You know what’s Crazy I’ll tell you what’s crazy!™
It’s been 2 months since Nashville flooded and still people live in sub standard conditions.
Country Music Stars have put on benefits and raised millions of dollars and still there is unbelievable devestation. Thousands of dump trucks filled with furniture, air conditioning conduits and bathroom fixtures has treked to the county dump and still there is unbelievable devestation.
I went to a trailer park today where debris was piled on the front lawn in front of each trailer like a massive, river filled toilet that over-flowed.
This community is on a slope, the lowest end is closest to the river. These homes suffered the worst damage. Location. Location. Location, right?
While there, I meet a married couple of 42 years who were so happy, you would have thought they were Jehovas Witnesses delivering bibles to heathens.
I’m not sure why they were so happy, but happy they were. I know they weren’t blind, so they could see their home just as clearly as I could. And yet they smiled as they spoke.
Their trailer was an average trailer from the outside. It was grey and square and it was on brico blocks. In the window there was a sign indicating the city had recently granted them a permit.
“We’re camping in our own home,” the woman would tell me over and over.
If a 97-degree, gutted trailer without power, makes you smile, what makes you mad lady? This is what I wonder to myself.
This woman’s lack of complaining made me re-think the gripes I gripe.
I hate my car. What’s up with these love handles? Why don’t company’s give employees raises anymore? All good gripes, I think to myself. But at least I can gripe in air conditioned comfort.
The couple with the bright smiles and pleasant dispositions lead me into their single wide.
It is a mess. There are no walls, only wooden framing and lots of open space.
There are piles of boxes and supplies in the middle of the trailer. I see tools and emergency kits that were handed out from the Red Cross. It looks like a Katrina waste zone in the 9th Ward.
Most striking to me; there is a toilet in the middle of the trailer. The woman tells me that the commode works, but it is hard to imagine using it since it is visible from every vantage point. There are no walls, no curtains, nothing but thin air for privacy.
I ask the woman how she uses it? She smiles and shrugs as if this is just another of God’s little tests.
It is 9:30 am and a thermometer in the trailer all ready reads 90-degrees.
The woman tells me that last week it got up to 110-degrees. She’s right. Nashville was hot as a pork chop hidden in a fat man’s belly crevice.
“We were really sweating,” the senior citizen says with a chuckle in her voice. I notice fans scattered throughout the trailer.
“You have power?” I ask.
“Sort of,” The woman replies pointing to an extension cord that is coming in through a window.
“We are borrowing power from a neighbor.”
And in deed, the yellow electric cord exits their trailer, and snakes through the high crab grass of their back yard. I follow it for a 15 or 20 feet. The couple tells me not to bother since it winds around the corner for about 200 feet.
“We tried to pay our neighbor,” she says seriously. “But he won’t take any of our money.”
I immediately realize this is a metro codes violation. These people should not be in a house that does not have functioning power. They should not be living in a house where the coffee pot, the fan, the refrigerator and the toaster are all plugged into the same power strip. They should not be living in a home where you can lay on your queen size bed and watch your spouse of 42 years have a bowel movement 2 rooms away. That is more than a codes violation, it’s a domestic injustice that no FEMA check can correct.
“We’re camping in our own home,” the little lady will tell me again and again as if this is an episode of the Brady Bunch and the boys have pitched a tent in Dad’s office.
All around me are electrical sockets hanging from two by fours surrounded by open breaker boxes suspended in mid air. It looks like an electrician’s wet dream.
The trailer is clearly a work in progress, yet the family lives here.
“We have our permit,” the husband tells me. “We need to raise it up 2 feet before the Nashville Electric Service will hook up our power.”
The flood has changed everything. The old standard for flood plain is now sadly out of date. The gurus of such determination have now determined that this trailer must be 2 feet higher to pass city codes, so the couple had to stabilize the trailer to allow a company to jack it up several feet. That’s what the permit in the window represents. The placard tells the lift company that this trailer is ready for its modification. Once the trailer is raised, blocks and dirt can be placed underneath. Once it is lowered back onto the lot, the Codes department will reinspect. If it passes, the electric company will restore the power hook up.
Easy as pie, right?
Not exactly. The problem is, nobody can tell the family when the company that moves trailers will be available to raise their home.
The flood was May 1st. It is June 29th now. That’s 60 days and counting. 60 days without power without walls or privacy. 60 days of sweating while you sleep in a bed in the middle of extension cords and two by fours.
When does it end.?
The woman says she feels for her neighbors down the street whose homes, closer to the river, were completely destroyed. These people had children, and now they have no where to live, she says, her smile waning for the first time all morning.
These are the people the couple are concerned about. Neighbors, with children, who lost it all.
I ask the couple how they can remain so calm. They tell me they are older and mellow.
The husband tells me that they have not seen television for 2 months.
I tell them that by and large, what they have missed is a city that is recovering. While there are still many stories like this one, there are also a plethora of success stories of a city that has Risen. I think it is safe to say, a vast majority of Nashvillians have gotten their lives back on track.
For most people the flood is a memory. It’s still very much an every day event for this couple, married for 42 years.
The couple say they got FEMA money but they also wonder where all the funds are going from these highly publicized musical benefits.
“The red cross was here for a week handing out donuts,” the husband says. “Where are they now?”
As we drive out of the neighborhood, I see piles of debris and trailers in ruin. I wonder about the gripes I gripe and then decide I should be more grateful for what I have.
The flood waters only lapped at my garage doors. I lost a few trees at the lowest part of my lawn.
The flood for me is a memory. The flood for this family is a 60 day reality and counting.
Makes you think, doesn’t it.
And that is Crazy.