Wednesday, March 15th

First off, please forgive me if I don't blog this day very well, I'm gonna kind of let myself ramble on this one...

So let's just go!

If there's just one day that I'll remember from this trip, it'd be this day. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but I actually remember walking around thinking: "I'm going to remember this day for the rest of my life!"

So after we did our morning routine a group of us went to this guy Larry's house. We all were piling out of our van and we saw Larry walk up to us and invited us into his home:

His dining room:

His hallway:

In the hallway were mounds and mounds of records and books and magazines. A lot of the stuff was just embedded in the carpet at this point.

The Kitchen:

Larry's Bedroom:

I'm so glad that Rachel took that picture above because it is an image that is permanently tattooed in my brain. He told us later that he'd just gotten that comforter off of ebay a week before the hurricane.

The bathroom:

The water went all the way up to the ceiling fan. Larry and his father Lawrence had lived in this house for 50 years, 50 years of accumulated stuff lie in a muddy sop all over the house. In fact the hallway was still, 7 or 8 months later, a wet, muddy, mess. The smell was just a given.

Our first assignment was to clear the house out of all the stuff. We were to be carefully looking out for any little figurines that Larry's parents had collected. We found a lot of figurines that were still completely in tact! The mud had protected these little things and kept them safe amongst all the furniture flying everywhere.

I should also mention how DARK the house was when we went in - it was just so dark. Rachel's camera has a flash on it, so that's why they look so bright. Look at that last picture of the bathroom - I remember being freaked out to even walk near that bathroom because it was pitch black.

Rachel took this picture of Lawrence's bedroom, and it's a little closer to what the rest of the house looked like:

At first I think some of us thought it would be a really difficult day because there was a step missing:

but it turned out that it wasn't too hard of an obstacle. GO TEAM!

Larry loves Bob Dylan

I looked in his closet and saw more cds than I'd ever seen before, 1200 according to Larry. A good 80% of them were Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan Live from St. Paul, Bob Dylan Live from Kansas City, Bob Dylan Live from New York City in 1978. Everywhere I looked I saw Bob Dylan. I didn't know there actually could BE this much Bob Dylan.

Larry:"Don't worry...I'll get 'em back"

Later when we asked him why so much Dylan he explained:

"I wanted to collect something, and it was between Bob Dylan and the Beatles, I couldn't afford to do both"

Fair enough, Larry!

We got into the back room and started peeling out hundreds of records. The first one I saw was My Aim is True by Elvis Costello. I love that album. He had the promotional copy as well as the real copy. Larry and I talked about Elvis for a little bit. Later he would make us all cds with live and rare performances from Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello (for me), and the Beatles (for Jim). The My Aim is True cover was in pretty good condition. I put it on top of the trashpile so it would still be visible and sure enough he went through the trash and took out that album cover to keep it.

Later in the day Jim and I decided to take a soda break (Larry had provided us with Coke and Dr. Pepper, Seth wanted us to just drink water, but...yeah, sorry Seth). Then Larry came over and talked to us for awhile about a lot of stuff.

- About how much people wanted to live in his neighborhood, and how this house was the kind of house people would buy just so they could tear it down and build a mansion.

- About where he'd evacuated to and about how it took them 10 hours to drive what was normally a 40-minute-to-an-hour drive because of everyone fleeing the city.

- About his mom who passed away a few years ago, and how glad he was that she didn't have to see all this happen.

- About his aunt who lived next door to them growing up, and how when his dad designed this house he reversed the floor plan so that their kitchen window would look into his aunt's kitchen window so his mother and his aunt could talk to each other while they were cooking (I love that story).

- About how his dad would make these intricate bowls made out of these tiny square pieces of wood that he would put together.

- About just how strong his 89 year old dad has been through all this

After Larry and Jim left, I just sat on the cooler staring at the house, I was getting a little emotional (it's me afterall!) and Lawrence comes up from behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder, very grandfatherly, to offer a bit of comfort to me (it's not even my house). Then I just watched him for a few minutes go over to the house and peek in. This guy lived in this house for 50 years. 50 years.

(Thanks to Krista and Rachel for hugging the daylights out of me at that moment, by the way)

Before lunch, I walked with Larry and Lawrence around their house and let them point some stuff out. They showed me the toolshed where Lawrence's Shoprite saw was where he would cut those tiny pieces of wood out that he used to make all those bowls. Lawrence wasn't being nostalgic about it though, he was just figuring out how we were going to get that honkin thing out of there. They showed me the sewing machine too. I asked if Lawrence could sew, and Larry said "yeah! He just hemmed his pants two days ago." I can't even hem MY pants, this 89 year old man just hemmed his pants!

Okay now Lawrence, spit fire, man!

Apparently there's some interesting neighbor relationships going on - Lawrence parked his car in front of their neighbors driveway and Larry said to him

"Dad don't you think you should move that so she can get in?"

and he just goes:

"Bah, she can just deal with it."

Ha! Oh Lawrence...

When the guys were taking out the fridge, Lawrence is standing out there just giving his advice, and he was right every time! He knew just how to get the fridge out of the house, what door, how to angle, all that stuff, and as we were wielding it out, he just says "you need some more weight in the back there!" and he was right!!

Larry talked with us about where he was spiritually too which was cool - he'd taken a lot of interest in Eastern Religions, but didn't prescribe to really any belief. This really opened the door to some good conversation - we were all really encouraged by Larry's positive attitude and his desire to share his heart with us.

At the end of the day we prayed and a few people prayed for Larry, and he came up to all of the people who prayed and personally thanked us. We get so wrapped up in our world of daily prayer that it's kind of weird to see someone appreciate prayer as much as this guy did. Weird in an awesome way. I admit I underestimate the power of prayer at times, prayer IS powerful, and Larry showed us that.

Then we went home, you know the drill, took a shower, ate dinner, had a meeting, went to bed (in our new rooms that Sarah and Maren had set up for us at the church).

Here are some more pictures from this day:

Ben walking through the muddy hallway with one of the trashcans we were using to haul stuff out to the trash pile. All the stuff you see on the floor had become a part of the carpet at this point:

This mop was frozen solid in this position:

Where's the garbage??:

The Wednesday Crew:

Knockin down the walls:



The backyard where Lawrence's garden used to be:

The bathroom (once it got a little light):

Mold:

And of course, Larry, with one of his many Bob Dylan memorabilia (is it memorabilium?):