You Know What’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s Crazy!™
How pervasive and consuming this Historic Flooding is.
Everyone has a story of a close call or a story of a direct hit.
I have a story of a close call. Downed trees and torn up grass. Big deal!
I got to help a friend, this weekend, who was the victim of a direct hit.
Many of you know Uncle Daddy from the pages of the Crazy Confessional. I’ve known Uncle Daddy for 14 years. He is a creative savant of a man who is thoughtful and cares for others.
Uncle Daddy’s home burned during the flood. Did the raging rivers do it? Not exactly, but kind of sort of.
Uncle Daddy was working his umpteenth straight hour helping others in this tragedy. He thinks he left a cooler on top of the stove at his Green Hills house.
Well you can guess the rest of the story. He came back to his home that evening and said to himself; “Why does my house smell like a dumpster.”
He walked into a blackened stew of smoke and charred hell.
Imagine crawling into the fire place at your home and rolling in the soot. That is what Uncle Daddy’s home had become.
Uncle Daddy enters the smoldering mess, with plastic spider webs stuck to the ceiling like charcoal flavored silly string. He side steps charred furniture. He waves his arms before his disbelieving face to move the stagnating smoke from his nose.
As he enters the kitchen, the enormity of the tragedy swallows him whole.
This is where he finds the hell that will change his life. A plastic cooler containing water and ice, that he would need to continue his trek into the flood waters was left on a burner. The cooler melted, and the particles disintegrated, floating into the smoke like the feathers of a bird caught in an oscillating fan. The melted plastic fibers floated onto the walls and attached themselves onto everything at the molecular level.
The stove burned, the fridge next to it melted. The curios on the wall went up like a puff of cigar smoke. The ceiling charred like Cajun cooking.
The kitchen transformed into an ash tray in five minutes.
Uncle Daddy still lives in the home he grew up in. The tiny two bedroom house is now filled with memories of himself and his three kids. If these 70 year old walls could whisper they would tell you stories of his father who launched the Grand Ole Opry and WSM, the 50,000 watt radio station that literally was the transmitting spark that spewed Country Music into the atmosphere, effectively putting Music City on the map.
Uncle Daddy’s father told Elvis’ people that the KING wasn’t right for the Opry. Too much hip shaking or something like that. Uncle Daddy’s father threw back whiskeys in the Original Tootsies with Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. These memories fill the walls and the shelves and the cubby holes of Uncle Daddy’s existence.
Uncle Daddy’s mom lived to be 90 plus years old. The house is filled with her spirit too. That is what made the clean up so damn tough. What was a cherished item and what was burned garbage was sometimes hard to tell.
A home built today would have burned to the ground. But Uncle Daddy’s home was built in the forties. Back then; men were men and lead paint was not a warning notice from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The house is composed of brick and concrete instead of two by fours and dry wall. There should be a FALLOUT SHELTER symbol on the door as you walk in.
The house is tiny and appears frail, it is actually a tough little SOB that has out lasted the neighborhood around it.
Green Hills is an exclusive Zip Code in Nashville. Lots routinely sell for 3/4 of a million dollars. Investors buy here to knock down homes like Uncle Daddy’s and build structures much larger.
Uncle Daddy says he is waiting for the market to turn. I think he is waiting for the memories to subside. That won’t ever happen.
It is with this knowledge that Uncle Daddy enters his boy hood home. Dripping with destruction and reeking of broken dreams.
Uncle Daddy sheds a silent tear, wiping it away with his cucumber sized finger.
With soot on his face he begins to separate the bad from the good, the salvageable from the perishable.
Uncle Daddy is too proud to ask for help. He doesn’t have to ask. Almost by osmosis we come together with a plan to help. A dozen of us, and some wives arrive at Uncle Daddy’s home.
Only a few of us know how bad it is. Those who arrive to help, who think a wash cloth and q-tip will fix the problem are awash in sorrow.
“How the hell has he lived here for 4 days,” I hear muttered over and over.
Where to begin is the issue. It’s like a fire breathing wrecking ball swinging through the wall of your home, destroying everything and setting it all on fire and then you have to pick up the pieces.
Like a burned puzzle, you have to decide which pieces still fit and which have to go to the landfill.
I enter the home and I am inundated with the familiar smell of burnt house. There is a mixture of rotting garbage. My feet walk over debris and burned pieces of whatever.
I scan the walls which are painted black and grey and more black. I look in the cubby holes of his burnt shelves. I see charcoal stained photos of his father with Elvis.
We slowly trudge past furniture that looks like roasted marshmallows.
We enter the kitchen. This is ground zero. The stove is blackened. The fridge next to it a metallic charred box. The sink is piled high with a plunger and garbage that has fermented and begun to rot. There are black contractor bags everywhere. They are opened and stuffed with everything.
Soon more friends arrive. They are driving pick up trucks and carrying shop vacs. One guy is from a restoration company and he brings solvents and knowledge none of us has.
He says this house is no big deal. “We do stuff like this all the time.”
By the time we leave, he too is in awe at how much damage there is. “Normally a house like this burns all the way to the ground,” he says referring to the non combustible building materials that form this house.
He admits by the end of the day this is a very tough clean up because of the severity of what is left to clean.
We carry appliances to the curb. We carry bag after bag of Uncle Daddy’s life.
We place pictures and art and furniture in the grass. A group of friends grab rags and wood cleaner and Windex and start rubbing off the layer of filth.
Wearing breathing apparatus and rubber gloves, the rest of us grab rags soaked in cleaning solutions and begin scrubbing the walls. The charred barrier of disgust comes off. We transform the interior from a dark grey into a dirty white.
The idea is to get the walls ready to prime with paint. The idea is cleanse the house of the stench that is clinging to every surface.
A dozen of us donate 5 and six hours to the cause. I hurt my back on the first item I try and move. I soldier on and keep cleaning.
By the end of the day, Uncle Daddy is smiling. There is some hope. He can see the forest through the trees and perhaps realizes that with a little paint and some more elbow grease, his boy hood home can be restored.
This is the story of one home in Nashville. The great thing about Nashville right now is that this home is symbolic of a thousand homes.
Destruction and despair are being over come by friends, families and strangers willing to make a difference.
And that’s more than crazy. It’s beautiful.