Catch up

Dayum. I can't seem to keep up with one entry a day.

Here's a highlight reel...We screwed around for half a week and didn't have much of a plan. Then I got assigned to Washington County. The county seat is West Bend which is where I'm staying. This is a nice little town.

For the first day or so, we met the local officials and got the lay of the land. Turns out the damage was near the rivers and lakes in the county (go figure). I was given the lead for the county and assigned one community relations officer to help me. Ron is a great guy...a retired gentleman also from Michigan. He and I have been all over the county and we work well together.

He's not trying to impress anyone. He just wants to go door-to-door and meet people. We call it 'paper hanging' because we pass out flyers as part of our door-to-door routine. So after we got our base of operations all set up here at the Country Inn, we made a plan for how to attack this large county with only two people.

I really enjoy the fact that we are the only ones out here and we're left pretty much to our own devices. I think the leadership is pretty happy with our results, so the leave us alone...so far. We've visited some lakes in the area and have seen some pretty bad flooding in spots. Mostly, though, it's just basement flooding and other minor stuff.

Yesterday, we hit the lakes and saw the worst of the flooding so far. Some people there are truly devastated. This might be a minor disaster to the county as a whole, but these people are truly screwed up and hurting. If there's anything I can do for these people, they're going to be my priority.

Toward the end of yesterday, we stopped into the city of Hartford and met the Mayor and City Administrator. We hit the fire hall and talked to the fire inspector also and got a feel for what was going on there. Today, we hit the streets hard.

Again, not much damage..just a few damp basements. But then came the crown jewel of the entire trip so far: Ms Nellie.

Ms. Nellie is 93 years young. She's spry and lives by herself. Her husband passed 30 years ago and she has no family left. She has a nephew who helps out once in a while, but otherwise she has nobody to talk to. I arrived at her door to ask how she got through the flood. She said she was fine, but had some damage downstairs. She couldn't do much about it because she can't get down the stairs.

She couldn't give a damn about the water in her basement. There was someone on her porch to talk to. So we talked.

And talked...about 20 minutes into the visit, I realized why God was letting me exist on the planet at that moment. My job was to stand there just as long as Ms. Nellie wanted to talk and keep this woman company for a little while.

She told me about her husband...owned a hardware store. Times were hard during the depression. She's always scrimped and saved. She told me about her life and her church and everything else. Her views on the world today, politics, philosophy and everything else.

She finally ran out of gas and I stood there and shook her withered, arthritic hand and wished her well and walked off her porch...I'm a much richer man for having met Ms. Nellie. She absolutely made my trip.

Just when I thought this wasn't going to be a very rewarding trip.