Hop’s Blog

Our group of 32 is divided into 2 teams who go out separately each day to different worksites. I introduced you to those riding in my car the other day, but let me introduce you to the rest of my team…

Jay & Pam Achten – Jay is the crew chief for our team. A contractor by trade, he’s invaluable on the job. What’s more, he’s a great guy to shoot the breeze with. And Pam is a wonderful woman…a nurse who must have a great bedside manner considering all she does to keep the humor in our group.

Rick & Dawn Crabb – What a hard working couple! Rick is with Valley Unit Step, and Dawn is with a medical transcription service. They’re among the quieter members of the group, but every once in a while, they crack us up with a well-timed one-liner.

Dick Collar – he’s Dawn’s dad, and a former Parks Department equipment operator for the city of De Pere. When he gets his nose to the grindstone (which is quite often), there’s no stopping him. I call him the Candy Man…every lunch break, he brings around the bag of chocolates.

John & Carol Mueller – One of the retired couples on the trip, they’re on a return engagement from last April. They’re a study in contrasts, but it works well for them…John jumps into any situation with gusto, and Carol brings a comforting calmness to the group that puts anyone around her at ease.

Erin Riley – Erin is with the religious ed program at Our Lady of Lourdes. That girl can really swing a sledge hammer. There’s not much she’s afraid of…except roaches, snakes, mice, and rats…as we quickly found out. But when it comes to tearing houses apart, get out of the way!

Courtney Christiansen – As it turns out, Courtney is a former student and basketball player for my wife’s brother, Mike, in Wausau. She’s now with Humana, and with her height she teams well with Erin. When they’re ripping drywall and pulling nails, Erin gets the low parts, and Courtney takes the high parts. They’ve got it down to a science.

Paul Van Den Heuvel – Paul’s another quiet one, but a consistent hard worker who takes on any job he’s asked to do. He’s with Wisconsin Public Service, so it’s been interesting getting his take on the power grid in this city. And he’s another one to watch out for when it comes to one-liners. Not all that often, but when it happens, it’s pretty good.

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Today was an easier day as far as the complexity of challenges, but we managed to finish two houses. The first was the house we began yesterday, and the second was a cleanup job in a house that had been partially completed by another group before they departed.

At the second site, we visited with a contractor who was working on the house next door. It looked fantastic! He had purchased the home (a duplex), completely renovated it with over $100,000 of new work into it, and plans on renting it out. It was nice to see that type of progress going on.

The group has really become an efficient machine…we’re actually working faster than Catholic Charities has managed to line up jobs for us. And we’re having a lot of fun with each other along the way, no matter how hard the work. This afternoon we knocked off early because there was no other job lined up for us, and are heading down to the French Quarter for some food & entertainment. We’re going to see an IMAX movie called “Hurricane on the Bayou,” which is a documentary on what happened here 17 months ago.
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Found out after some conversation last night that Willy Mae (the woman whose house we fixed yesterday), was actually thanking the hurricane for one loss in her life. Among other troubles her husband was causing, he had begun using her home as a crack house and she couldn’t get him to leave. Turns out that the storm chased him away…he doesn’t want to change, nor come back to the neighborhood! God works in mysterious ways.
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A theme we’ve heard a couple times over is that of the “lost generation” here in New Orleans. Two African American older women lamented the fact to the other half of our group while they were on two separate jobs. As the group gutted one woman’s house, she pointed down the street and said, “Look at those little bastards down there.” Evidently, she had offered several neighborhood teenagers money some months before to do the same job our group was doing for free. Over the last few months, she had done what work she could on her own, and used our people for the heavy lifting. She told the group that after they left, she was going down to tell them they should be ashamed of themselves for sitting on the porch and watching.

I’ll giver her credit…it sounds like she was the neighborhood caretaker before the storm, sweeping sidewalks and prompting people to fix their houses and take care of their lawns. New Orleans needs a lot more people like her in every neighborhood. But it seems like many of the ambitious folks have moved away. And the older people don’t have as much sway with the younger generation as they used to. I hope she and others like her throughout the Gulf Coast area keep on trying, though.
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Time to head down to the French Quarter to absorb some local culture. Tomorrow we begin the journey home.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 7:48 pm and is filed under New Orleans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.