Marathon No. 15

Marathons are like snowflakes in that each one is different. Training level, weather, hills, crowd support and competition are among the myriad variables in every race.
For the Mississippi Coast Marathon on Saturday, the added factor was Hurricane Katrina and what she did to that region.
In my quest to run a marathon in every state, with six states now crossed off the list, I'd targeted this little Mississippi marathon a year ago and began training in May. I'd hoped to perhaps qualify again for the Boston Marathon, which I ran in 1999.
But then came Katrina, raising questions about whether the race would go on. Nevertheless, I continued training. But then came Rita, and it derailed my runs for three weeks. I decided Mississippi would have to wait.
But then, in the third week of October, race director Leonard Vergunst returned an ancient e-mail inquiry. Vergunst assured me that the race was on, so I got to thinking about maybe going for it, despite a hairy mileage ramp-up that in the past would result in some kind of injury.
So on Oct. 22, I ran a 13-mile long run. That's half a marathon. The next Saturday, I bumped it up to 16. Then, on Nov. 12, I ran a 20-miler, a critical run in marathon training. The 20-miler was tough to finish, thanks to the heat, humidity and a late-morning start, but I did it.
However, I began waffling last week, only days from the race. I do not run well in the heat, and it looked like it was going to be a warm marathon, with a low in the mid-60s and a high in the mid-70s. Marathoners like it cold, preferably in the 40s.
What ultimately convinced me to go was the forecast for overcast skies and some rain as well as the fact that I finished the 20-miler in worse conditions.
So on Friday, after spending Thanksgiving with my folks in Houston, I dropped the wife and kids off in Beaumont and headed east on Interstate 10, having no idea where I would stay the night. Hurricane Katrina destroyed not only the host hotel but all other accommodations for miles around.
So I brought a tent, sleeping bag, Coleman stove and a cooler full of food. I figured I could find a cozy little debris pile or something to sleep on. Some 308 miles later, I found myself at the registration table inside the wellness center of the Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. Race director Vergunst, who was working the table, said out-of-towners were welcome to camp out on the grounds or just sleep in the gym on an aerobics mat. I went with the tent, as did a couple from Jackson, Miss.
I went for a gas run and quickly discovered the stark differences between Hurricane Katrina, a Category 4 storm, and Rita, a Category 3. The damage along Interstate 10 seemed about the same, with a few more snapped trees and a few more blue tarps here and there.
Running low on gas, I took the first exit off Interstate 10, took a right and got about a quarter mile down the road when I hit the gas stations, or what was left of them. They looked like they had been hydroblasted with dirty bayou water. The structures were in tatters, and mud an inch deep covered the parking lot.
Nervously eyeing the gas gauge, I went a few more miles east on Interstate 10 and found a collection of open stations. However, as I filled the tank, the station's gas ran out, forcing customers to scurry over to a nearby competitor. I felt like I was right back in Beaumont in the days of struggle following Rita.
Back at the wellness center, a jolly scene ensued. Pasta boiled on Coleman stoves. Runners broke out a beer or two.
Put a bunch of runners together, and they are going to talk mostly about running.
But not this bunch.
We talked about hurricanes, damage, insurance companies, FEMA, Red Cross, building contractors and all the other players in the post-storm recovery. They all had worse stories than I had.
Everyone went to bed early. As the pool's filtration system hummed outside, I struggled to go to sleep as visions of race failure filled my imagination.
The next morning, we made our way out to the starting point a mile or so away, where only 50 runners had signed up for the marathon, compared with around 150 on a typical year. There was also a half marathon and 5K, the latter being the more popular race.
My plan was to run slow and steady, with no stops or even slowing down. The persistent turtle, grinding his way over the 26.2-mile course.
Luckily, the temperature was in the high 50s at the start, with clouds overhead. Perfect. I prayed for the clouds to stay put.
Just before the start, I bumped into Gary Van Kuiken, 47, a resident of The Woodlands near Houston. His time goal of around 4 hours was the same as mine, so it was only natural that we found ourselves running side-by-side throughout the race. Sometimes he'd surge ahead, and sometimes I'd lead the way.
Around Mile 17, the clouds grew dark and the rain poured down. We trudged on. Volunteers abandoned the water stations, leaving behind cups filled with water and sports drink. We trudged on. The roadsides were empty of crowd support, with snapped trees being our only audience. We trudged on.
Around Mile 20, Van Kuiken's pace began to slow. A fellow 50-state marathoner, he said he needed to back off because he was running yet another marathon this coming weekend. To me, that's incredible, because it usually takes me a week to even be able to walk normally after a marathon, much less run another one of these dadblammed things.
All alone, I kept up my pace and managed to finish in 4:00:28, less than a half minute off my goal. My best marathon time of 3:13 probably wouldn't get me a Top 10 finish in the 60-64 age group at the Boston Marathon, but on this day, a 4:00:28, my fourth worst marathon time ever, landed me third place in my 40-44 age group.
It'll probably be the only marathon plaque I ever get.
Despite it not being my best race finish, and being overweight and undertrained, I'm glad I made the trip, as did the other marathoners whom I talked to. They didn't care about hotel accommodations, fancy post-race food (there was almost none), their race time or having thousands of screaming fans lining the course, as they do in the big-city marathons.
Many of them, like me, came for one thing: to show that in the face of profound adversity, the enduring spirit of runners can still prevail.

Hot damn! I'm thankful!

Adversity has a way of dredging up the best in people, or at least some people.
Lots of people fold and blow away like a cheap tent in a hurricane, while others become deeply-buried titanium fence posts, able to take a stout blowing and keep on going.
I suppose I'm somewhere in between, perhaps closer to titanium fence post than a ragged, crumpled tent flapping in the breeze on a power line.
Small victories mean a lot in the face of catastrophe. Liliputian wins such as getting through quickly on the phone to a FEMA representative or having a relatively easy day at the office can nuture a disaster-battered soul.
There has been so much to be thankful for in the wake of calamity, such as the Broussard family in Louisiana who generously sheltered and fed my wife and two boys for days after Hurricane Rita. These folks represent everything that's right with America.
I'm thankful for the help my wife's family provided in getting her up to Richmond, Va., so she could take comfort in her mother and father while harsh living conditions ensued in our area. My parents and sister sent cash to my wife to buy clothes and cover some travel expenses. They also provided critical emotional support.
My sister and her husband stepped up big-time by following me to Shreveport, La., so I could retrieve my wife's car and minimize her return-travel complications.
Titanic kudos go to Susan Kellner and her husband, Larry, the freakin' CEO of Continental Airlines. The Kellners, friends of my parents, took care of the return-trip arrangements - all expenses paid. I've never even met these people, but they read this blog. Thank you!
I'm thankful for FEMA, the Red Cross and Allstate for their quick responses to our home damage, and I'm thankful for all the debris-removal specialists busting their nuggets to clean up Southeast Texas. I see them everywhere, working all day and on weekends, and yet as of this writing, they are only halfway finished. That means we're looking at another two months before the last log or moldy refrigerator is hauled away, but it could have been worse.
Hurricane Rita, at one point the most bad-ass storm on record before it mercifully pooped out before making landfall, was terrible, but Katrina and Andrew were worse.
I'm thankful for a job that, in Rita, gave me the biggest story of my career, and I'm grateful for a staff that met the challenge with tenacity, professionalism and a brand of journalism rarely found elsewhere.
I'm thankful to have my parents still around. Dad will be 86 this year. Mom is 78. They're both healthy, and we're all going to attend the grand Christmas lighting tomorrow in the Uptown part of Houston.
On Friday, I will drive east to Waveland, Miss., where I plan to run a marathon the next day and write a story about the enduring spirit of runners, who kept the race alive despite the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Being poorly trained, I'll be lucky, and thankful, to finish that race.
This past week brought three nice victories into the picture.
First up, the contractor, who works the old-fashion way - with his word and a handshake - sent his crew out to the house to put on a new roof and fix all the smashed wood it sits on.
Next, one of the three debris piles disappeared from the front of our home. It was the smaller pile, the one with the leaf- and pine needle-filled bags, but I was happy to see it go. One more step toward normalcy.
Lastly, FEMA wired $2,000 into my checking account, ending a two-month ordeal through the ugly but interesting bowels of government bureaucracy.
And, by golly, I'm a fountain of thankfulness for that one.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Greetings From Uganda

One of the more interesting characters I met at a Poynter Institute editor workshop last year was Joseph Were, a newspaper journalist from Uganda. Joseph is polite, friendly and soft-spoken, personality traits that belie his treacherous daily working conditions.
Freedom of Speech isn't as guaranteed over there as it is in the United States. Not even close. If the government doesn't like what you print, it might send heavily armed police or even the military to storm in, make arrests and shut down your publication.
While at Poynter, a Florida training ground for journalists, Joseph told us the story of one particularly nasty raid in which he managed to send out a desperate message as armed soldiers pointed guns at him and told him to step away from the computer. Yes, the PC is mightier than the machine gun, even in Uganda.
However, newspaper reporters there are on the take. Sources pay them to write stories a certain way. Newspaper wages are so low there, Joseph says, that reporters won't work for you unless they can get that supplemental income.
In the United States, this kind of thing would get a reporter fired on the spot. Clean out your desk. You're out of here.
Joseph during the past year has continued to update his fellow Poynter alums regarding the tenuous relationship his publication has had with the government. Every day is spent in fear of a shutdown.
Lately, the news has been worse than usual.
Last Thursday, about 20 armed police late at night surrounded and entered the newspaper offices, according to an e-mail that was waiting for me this morning. The "Commissioner in Charge of Crime" suspected the newspaper of printing a poster supporting a government opposition group. The poster was pinned in various places in Kampala.
The newspaper, the Daily Monitor, did not print the poster, but an edition did carry the opposition group's half-page ad.
Following some intensive negotiations with newspaper management, the police withdrew and the presses rolled on. However, 90 or so minutes later a newspaper delivery van was stopped at a police and army roadblock. Again, it took some negotiations before the van was released. More delivery roadblocks ensued throughout the country. In some towns, there were police orders to stop newspaper delivery. In other towns, police seized the newspapers. After more negotiations, the newspaper finally was distributed.
And so it goes in the day in the life of a scrappy newspaper in the heart of a dangerous third-world country with a long history of bloody violence, human rights violations and iron-gripped tyrannical regimes.
At the Beaumont Enterprise, we grouse about how Hurricane Rita left us in a marginally uncomfortable working environment as the newsroom undergoes repairs. We work elbow-to-elbow, swat at pesky gnats and take interest in each other's phone conversations, e-mails and Internet surfing. Privacy is non-existent.
Meanwhile, Joseph and his coworkers spend their days struggling to get out another edition and wondering if and when they'll be looking down the business end of a machine gun.

Cuba, Cigars and Southeast Texas rice

U.S. Congress this week killed a proposal to do away with a trade restriction that requires Cubans to pay for U.S. goods before the leave U.S. ports. The House and Senate approved the proposal, but it died in a conference committee after President Bush theatened to veto the bill it was part of.
I've never really understood this whole U.S. trade policy toward Cuba. Do you?
The trade embargo surfaced during the Cold War era of the early 1960s and stiffened following the missile crisis in October 1962. I can understand that.
The idea, I suppose, is to show Fidel Castro that we won't stand for his oppressive, bloody dicatatorship. Maybe some of the silverbacks in Congress are still mad because they remember a time when Havana was their hedonistic playground, so they're punishing Castro economically. Maybe that explains why we trade with countries such as Vietnam, China and the former USSR. Or maybe they think Cuba doesn't have much to offer.
Whatever the reason, it seems like a fine time to kick down the restrictive trade barriers and start doing business with Cuba. This would benefit Southeast Texas, a rice producer. Cuba gets a lot of rice from Vietnam, but we're a whole lot closer.
Cuba doesn't exactly have a thriving economy, so trade could help improve quality of life and help that country take a step toward regaining its former glory and prosperity. A little tourism would be nice, too.
Some Congress members contend that trading with Cuba would strengthen its communistic resolve, but I don't believe that. With Western culture being one of the most effective weapons of mass destruction on Earth, it would be just a matter of time before they're rocking to System of a Down and rapping to 50 Cent over there.
How cool would it be to take a jet, a boat or maybe, if it's possible to build a bridge, a car over to a Cuban resort for the weekend? Apparently, while much of the country is struggling, the luxury hotels and gambling casinos - which are off-limits to Cuban citizens - are cranking.
With a license from the U.S. government, Americans can go to Cuba, but the Treasury Department only allows them to bring back up to $100 worth of Cuban goods, including those fine cigars.
I suppose there is the chance that regardless of what we do, Castro will be a butt and maintain his cholk-hold on his country, but it's hard to ignore the fact that the very tourism he stomped out when he took control almost a half century ago is now his economy's bread and butter.
I'm not much of a smoker, but I do like a good cigar every now and then, and I can testify from experience that Cuban cigars are excellent. Somebody at my bachelor party back in 2000 brought a whole jar of them, and I burned through three of them in one night.
I could go for one right now, in fact.

Flashback Flashflood

Every day serves as a Hurricane Rita reminder. The debris pile remains in the yard, as it does in just about every yard. The newsroom works out of makeshift first-floor offices.
Almost a week shy of the Rita's two-month anniversary, the circumstances continue to make it impossible to get out of post-storm mode.
Just about every newspaper story we do has some kind of Rita connection, and today's cold front underscored that. The forecast called for 50 mph winds, heavy rains and temperatures plunging 30 degrees in a matter of hours. When that sucker blew through about 4:30 p.m., it did indeed bring some strong winds and heavy rains, although not as heavy as predicted, from what I can tell at this writing.
In the past, a strong cold front typically would not be Page 1A news unless it ended a lengthy hot, dry spell or spawned tornados and flooding.
But with today's Canadian clipper, we had several Rita-related angles to explore: dead tree limbs falling, blown-away roof tarps and leaky homes and businesses.
I ran upstairs a half hour ago to see if our building was experiencing the latter, and sure enough, many of the same players who lived here for weeks during the Rita aftermath were scurrying around and using trash bins and plastic covering to stop the indoor waterfalls on the second and third floors.
Water poured through the roof near the same spot by where I nearly got brained with falling ceiling debris during the hurricane Sept. 24. Water cascaded down the back stairs and ran into a second-floor area where our copy desk is stationed. Water soaking through the third floor dripped down into a second-floor back closet.
Standing near some co-workers trying to avert another mess, I said, "We're back in the (expletive) again! Break out the guitars!"
Everyone laughed.
I got back to my desk to find an e-mail from my wife, detailing the water running into the kitchen from a window frame.
No matter how we try to break away from Rita, she keeps dragging us back. No matter how we try to distance ourselves emotionally and physically, vivid reminders remain or bubble to the surface in the form of slippery stairs, soggy ceiling tiles and panicked managerial fingers plugging dike holes.

24 Notes

Twenty-four notes.
That's all there is in "Taps," probably the most recognized and most played trumpet solo in history.
All notes are played with one fingering on the three-valved trumpet or cornet. Or it can be played with no fingering at all, bugle-style.
Today is Veteran's Day, and "Taps" could be heard resonating throughout civic centers, schools, outdoor settings and elsewhere throughout the land.
As a longtime trumpeter, I've played "Taps" many times. My first experience playing it before a crowd came in junior high, early one Sunday morning during the state muzzleloader championship in Brady, Texas. Brady is the geographic dead center of Texas, or at least the town of about 5,000 bills itself as such. "Taps" and a rifle volley came early that Sunday to honor deceased muzzleloaders as well as the soldiers who secured our freedom to have a muzzleloader competition.
My latest performance came this morning, when I played it as a duet with another trumpet player before an audience of about 100 people, many of them World War II veterans, to close out an event at the Beaumont Civic Center.
I can't think of anything else in music that evokes a somber mood the way that "Taps" does.
"Taps" originated in July 1862 during the Civil War after the bloody Seven Days battles at Harrison's Landing near Richmond, Va. Gen. Daniel Butterfield, a wounded commander for the Army of the Potomac, and his bugler, Oliver Wilcox Norton, reworked another bugle call, "Scott Tattoo," into "Taps."
According to http://www.usmemorialday.org/taps.html, Butterfield thought the regular "Lights Out" was too formal, so the Army of the Potomac adopted "Taps."
Then other Union units - and even a few Confederate units - began using "Taps." It became an official bugle call after the war. According to Col. James A. Moss, in an officer's manual published in 1911, "Taps" for a military funeral was first used during the Peninsular Campaign in 1862. Apparently, the customary three volleys fired over a fallen soldier's grave often brought enemy fire, so "Taps" was used to hold off the shooting.
"Taps" has lyrics, too, although they apparently are not considered official:

Day is done
gone the sun
From the hills
from the lake
From the skies
All is well
safely rest
God is nigh

Go to sleep
peaceful sleep
May the soldier
or sailor
God keep
On the land
or the deep
Safe in sleep

Love, good night
Must thou go
When the day
And the night
Need thee so?
All is well
Speedeth all
To their rest

Fades the light
And afar
Goeth day
And the stars
Shineth brigh
Fare thee well
Day has gone
Night is on

Thanks and praise
For our days
'Neath the sun
'Neath the stars
'Neath the sky
As we go
This we know
God is nigh

During our "Taps" performance this morning, I could see the appreciation in the eyes of veterans in the audience. With all eyes - as well as television and newspaper cameras - on me and superior trumpeter Joey Love, a fellow member of the Lamar University Wind Ensemble, seeing their appreciation helped me snuff the stomach butterflies and provide the motivation and confidence to not split one or more of those 24 notes.
I also had my dad, a World War II veteran, in mind while playing. He served aboard B-29s and other bombers during that defining moment for The Greatest Generation. As a kid, I used to ask him if he ever killed anybody, and he said, "I hope not."
That speaks volumes about a bomber's mindset and ability to cope with all the blood, death and destruction.
During the days and weeks of harsh living in the Hurricane Rita aftermath, knowing that soldiers in war had it far worse than most of us will ever know injected some stark perspective into the picture here.
When I felt tired or down, I thought about some guy on his belly on a D-day beach or up to his ass in water in a Vietnam jungle. Or the Confederate soldier facing a wall of flying metal as he marched to his doom during Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.
Living in relative comfort and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips for week following Rita didn't seem like much of an inconvenience compared to war or even just the training to get there. We didn't need to play "Taps" for any of our news soldiers, although they certainly rose for the occasion and displayed a different brand of courage and dedication to the cause.
I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for those old veterans who cram themselves into medal-covered uniforms once a year to attend Veteran's Day ceremonies. It's a shame that attendance at these events is spotty, at best. Businesses should give their employees time off to go. Schools should bus in students and give them a lesson in freedom's price.
And they all should hear "Taps" the way it was meant to be played: long, slow, somber and full of emotion.
Twenty-four notes. I've seen that many notes sprayed into one little measure of the lengthy, mind-boggling pieces the Lamar Wind Ensemble often plays.
But those 24 simple notes speak for themselves, like the actions of those who endured so much and yet often say so little about their experiences.

Hello, You've Reached The U.S. Treasury Department

I thought I had my FEMA fumble figured out three weeks ago, but my so-called "expedited assistance" remains entangled in a sticky bureaucratic web.

Again, a recap:

1.) Hurricane Rita blows our pants off Sept. 24.
2.) Applied online for assistance Sept. 27.
3.) Received phone call from FEMA inspector Sept. 28.
4.) Welcomed FEMA inspector into my home Sept. 29.
5.) Received approval for expedited assistance Sept. 30.
6.) FEMA attempted to directly deposit money into my bank Oct. 3.
7.) Realized on Oct. 5 that I'd juxtaposed bank routing number with checking account number. I stood in long FEMA line at local mall to fix to the numbers.

Subsequently, as the days and weeks dragged on with no deposit made, I spent hours waiting in the FEMA line twice more and then even more hours on hold with the FEMA hotline.
Three weeks ago, after getting through easily on the hotline, I was told that the money was held up because FEMA had no indication that the bank rejected the deposit. I ran over to the bank, where I was horrified to learn that someone in a similar predicament had their problem turned over to the U.S. Treasury Department.
I wanted to avoid that at all costs, so following a three-way conversation between me, a bank representative and a FEMA supervisor, I felt confident the snare was untangled and a new bureaucracy, and a really big one to boot, would not be introduced into the equation. FEMA assured that the money would be deposited the next week.
It wasn't.
Nor was it deposited the week after that.
Or this week.
So yesterday, I called FEMA again, got through in 5 minutes and heard the words that I had dreaded: "Sir, your paper work has been turned over to the U.S. Treasury Department."

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I immediately envisioned my poor little application as a marble cast into the largest black hole in the galaxy.
But as a seasoned marathon runner and a wiley veteran of this whole post-Rita hassle, I woke up this morning ready to take on the Treasury Department. I got to work early, poured a big cup of coffee, logged into my computer, hit the Internet and started my telephone odyssey with what looked like the most helpful number.
I got an answering machine.
Rummaging around on the Treasury's web site, I found a number that had some connection to FEMA. The person who answered the phone told me to call another number and be sure to mention up front that I had a direct deposit issue.
So I called that number, and when I told a woman of my plight and that FEMA told me the application now was in the Treasury's hands, she had this to say: "Wow."
She told me there were three options for call transfer: the Check Reconciliation Department, the Check Reclamation Department or the Check Retrieval Department.
Wow.
She tranferred me to Reconciliation. No one home. Then she tried Reclamation, but it turned out to be the Accounts and Fees Department, which transferred me to some guy named Bob.
Bob wasn't there, but his answering machine advised callers to try another number, which brought me back to Accounts and Fees, where the women I'd talked to before said, "Can't you just call back Monday?"
No, I said. Where can I go next? Recalcitrancy? Recapitulation? Recidivism? Reciprocity? Repentance?
She recommended Reclamation, which is where I was supposed to go in the second place, and gave me a shiny new number to call.
Reclamation subsequently gave me a number to the Check Claims Branch, which said I needed "a specialist." I was given the number for the U.S. Treasury Direct Deposit Department, and hot dang if it didn't have an Austin area code.
So I called Direct Deposit, unloaded my sad story on a fellow Texan, and she quickly called up my account and informed me that "the application has been returned to FEMA."
So I came full circle, but through the Texan I got a previously unrevealed piece of information: On Oct. 3, the day the FEMA money was wired out, the bank indeed kicked it back, and there is a record of it, although FEMA told me otherwise.
The Texan said my application is now in a sea of misfit applications slowly grinding their way through FEMA's accounting department like chunks in an Arctic ice flow. It likely would take weeks before reauthorization of the expedited assistance, she said.
She wouldn't give me the number for FEMA accounting, saying they were buried in botched applications and didn't need a resourceful and persistent young man such as myself bugging them.
Nevertheless, if I can get my hands on that number, I'm going to call it. I'm not desperate to receive the money. I'm just up for the next adventure in Bronco Billy bureaucracy busting.

Two Boards and a Nail!

Fences have been a low priority in the post-Hurricane Rita cleanup. Some 46 days after the storm, fences continue to lie in ruins throughout the region, like giant wooden DNA strands along property lines.
Some residents have neatly stacked their fence sections in their front yards, joining the curbside-debris audience of house rubble, lawn bags, logs, limbs and branches. They sit and wait for the parade of cleanup trucks that could take weeks, maybe months, to come through.
Last week, government officials said Rita debris removal had reached only the halfway mark. I might string Christmas lights on my mammoth frontyard debris pile. A nebulous blob of festive colors. Ho ho ho. My wife and I have talked about having our children pose atop the pile and shoot pictures for our Christmas cards this year.
Compared to other fence piles, ours is relatively small. A neighbor's pine trees gouged out fence chunks in two spots. I initially just dragged the damaged fence sections to the curb, but since then, I've grown wise to the ways of fence-mending.
Handyman has never been my middle name, nor my first or last name for that matter. I've had little home-improvement success in the past. A kitchen window I tried to replace months ago remains a gnarly mess, and Rita knocked the whole shooting match out of kilter. Poorly stained shelves are crooked. Toilets leak or require multiple flushings. Water from outdoor sprinkler heads bubbles up like oil in Jed Clampett's hillbilly back yard.
My wife and I have a battle cry when it comes to home-improvement projects that seem easy on the surface but ultimately wind up with myriad complications: "TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL! THAT'S ALL IT TAKES! TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL!"
I think this refers to a conversation we had about building a headboard for a bed, but I can't remember. I just know that "TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL!" now applies to everything from fixing faucets to adding a new wing to the Taj Mahal.
It's a joke, but recently, after learning that my insurance company won't pay for fence repairs, and that lumber costs and labor are sky high in this target-rich environment, I decided to take a hard look and decide whether I was up for the challenge myself. After careful review, I discovered that fence-fixin' indeed demanded little more than TWO BOARDS AND A NAIL! Maybe a few nails. And some more boards. And some cement. And some kite string.
An interesting roundup is taking place throughout the land at this time. As people are realizing the high cost of lumber, they are pulling discarded fence sections out of their debris piles and salvaging the good wood. They're also doing the same thing at their neighbors' houses. Or complete strangers' houses.
Yes, the fence rodeo is on, and I am now a part of it. This past weekend, I decided to attempt to patch one fence section.
My first step was salvaging fence materials from my debris pile, and there was a lot of it worth saving. On the way to the home-improvement store, I spied a pile of perfectly good fence wood and asked the resident if I could have it. I managed to get a half dozen perfectly OK pickets, or planks, or slats, or whatever they're called. They sell for $1.50 to $2 apiece at the home-improvement store.
Score.
At the home-improvement store, I bought the the following (costs are wildly estimated):

1 fence post, 8 feet long ($6.50).
1 box of long "hot galvanized nails" to hammer cross bars to fence posts ($11).
1 box of short "hot galvanized nails" to hammer pickets, or planks, or slats, or whatever they're called, to the cross bars ($8.40).
1 50-pound bag of cement ($6.50).
6 glow-in-the-dark light sticks for the kids ($1.50 and no relevance to fence-building).

The fence post looked way too long, but the customer service woman assured me that a 6-foot-tall fence required an 8-foot post, and she was spot on.
To repair this one section, roughly 7-feet wide, I needed to replace a fence post, put up two salvaged cross bars and then pound on the pickets.
Using a borrowed post-hole digger, I went to work trying to dig out the old post's remnants. Getting nowhere, I brought in the shovel, chipping out old cement and digging myself a small foxhole to get out the last chunks of post materials.
The home-improvement person wasn't kidding about the 8-foot post. When I wrestled out the old post, it left a mine shaft of a hole, which made it easier to set the new post, which I did a minute or so later. After that, I sprinkled in cement, adding water as I went. I used way too much cement, about two-thirds of a bag. I think you can get away with half a bag, or maybe even a third of a bag, to set a fence post.
With it getting dark and time to fire up the grill, I quit for the day and let the post set overnight.
The next day was so full of activity that I only had time to set the cross bars: TWO BOARDS AND EIGHT NAILS!
This weekend, I'll nail up the pickets, using kite string as a guide to ensure a fence that doesn't look snaggle-toothed.
Looking at the entire fence job, I figure it's going to take around five hours and about $100 worth of materials to finish the job, depending on how much wood I can purloin from curbsides. Some folks who are hiring pros to do the work are paying thousands of dollars, even after salvaging huge fence sections.
So, as for now, I think I'm a pretty handy guy. I'm going to beat the system. I'm going to beat The Man.
Now if I can get that toilet to stop running, I'll be set.

Old Lease On Life

The Super Bowl of outdoor sportsmanship is tomorrow: opening day for Texas deer season.
The highways, byways and back roads this afternoon will be clogged with big trucks with big tires, hauling trailers of ATVs and whatnot into the backwoods and brush. The hunters will sit around fires, fart, tell the same hunting stories they've been telling for years, and do whatever it takes to separate themselves from their urban personas.
Sadly, neither Dad nor I will be part of that this year.
For the first time in more than 40 years, we're deer lease orphans. Dad had a falling out with some of the boys on the lease where he's been hunting off and on for decades. He decided to give up his spot. Part of the beef involved the old guys not accepting me this year as a member rather than guest. Part of it involved a beef I won't go into. And part of it, I believe, involved the fact that Dad is almost 86 years and perhaps has no business hiking around this place, a sprawling and unforgiving rocky ranch just west of San Antonio.
A year or two ago, while out walking alone and miles from camp, he stumbled and fell into a massive cactus patch. He had trouble getting up. Had he been unable to, it might have been hours and hours before anyone found him. Not good.
As it was, it turned into a humor festival for his fellow hunters back at camp, where part of the evening was spent plucking prickles out of Dad's noggin.
I'd hoped he had another season or two left there, but that was not to be.
Hunting there had little to do with killing. It was about deer-camp camaraderie. Bringing home the meat was icing. Last year, a wicked 150-yard shot from my open-sites rifle downed an eight-point buck, only my third deer. I have its skull hanging on a backyard fence.
In addition to missing not having a hunting experience with Dad this year, I'm going to miss this deer lease, a scrubby, undeveloped patch of Texas Hill Country.
For more than 40 years, the hunters here have joked about getting water and electricity, infrastructure whose development is pushed back from one year to the next. They sleep in shacks and campers that must be cleared of wasps, mice, rats and occasionally ring-tailed cats.
Then there is the toilet, if you could call it that at all. Basically, it's a piece of plywood with a hole in the middle and supported by four wooden posts. They put it out in the open to ensure that lack of privacy is underscored.
The country here is a bit more rugged. Roads and trails are a little rockier. The brush is a little thicker. The cacti are a little thornier. The rattlesnakes are a little bigger. The farts are a little louder. The campfire stories are more outrageous.
Tomorrow is opening day, and even if Dad were still a member, I wouldn't be allowed to go. No guests on opening weekend. Period. This was his weekend to be with the old guys.
But that's perhaps all gone now. The Last Great Hunt might be behind him, and I was there for it in early January, when I killed that eight-point, popping him in the neck at twilight.
Yeah, I'm going to miss going out there with Dad, but there is comfort in knowing that I won't spend this weekend worrying about whether he is lying out there all alone in the brush, mired in a rattlesnake-infested cactus patch.

Wrinkle, Wrinkle Little Tar

I think I've become a litmus test for things that can go wrong for hurricane victims just trying to get the roof holes patched and the fences mended, both literally and figuratively.
I've bellyached and whined about all sorts of things in this blog. I've wanted to quit the griping, because negativity can and will become an addiction. It's like the dark side of The Force. Misery loves company.
But yesterday, the frustration viper sank his fangs into me, not once but twice.
It started with a simple attempt at a bank deposit.
Three days earlier, I could almost hear a chorus of angels singing "Ode to Joy" as a delivery van pulled into the driveway and deposited into my hands the insurance check we needed to begin paying for home repairs. Lots of people I know still are waiting on their checks.
The check was made out to three entities: me, my lovely wife, Amy, and the mortgage company. I called my bank, which verified that signatures from all three were needed before a deposit could be made.
Our home lender has only one branch bank in Beaumont, and it is near our house. So early yesterday, I hit the bank's drive-through and was told that Amy and I would have to come into the lobby when the bank opened and together sign an affidavit assuring that we weren't going to blow the money on crack, Las Vegas or pork belly futures.
I called Amy and notified her of this, so she loaded up our youngest son and met me at Roadblock Bank, where we were the first customers in the door when it opened at 9 a.m.
We explained our needs to the bank teller, and she asked us a fateful question: "Is this the final check?"
I told her I didn't understand what this meant. From what I've been told, you use your insurance check to pay the contractor, and if there are additional costs, then you, the insurance company and the contractor get into "supplemental" world. I've heard varying accounts about how this is handled. The insurance adjustor who surveyed the damage said that I would have to fill out a form requesting money for me. However, my insurance agent subsequently told me that his company and the contractor would work it all out.
When I explained all this to the bank teller, it gave her the impression that this was not this so-called final check. So she wouldn't sign it. No supervisors were around to call into the battle, so we left without the coveted Roadblock Bank stamp on the check's back.
With that being the lender's only branch in town, I then was faced with barking up the corporate ladder in search of a solution. But when I did this, I was told that I needed to try another branch, the closest being 30 miles away. He told me that I needed to just go ahead and tell the branch that this was indeed the "final check."
Not wanting to load up the entire family for another branch bank odyssey, or to play mind games with the lender, I thanked him for his time and hung up.
I then called Roadblock Bank again and found someone higher on the pecking order. He assured me that all would be straightened out and that all I'd have to do was come back, wife and all, the next day to take care of business.
Awesome.
But whatever lift that small success gave me got stomped an hour later, when my wife called to announce that the city had cut off our water.
I raced over to City Hall and told them that I had put a check in the mail almost two weeks earlier. They said they had not received a check from me since mid-September and that due to mail-delivery problems, they "may never receive the check."
However, I soon learned from a reporter that the city was not cutting off water unless an account was 60 days past due.
Rather than going to war with City Hall, I just paid the bill and the reconnect fee so my wife and our little boys could get some water. After all, we're in prime potty-training season at this time.
Looking at the problem's big picture, a pre-storm hassle might have been a factor. A couple of months ago, my checkbook disappeared. It might have been swiped off my desk. It might be under a pile of toys in a kid's room. It might have fallen out of my car. Either way, I scurried over the bank and canceled the remaining handful of checks in the booklet. Not the whole box. Just the booklet.
Subsequently, the bank erred and canceled the whole box, so stop payments were made on an entire month's worth of bills I had sent out. To help straighten out the error, the bank gave me a letter to show to all the bill senders, and I personally took the letter down to City Hall to show what had happened. I also paid my bill in full at the time.
So I believe that due to some City Hall error, my account bubbled to the surface, showed the stop payment on that one check and resulted in an order for water service to be discontinued.
I think I've got it fixed, but I'm still going to have to run the bank letter over to City Hall once again to get reimbursed for the $25 disconnect fee.
So that was my glorious day yesterday.
Today, I woke up with a renewed energy for getting the insurance check deposited.
Again, we made a family trip to Roadblock Bank, and again, as expected, hassle ensued.
Despite being told the day before that all was in order, the bank teller, a different one from the day before, went to the telephone. She said she needed to verify the check's authenticity. She returned and notified us that the "system was down" and that we would have to come back.
I told her I would wait. I wasn't leaving without a signature. I desperately looked around and saw a guy sitting being a nameplate bearing the name of the guy I talked to on the phone the day before. I called out to him and introduced myself. He got up, shook my hand and told me that all was in order. But then had a conversation with the bank teller and disappeared.
The teller, after some more hemming, hawing and document fiddling, then motioned to a bank supervisor, who came over and ask me that fateful question: "Is this the final check?"
Yes, damn it, this was the final check. It was the check to end all checks. The check of the apocalypse. The Armageddon of checks. The Rapture of checks. Check it out. Check mate.
Grudgingly, she signed the check, and off I raced to get it deposited before a heavenly bolt could fly through my vehicle's air-conditioning vent and incinerate it.
I can't wait to begin the next phase of this reconstruction circus.

Astroworld Goes South

The ride didn't seem dangerous. It was a big, black octopus-looking thing, with fingers branching off arms and passenger tubs dangling from the fingers. The tubs spun. The fingers spun. The whole shootin' match spun.
I think the ride's name, in fact, was The Octopus, or maybe The Black Widow, or maybe Kid Killer.
Astroworld opened in 1968, and our first family visit came either that year, the next or perhaps the next. I really don't remember.
There wasn't much there to ride at the time. There was the skyway, the train, The Swamp Buggy, The Octopus and a few other things.
I had no business getting aboard The Octopus. However, there weren't any rules at the time to keep me from riding it, so Dad and I waited in line and climbed aboard.
We then were treated to what remains to this day as the most horrifying few minutes of my life.
I was too small for the ride, so as we whirled and spun, I started to become airborne, and the safety rail was not going to prevent me from sailing off and being killed. So Dad swung his leg over my legs and pinned me down until the ride mercifully ended.
Mom to this day says she's never seen the ashen facial expressions quite like the ones we sported as we got off that ride.
This was my first - and most vivid - memory of Astroworld, which sadly closed its doors this weekend after 37 years of top-notch amusement, sans the whirling tentacles of death of my first visit.
Real estate prices combined with dropping attendance contributed to the park's demise. I haven't been there in years, but I still felt a sense of sadness and loss when I heard of its closing. I went to Astroworld many times as a kid and then some more as an adult. I liked it better than Six Flags Over Texas up in Arlington and even Disneyland in California. The park had character, and some kick-ass rides, too, like the Texas Cyclone, my favorite roller coaster ever.
The Cyclone's first drop was a doozy, and that rickety sound that only wooden roller coasters can make added to the thrill.
I have fond memories of some of those old rides, like the Alpine Sleigh Ride, where your car ascends a mountain and then plunges its way back down through a series of tunnels. There was a tunnel where you yelled stuff, and then when you got to the next tunnel, they piped in a recording of what you yelled. There was a cold tunnel, and then in the last tunnel, there was a guy dressed as a Yete to scare you. They tore down the Alpine Sleigh Ride years ago.
During my first Astroworld visit, my excitement was focused on The Swamp Buggy, this gigantic treelike structure in which the buggy ascended straight up in the middle, emerged out of a hole at the top and then corkscrewed down on a track running around the outside. It was an OK ride but certainly not worth the long wait.
I remember how great it was to be at Astroworld at night toward the season's end, when you could get off a ride, run back through the switchbacks and hop right back on without having to wait for hours. I also liked to try to get on the skyway in time for the spectacular fireworks show at around 10:30 p.m. Astroworld had great fireworks shows.
Years later, as a college student, I had 14th-row seats to an R.E.M. concert at the park's Southern Star Amphitheater. To this day, that show ranks among my Top 5 favorites. That was around 1984, on R.E.M.'s "Life's Rich Pageants" tour, and it might have been my last time to go to Astroworld. (A concert ticket got you free park entrance. What a bargain!)
Recently, my sister and her family went to Astroworld to pay their respects. She told me that it didn't seem the same. The place was a little run-down, and the crowd was a bit rougher. Thugish, in fact.
I'm glad I didn't see it like that. I prefer remembering it in its glory days, when going to Astroworld meant being too excited to sleep the night before.
Or being unable to sleep for a few years after riding that hell-on-Earth Octopus.