My Papi lost his office building to a tornado that spun off from the Hurricane.
It landed on the building, shattering windows and flooding the lower level.
We still have damage to our house and we're still trying to recoup the loss of two refrigerators worth of food.
Things are just now starting to feel a little like normal again.
I'm usually loathe to read The Houston Chronicle. However, the front page story last week made me giddy with joy.
Meet 60 year old Madelaine Carter, who, as of last Thursday, still didn't have her electricity back on.
When asked by the reporter about her situation and how it felt to be surrounded by others who were enjoying their restored power, she was quoted as saying, "Everyday is pretty much the same. You sweat, and you HATE everyone."
I'm nominating Madelaine Carter as the unofficial spokeswoman for the Houston Hurricane aftermath.
I HEART her to the infinite butt-sweat towel power!
Houston is known by many titles:
Space City
H-Town
Bayou City
Home Of The Smiling Infidel
4th Largest City In America
Fattest City (Awarded By Men's Health Magazine)
Beyonce's Hometown
After seeing the mountainous piles of tree remnants stacked up in neighborhood yards awaiting city pick-up, I considered another title to add to Houston's impressive profile.
Houston: Firewood Capital Of The World
This picture would look fantastic on some new glossy travel brochures touting the firewood surplus that Houston has to offer.
I maneuvered the mighty Infidel truck into a squealing U-Turn so I could go back and take a picture of this little irony in action.
Out of the 6 businesses in this local shopping strip, Lucky Money was the ONLY one that sustained major smackdown damage.
Lucky Money......Or Is It?
I guess Hurricane Ike and I share mutual feelings regarding check cashing "services". You'd be better off doing business with greased-down, slicked-back Tommy Salami over in Little Italy.
Tommy will offer you a more reasonable interest rate.
I drive past this house every day and I still can't get over my amazement at the tremendous force that ripped up their colossal tree, roots and all.
Using this picture as a guide, it's somewhat difficult to gauge the staggering height of the huge chunk of formerly front yard turf standing straight up.
It extends all the way to the tippy top of their second floor roof line.
For reals.
We nicknamed this tree in bondage, "Gulliver" because it appears as though a tribe of Lilliputians showed up, tied it up, and staked it up so that poor "Gulliver" can never escape and run free with any roving gangs of young, rebellious trees.
There's many of us around here that can now proudly display a "LANDSCAPING BY HURRICANE IKE" sign in our yards.
It's interesting to note that when you play the Scissors, Rock, Paper game in nature, the paper will usually win.
Paper comes from trees, right? And these trees decimated everything they fell on. They crunched and munched their way through a couple tons of SUV metal along with a sturdy rod iron fence.
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We met this friendly father of four while pumping gas a week ago. Like us, he still didn't have water or electricity but at least he had an important message to share with the World:
"Protect Your Nuts"
We would all be wise to hearken upon this wise counsel.
I'm happy to report that our nuts remain blessedly intact to see another day from the inside of a nice loaf of banana nut bread.
There's Even More Stupefying Hurricane Pictures Over At Boston.Com
21 comments:
We had a bad storm here last winter that left the area without power for several days, as well as no phone service, cell service and etc.
Tons of trees were downed and there is still evidence of that storm all over the place. I'm grateful we had that and not Hurrican Ike to contend with.
Yikes! My mil in Houston has had her power back for about a week now. I can't believe there are still people without it.
Love the pictures! Especially the huge roots!
That picture of the uprooted tree is amazing, especially that the house is still standing after a wind with that much force.
I'm just wondering, is there a great need for firewood in your area, I mean isn't it already kind of warm?
There is nothing like a nice big fire in Houston in the (still) summer.
Speaking of firewood and fires, I found it very odd that we had a hard time finding a house in Michigan with a fireplace, but we move to Texas and every single house we looked at had a fire place. What's up with that?
That tree with the upturned roots is amazing. Crazy.
I wouldn't expect you to be over a hurricane in a few weeks. We had a microburst and it took about 2 months. Hurricane's are much meaner and Katrina isn't cleaned up yet.
My cousin is in Infidel territory to demolition on buildings that must come down the rest of the way.
Banana bread sounds good.
Poor Infidels. I sure hope things pick up shortly. I can't imagine.
do you have a fire place, cuz that looks like a deal.
holy crap, that one tree uprooted is amazing. and terrible. that is some serious wreckage in your beloved H-town.
WOW! That's a mess.
What are they doing about Pappi's building? Is he able to work?
I'm so glad a huge tree didn't fall over and smush my favorite infidels.
I"m so glad your nuts are intact. I was really worried! That would be a complete horror to have banana bread female version:)
I am so sorry for what you are going through there and what you have lost. You always manage to find the good/funny in the crappy stuff though.
I've never been one who is fond of big trees by my house. SCARES ME!
Hang in there!
My Dad & Brother went through Katrina. (They are in Biloxi area). That's where my Hubby and I met. It was hard to go back and just see all the damage. I can't imagine actually living through the destruction. I love to see your humor through it all, that's wonderful!
Dude, we NWers would be eating up that free firewood. Nothing uproots our trees around here. Except for the rare tornado. How ironic that in a place where fireplaces are superfluous, the firewood abounds.
"You sweat and you hate everybody" sounds eerily familiar.
Wow! I hadn't seen the boston.com pictures. Those were amazing.
I really do need to get around to posting all of my pics that I took. We took a good bit of video driving around Spring the next day as well.
I hope your life gets back to normal soon!
I was really liking Madelaine's t-shirt until I saw Protect Your Nuts guy.
I'm sorry about all the damage and loss...that really stinks! The picture of the gigantic roots with half the yard up in the air is just crazy!
That's craziness I tell you!
Woah. That blows.
;)
I don't know what is wrong with me. I thought I commented here. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe this is all a dream or a nightmare.
I'm sorry. :(
Did you get my really exciting, super creative, brown envelope yet?
We were the last in our neighborhood to get power--14 days. I was surrounded by power braggers. Every day I would hear at least 10 people say, "don't worry, it will come on soon." It was everyone's favorite phrase--like a tape recording over and over and over. I wanted to punch them. One day, over at good ol' HEB, buying my daily 5 bags of ice for my coolers, the checker said, "good luck" as I was leaving. The bagger asked, "what did you say that for?" The checker said, "she's buying ice, she doesn't have power yet." The bagger said, "really? not yet?" Duh! Couldn't you tell from the hair done with no blow-dryer? the make-up put on with only a flashlight to see by? Hello? I think with his quick thinking, he's going to be a bagger for a long time.
I took a short cut through River Oaks last week, you should have seen the fire wood piles there! Many, many, many 100-year-old trees cut into little burnable pieces.
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