This Month's Story

Stella and I bought a small fire pit at Loews’s the other day and set it up on the slab where our living room once was. Recently, we have begun sitting there, looking out over the waters of the Sound, watching sunsets and talking to friends that stop by. Now with the weather starting to give us a late taste of winter, we figure we needed something to keep us warm when we sat out there. The fire pit was our answer. We placed it near the stub of the old living room fireplace. It seemed the appropriate place.

We were using the fire pit for the first time last Sunday when Stella got a call on her cell phone. It was from her cousin in Pennsylvania. She told Stella that they were having a really bad snow storm up there and that it was getting cold, in the teens. Stella listened for a minute and then with obvious pleasure told her that winter had come here as well, that it was in the 50’s today, but sunny.

“We’re sitting in the living room,” she said. “We’re looking out over the water and burning the bedroom floor.” There was a garbled voice at the other end, evidently the person at the other end didn’t grasp what Stella had just told her and was continuing on with her news that, to her news that to her at least, was more important .

But it was true what Stella had told her. The news she was telling Stella was important to someone in Pennsylvania, but to us sitting in front of the burning wood that had once been our bedroom floor, what happened in Pennsylvania it was trivial.

It’s a long story. I designed that floor. Before the storm, we had a wall to wall carpeting there, but wear and years had taken their toll and it had to be replaced. I began to think of rather than carpet, we would replace it with wood. One day at the “Mocking Bird” (our coffee shop and the living heart of what was left of our twin communities, I met a fellow who was an artist with wood. He showed me pictures of some of the things with woods involving floors and walls that he had done in other houses. They were beautiful works. He was a pleasant person and as the afternoon passed and I realized Stella would be coming home soon, I asked him to come to our house, I had something he might be interested in.

I took him back to the bedroom and proceeded to show him an intricately designed floor to be made of solid wood. I used chalk to detail the design. He gasped at the design and said he’d do it! We haggled a little over the cost, but not much, he really wanted to do it.

It took him a month to finish. Meanwhile, Stella and I slept in the guest bedroom. When the work was done, it was beautiful. Stella was happy. I was happy. He was happy and a bit proud. I paid what he had asked for and threw in an extra hundred as lagniappe.

Now, I’ve been happy since they moved the FEMA trailer from the back waters of Bay St. Louis to the driveway that bordered our property. From the window over the small trailer table, I could see the water of the Mississippi Sound. Unfortunately, we could also see the entire empty slab that had once been our home, but, hey, we were home!. While the slab was generally clear, it still looked like the remnants of a our house. There were pipes sticking up, uneven brickwork jutting up from were the fireplaces were, many of the wood base plates that held the walls were still in place. Also, in the bedroom area parts of the wooden floors were still in the rooms, badly warped or, where the floors had been washed away, there were nails and screws jutted up.

What was frustrating was that there was nothing I could do about this. Because of an recent accident that required two operations to both my shoulders, I can’t do any heavy work, certainly not the work entailed in clearing artifacts off the slab. Even picking up a cinder block (which I mistakenly did the other day and later suffered in pain for hours afterward. In desperation one day, I went to Hubbard’s on Nicholson Avenue and bought a hacksaw, crowbar and nail cutters, but later when I tried to use them, I found I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength.

Stella does most of the small amount of work around the trailer that requires any exertion and I am delegated to standing by and offer suggestions (I’ve learned to do this very quietly).

So despite being frustrated since we’ve been moved forced to look out over these ragged residuals of the horrors of Katrina; unable to do anything about them, I’ve learned to live with the view. This was really an added insult, since Stella and I had in years past, put many of those same pipes and nails in ourselves.

All this changed a few weeks ago when a car pulled up across the street from us and the occupants started taking pictures of the two-story ruin that was the Jeffries home. They were nice people and we started talking. They were volunteers from a church near San Francisco. During the conversation, I mentioned that while our slab was cleared of big debris, it really was demoralizing to look at the ragtag bits of debris that projecting from it; daily reminders at what we had lost.

The men sympathized with me and said they would stop by the next day with “some volunteers.” The next day they did come back! They came with several vans loaded with tools and more than 40 volunteers! These wonderful people tore into the slab, raked the grounds, buried the water pipe to the trailer and much more. By the end of the day, Stella and I were staring at a pristine slab, an almost manicured yard and 40 very tired California volunteers. We were speechless and very, very grateful.

And so I no longer have a slab with ancillary debris to look at over my morning coffee. Stella and I have since bought plastic chairs and a small table and began sitting again in what had once been our living room. We began entertaining friends there that stopped by to chat.

There is more. When the volunteers tore up what was left of the floors, they piled the wood by the side of the slab within easy reach. And so when Stella’s cousin called and Stella told her cousin we were “sitting in the living room burning the bedroom floor,” that was exactly what we were doing.

Her cousin didn’t understand but we did. After all, how many people could say that?