing convenient (as in “let’s bop on over to the snack shack and hang out.” Back home within a mile or two there are 4-5 major food chain stores, Wal-Mart, Sears, Meijers, Home Depot and Menard’s, and more restaurants and gas stations than you can patronize in six months).

We are used to having so many choices and alternatives.  But here in our little “bottoms” town of Pineville, it is FasCheck, unless you want to drive on out to Save-a-lot or  Rite-Aid.  Now that I think of it, we do have a choice between Dollar General, Family Dollar or Magic Mart for general merchandise.

Late last week and early this week travel restrictions through Pineville were caused by resurfacing the road in the narrowest part of the main street (but truth be told, we’re glad for the nice smooth surface and the improvement to rough tire-shredding jagged shoulders of that particular stretch of roadway).  Today the slow-down came from following the yellow-line-painting trucks.  We noticed that the paint nozzles are set by default to paint double yellow lines 99% of the time – there is simply no passing unless you have memorized where the almost-straight sections of roadway are, and unless you are in the right place at the right moment to floor it like an Indy 500 car, then duck back into your lane within a hairs-width of the next approaching vehicle.  Needless to say, most of us don’t do any passing.

Tonight 18 more UCCers arrived from Ohio.  It is funny how the first thing people say when they get here is that the 50 minute drive once they got off the Interstate was so “interesting.”  Translate that to mean, “Wow, we’re almost dizzy from the turning, braking, and cornering it takes to get here."

It’s hot again, partly because of the weather, and partly because of the great industriousness of our groups.  Folks who came here all the way from New England went at their work like a house-afire!   When they started their project, there was just a foundation and a floor and one wall. By the end of the hottest day so far, they had three more outside walls and two interior walls up and secured.  It was such a flurry of activity you would have thought they were people who had been crammed into vans for two days and after driving for 18 hours were eager to “get at it.”   Judging from the red faces when they came up for air, (or was it in for dinner?) and the red arms and shoulders, they were getting a bit more sun and heat than back home in Maine.

Two deck building crews finished their decks and moved on to two more of them.  One owner said they just took their chairs outside last night and sat there looking and loving every minute of their new porch!

At the other home where a deck was being completed, the volunteers were cleaning up scraps from the old deck and left overs from the new when they decided the scene ought to be a lot more homey.  So they moved large flower urns to each side of the new steps, put a chair and small table on the deck, and added some flower pots to the railing cap they installed.  Then after dusting off their hands, shucking off muddy sawdust covered boots, they sat at the owner’s dining room table for piping hot pizza, which was a thank you from a delighted homeowner.

She and her family had labored for 8 months to restore this mobile home after 3.5 feet of water poured through it.  Now they were ecstatic to have this last piece of work completed.

Unfortunately, we also had to sample emergency services in southwestern WV.  One young lady suffered severe abdominal pain during the night.  Her advisors called 9-1-1 and got the response “well, I’m not sure we can help you right now, but we’ll try.”  After 45 minutes, a volunteer walked to community response ambulance service at the end of our school road, and those paramedics drove the girl to Beckley (45-50 minutes away) where she sat in the emergency room for three hours or so even though it didn’t seem they were that busy from our perspective.

By the time the test results and other procedures were completed, the pain was gone, but she and her companions were very tired.  She slept in the next morning, and by noon felt well enough to rejoin her group.

When she walked in, there was a rousing “hooray” and “welcome back!” followed immediately by “hand me another piece of pizza, wioll ya?”  (Now you know which group she was working with!)

We discovered from the local citizens that there is a stomach virus making the rounds of the hills – with varying degrees of intensity among sufferers. Another member of our group felt queasy and uneasy most the day – and there was at least one case of diarrhea for half a day but people are holding together pretty well.

One group will interview their host today and make a videotape to show back home. They’ll ask the couple to tell their flood story in their own words.  Should be an interesting promotional/interpretive piece.

This week we’ve done a lot of painting, installed cove and base trim, helped install steel support beams, and assisted with the unloading of an 18-wheeler full of goods from Ohio.

A crew turned into archaeologists as they dug post holes and found remnants of the old foundation which had been undermined by the raging flood waters so that the former dwelling simply tipped over.  That sort of cemented (is that too corny?) for them the story of how this older couple lost the house in which they had lived for over 30 years.

Our volunteers this week represent two congregations that have long histories of work camping – and it shows in the rapport within each group in the no-nonsense way they organize themselves. There seems to be a tradition in those congregations which is nearly as strong as Confirmation itself, as youth impatiently wait to be old enough to go on a mission trip, then relish the opportunity to be seen as “veterans” of 4 or 5 work camps.

Another group is a “first-timer” – with a great age spread from 14 to the late 70s.  They are hoping to be ambassadors when they go home so that others will join in subsequent hands-on ministries – whether in their own major city, their state, or elsewhere.  They were deputized (or is “commissioned” a better theological word?) by the congregation to spend $1500 while in West Virginia to help people.  They did.  They bought supplies and materials, food for two families, a washer and dryer, a freezer, and a vacuum sweeper!  Way to go!

Oh yes, that man in the trashy flooded-out trailer we mentioned previously? There have been as many as 4 “plans” developed for how to help him, most of them with severe limitations of one sort or another.  The good news is that the family, prodded by the Recovery staff, started working on his situation. Many bags of trash have been cleaned up in his yard, and they have literally used a rake to scrape together rotted clothing, food and other debris from inside his trailer.  The major problem with that has been when the piles were moved, they revealed the huge holes in the flooring of his dwelling!

The “final” plan is to repair what he’s got.  The floor joists are OK – having been replaced after previous flooding.  New flooring will be installed after the cleanup is finished, and the walls which are in good shape will be cleaned and sanitized. He’ll get new bedding and furniture when the old is thrown away and burned, and his flue pipe for the coal burning stove will be insulated properly (it now goes through the wall with a gaping hole much larger than it needs to be!).

A group of nuns who specialize in cleaning rather than construction will move in to scrub the whole place with Clorox.

The case worker had to raise money for the repair materials, bathroom fixtures, and windows.  Once “the plan” was firmed up, by the end of the day she had $4000 pledged for the job!

So, this man will get his place cleaned up, fixed up, and he’ll be settled into a much safer, secure and sanitary situation. Meanwhile, he goes daily to visit his wife at the nursing home, and though he remains a bit bemused by the whole gamut of attention he is receiving, in his shy and sheepish way he manages to express his gratitude by joining in the clean up effort.  It’s all worth it.

Devotions this evening picked up the story of Nehemiah’s efforts to goad the returning Israelites into restoring the walls and temple of Jerusalem.  In a sense, we are struggling to repair the walls – that which gives a sense of identity and shape to a community.  Walls not to divide, but to shape, to secure, and to shelter those who are battered and nearly forgotten.

Next week five more UCC volunteers will come from Ohio, then later there will be others from Ohio.  Another Indiana group may come in August, so the work goes on, the sounds of scraping away dried mud, debris and filth continues, the rat-a-tat-tat of hammers echoes against the hillsides, and brows puckered by worry and depression relax slightly as progress is made.

But more importantly, our presence sends significant signals that “you, child of God, are beloved.”

We are at this work because we respond to a God who calls us to love God with all our heart, strength, and mind, then adds this caveat:  you can demonstrate – prove – that you love me by loving your neighbor as yourself.  Make that love be not just words, but words and deeds. 

It feels like we are working out the oft-quoted remark by St. Francis of Assisi, a “slogan” picked up by Back Bay Mission,  Biloxi, MS where work camping is state-of-the-art.  Paraphrased it says:

“Preach the gospel always; when necessary, use words.”

Shalom

ADDENDUM

At this point, the author left the area.  Back home we learned that:

-   A rare earthquake in Indiana was centered in Darmstadt, north of Evansville, where one of our groups in the first week goes to church. We are waiting to hear if there was loss, injury or damage.

-    A teenager from the first week, and her family were en route to a vacation destination, when their 30-foot camper was sucked into a fishtail by an 18-wheeler passing them at high speeds.   They lost control, rolled three times, demolished the car and trailer, and injured the Mom seriously, and two kids a bit.  When asked if she didn’t have enough excitement in West Virginia, she replied, “We needed to stay for two weeks!”

Thankfully, we can praise the God of our blessings – most of which we shall never again take so much for granted!

Shalom

John M Gantt
Work camp coordinator for Indiana-Kentucky Conference
Host for UCC groups in Pineville as an associate of Jim Ditzler

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