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When he was first thinking about his trip down to the hurricane-damaged area, Roger knew he could have rushed down there in a day and a half. It didn't work out that way.
What with one thing and another he was late getting on the road, and a night stop would have gotten him down to the coast around dark. If nothing else, he wanted to hit the place fairly early in the morning so he could have some light while he was looking for a place to help out. He wasn't in all that big a hurry to get to the Gulf Coast, and for that matter wasn't really clear on where he was going. This trip would take him into a part of the country where he'd never been before, so rather than rush ahead he decided to take his time and enjoy himself. With a few exceptions, like getting around Indianapolis, he stayed off the four lanes and tried to stick with the two-lane state highways. He even took the Natchez Trace Parkway for a hundred miles or so, and that was a pleasant change of pace from the four-lanes.
One of the things that his neighbor Larry had tipped him off about was that Walmarts were pretty good about letting RV'ers park overnight in the back part of their parking lots. He'd learned from Larry that staying away from campgrounds is called "boondocking," and that was pretty much how he wanted to operate. The first night he stayed in the parking lot of a Walmart in Evansville, Indiana, and the second night at the one in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
If there was any kind of a volunteer center to guide people like him in the Katrina-damaged area at the time, he never found it. He headed south to Gulfport and started asking around. It didn't take long; by the middle of the day he was pointed toward a crew working on repairing houses in the inland part of Pass Christian.
There was no doubt that Katrina left a hell of a mess, but what the rest of the country saw on TV was mostly right on the coast, where there were places of near-total devastation. A mile or two inland things were nowhere near as bad, but most of the developed areas were right along the coast, so that made it worse. Inland, there were any number of places that needed a little or a lot of work to make them livable. It wasn't the biggest problem down there, but it was a big problem.
Roger was just a little bit surprised to discover that the crew he was pointed at was mostly Amish -- all in their uniform of black pants, blue shirts, black suspenders, and wide-brimmed straw hats, ranging in age from barely needing to shave on up through full gray beards.
He found a graybeard who seemed to be more or less in charge, explained that he was sort of a jackleg carpenter, and asked if they could use any free help. "Yah, there's more than enough to do," the Amish man replied with a smile. As Roger was getting himself organized he talked with the graybeard, who proved to be named Aaron, and found out that this group was all from near the Amish community of Shipshewana, Indiana, not all that far from Wychbold. Roger was familiar with it -- there's a big trade fair there that he and Colleen had been to on several occasions. This group was all but neighbors!
As he was getting his tools from the storage compartment of the RV, Roger pulled out his toolbox with the power tools. "I don't suppose you use Skil saws and like that," he said to Aaron.
"Nay, we don't," he nodded. "That would be unseemly, but I can't believe that the Lord would mind us nailing a board that an English had cut with one. However, power hasn't been restored here yet."
"Not a problem," Roger smiled. "There's a generator in the RV."
So Roger became the saw guy -- not that there wasn't any amount of sawing going on with handsaws. The generator only had power enough to run one saw at a time, but that was fine, since he was sawing so much lumber that the saw would get uncomfortably hot to handle and he had to change off. Fortunately, one of the saws he had with him was one that had been handed down from his grandfather. That old gray Skil would work all day and half the night -- they built tools to last back in those days, not fall apart almost immediately like a lot of the modern stuff.
Roger could quickly see that the gang of Amish didn't mess around. They worked fast, but they also did good work and wouldn't put up with anything mediocre. Roger was used to working all day -- or at least had been until he retired -- but that was mostly standing in one place and running a machine. On top of that, he realized that he must have gotten soft over the summer with all the sitting around he'd done, and by the end of the day he was just about totally exhausted.
He was putting his tools away for the night when Aaron came over. "You've been a big help today," he said. "Would you care to share supper with us? One more among a group as big as we is not a problem."
Roger was in the mood to eat but wasn't sure he had the energy to cook it, so he agreed. The two of them walked a couple blocks to what Roger guessed was a city park, where the group had set up camp. Even that had an Amish air about it -- the camp was all old wall tents and tarps, and cooking was done on a big open fire. There were several Amish women, all in their blue dresses working on dinner. They were all good cooks and put on an excellent feed -- Roger had memories of his great-grandfather telling tales of the huge meals with all the neighbors helping out at threshing days back on the farm way back when; it must have not been a lot different.
After dinner, Roger sat around talking with the Amish for a bit. It turned out that they'd already been there for several days, just working on house repairs like they'd done all day today. They'd arranged with their English neighbors for a bus to bring them down to the coast along with a truckload of supplies and tools. Other Amish had arranged with "English" -- non-Amish -- friends to have supplies trucked down to them from time to time.
As it was getting dark, Roger commented to Aaron that he was getting pretty tired, and thought he'd better head back to the RV and get some sleep. "You're going to be here tomorrow?" Aaron asked.
"No reason to go anywhere, unless you don't want me here." Roger replied immediately.
"Nay, as I said, you were a big help, and we're happy to work with you. What I was saying is that we'll be having breakfast about six and you'll be welcome to join us."
"I'll be glad to," Roger smiled.
The next day they were back at the same project, rebuilding a roof; the old one was so damaged that Aaron decided it'd be better to just rip the it completely off and start over with new trusses. Finally they got to the point where there wasn't much sawing to do, so Roger was up on the roof helping nail down shingles when Michael, one of the crew who he'd gotten to know a little, turned to him and said, "Brother, you're getting a little sunburned."
Roger had put on SPF 40 in the morning, but it hadn't held up to the sweaty job. He was wearing a baseball cap, so his balding head and face weren't too bad, but his ears were hurting, now that Michael had brought his attention to it. "Yeah," Roger told him, "Maybe I'd better crawl back down and get some more lotion on."
"That would be a good idea," Michael said solemnly, then added, "Do you know why we wear these hats?"
"Tradition?"
"There's that," Michael smiled. "But we don't use suntan lotion." Roger went and slathered more SPF 40 on and figured that was the end of that. But after dinner with the group that evening, Michael presented him with one of the traditional Amish wide-brimmed straw hats.
For the next several weeks Roger was an honorary member of the Amish crew. They did a lot of repair and rebuilding, some projects taking only a few hours, others lasting days. The women weren't just along for the ride and do the cooking; they helped the homeowners with cleaning up and things of that nature. It was a happy crew, and he was proud to be part of it.
Naturally this crew didn't work on Sunday, and that was fine with Roger, who needed a little rest himself. Besides, he soon discovered that about once a week he had to take off with the RV, find a place to gas up, empty the holding tank, do his laundry, and find a place where he could plug the laptop into a phone line so he could check his e-mail. At first he had to drive clear back up to Hattiesburg to do that, but later things improved to where he could manage it in Biloxi. Stocking up on groceries wasn't really all that much of an issue since he was eating most of his meals with the Amish.
Over the next few weeks things continued pretty much the same from one day to the next -- except that Roger developed quite a farmer's suntan under the autumn Mississippi sun and shook off the effects of a summer of not doing much of anything. Before long he was probably in the best shape of his life, at least since he'd left the Army -- swinging a twenty-ounce framing hammer all day will accomplish that, and he did it as much as he ran a Skil saw.
By the time October was drawing to a close the Amish crew was looking forward to heading back home -- not that there was any less work to do, but they had homes and farms that had to be taken care of. It had been a stretch for their neighbors to cover for them as it was. Some of them planned to come back later and stay for a while over the cold months when they couldn't do much farming. Roger was sorry to see them go, and told Aaron and the others that he hoped he might be able to work with them again sometime. Some people may consider the Amish to be a little weird, he thought, but they were the salt of the earth, and their dedication made them very heartwarming to work with.
Roger wasn't ready to head back just yet. He was enjoying himself working hard, and was pleased to see what little he could do was having an effect -- not that it counted for much in the overall scheme of things, but every little bit helped. He decided to rest up for a day or two, then find someplace else where he could be useful.
It shouldn't have been a surprise, but he found it hard to sit on his butt and relax, since he had gotten used to working again. He managed a day of sitting in the shade in a campground reading a book, but it really didn't hold his interest. He discovered from his e-mail that Erin had been TDY in Kuwait, but she was back in Germany now. Reading between the lines it seemed like she was getting serious about some guy, and both of them looked to be putting in their twenty. He'd pretty well figured that he wasn't going to be seeing Erin at home again for any length of time, but this made it seem even more real. More and more Erin and Colleen and Ford seemed to be fading away into the past.
After a day Roger packed the RV back up and headed on down to Gulfport. By now things were a little more organized, and he had some idea of who was doing what, and where that was. Without much looking he got involved in a Habitat for Humanity project that was putting up several new houses. This was a little interesting in that the houses were prefabbed by a Habitat group in New York. The houses weren't complete, but wall panels, roofing trusses, and the like had all been premade; the shell of the houses went up pretty quickly, although interior finishing took about as much time as ever.
Dottie
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