Adopting Covington, Louisiana

 

   I woke up early this morning, as the remnants of Hurricane Katrina threw a pile of rain onto Buzzards Bay. We also had a fairly heavy wind, which outlasted the rain as I got out of bed. As I enjoyed a smoke on my porch at 3:45 AM, I thought that things could be quite different here if Katrina had hit us with a punch like it hit the Gulf Coast with.

   I went through a storm in 1991- the Perfect Storm that gave us the Clooney/Marky Mark movie about the doomed Gloucester fishermen. That was a Category 1 kind of storm, and was about half as bad as this beast that smashed the Gulf Coast last week. And let me tell you, I thought I was dead about 56456465 times in a 6 hour span in the teeth of that storm.

   I managed to get trapped in my house with a friend on a futile mission to reach my schnauzer, who I wrongly believed had been left in our old house on Duxbury Beach (the schnauzer had been taken by a neighbor, and was high and dry while we were trapped like rats).

  

   What's a genuinely hellacious Nor'easter like from a oceanfront house on a small stretch of beach that is 75 yards wide and made entirely of sand.... especially when you are really nice on the Harvest?

   Basically, itis a constant state of OHMYGODI'MGOINGTODIE with fits of even worse panic as waves slam into the house every 15 seconds or so. You make your peace with whatever God you follow when the house 2 over from you is torn in half, and when there's 50 yards of raging sea between you and the modest little hill that is the only ground in the neighborhood that is not completely submerged. You are on the top floor of the house, and water is coming up the stairs. Snooping around after the storm was like walking through Hiroshima, and Hell probably has a neighborhood or two like it in the coastal regions.

   To be honest, not too much has scared me since.

   And that was an 85mph storm hitting Duxbury Beach, Massachusetts. This nightmare that smashed into Louisiana and Mississppi was just about  twice as bad. I am a pretty cold person, and I am simply full of pity when I see those poor SOBs standing on their roofs screaming at the news copter. Roving bands of freaks attack city hospitals for Oxycontin, bodies float down the streets like some sort of nightmare Venice, and the local domed stadium is a seething slum of panic. People have drowned in their attics, and the whole southern third of the state is "closed."

   A pretty huge American city is now a Septic Lake, and the countryside is even worse. People are dying by the thousands. The system in place to help these people is overtaxed. It may be weeks before they get to everybody who needs help. There will be arguments that New Orleans and Slidell should not be rebuilt at all. It's essentially 1870 in many parts of the Gulf Coast at the moment. Osama bin Laden couldn't have done worse... even if he had gotten his fiendish hands on a low-yield nuclear weapon.

   No person can see all this and not want to help. So, what can we do? The Red Cross is always a good place to start, and I hope many of you visit them and do what you can.

   Myself... I'm country folk, and I have a personal interest in Covington, Louisiana.

   Therefore, I'm adopting it. High Above Courtside adopts Covington, Louisiana.... and we'll do our best to get some help down to them.

   This site will feature a lot of links in the next few weeks, and they will all be aimed at sending help to these poor people on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain. You won't see Covington on the news- to be honest, there wasn't much there BEFORE the  storm, and with people firing at the Red Cross on the other side of the lake.....well, that's where I'd send my cameras, too.

   If you know someone in Covington and want to send them a holla....well, the guy you see in the pic below may have a better chance of being heard than I will at the helm of this forum.... but I will turn down no request to serve as an intermediary to finding someone's lost Mom. Send me your info, or the name of the people you're looking for, and I'll post it here. I'd be careful about things like phone numbers, though.... the Internet is a crazy place.

 

    Covington absorbed a frightful, Special Delivery Jones-style beating at the hands of Ma Nature....so it's natural that the charity apparatus there may not be up and running yet. I've snooped around online all day, and here's what i have:

 

Welcometo Covington, Louisiana (the town's home page)

 

Welcome Home (Trinity Church in Covington)

 

Covington News Banner Online (the local paper)

 

http://newsbanner.com/guestbook  (The News Banner now has a message board)

 

   I've written to all 3 of these links, asking for a more direct means of making a donation to the local citizenry. As of September 1st, they have no links up to help the people of Covington...the News Banner just got something online yesterday for the first time in a week, and it may take them a while to get their ducks in a row insofar as accepting donations and such..

   I was my usual charming self in these dealings, and I threatened to put $20,000 on the head of anyone who tried to fatten their own purse with any charity money we send their way.  I only  intend to post links, and I will never see a dime of this money- even as it changes hands. I play clean... until someone tries to steal from a charity, at which point I release a starved wolverine into their bedroom. 

   You can't mince words when people are living like tsunami victims, and I'm sure that- given time- all three media outlets will forgive me for any threats I made against them..... at least I hope the Trinity Church people do, although I'm pretty sure I was the first person to ever threaten to put a blood money contract on a secretary who takes the email at a church in a one-horse Bayou town.

   As long as she keeps her hands out of the kitty, she should be a-ight. Her God has His ways.... I have Mine.

 

 

Editor's Note:  If anyone knows Paul B. and his wife Teri M. in Covington and sees them before we do, tell them that Kevin in Idaho is very worried about them, and to call- when possible.  Feel free to contact us here for additional details.

I am wondering about Jean and Wayne R., Internet friends I once met.  Their address is Covington.
Comment from mosie1944

John Manale   Ginger & Sharon Grimes   Patricia B. an old friend from the Navy...from friends in Vermont, Jack and Barbara G.

 

 

 

 

Knight Ridder photo by SMILEY N. POOL/DALLAS MORNING NEWS Boats, homes and debris are seen in an aerial view of damage from Hurricane Katrina in Slidell, Louisiana, Tuesday morning, Aug. 30, 2005.