Day 4 - Muckers Anonymous

There was an element in our group who wanted to go mucking, tearing out debris from houses and trying to dig up sentimental items for the home owners. I would have been happy to go mucking also, so our team leader said a crew could go mucking if they could join up with Chuck. Chuck was our mucking crew leader in August. I did not have my heart set on mucking or gutting houses, though it would have been good to do it, I was not disappointed when Chuck told me his van was full of volunteers already. Since he had no room for additional volunteers, we headed back to the St. Bernard project office.

The Ohio Seven headed back to continue the mudding project at the same house. I was amazed at how much work there still was to do, even though we had worked there two days already.

I got to do something new today when our mud ran out. I asked if I could use the mixer, which is a special bit that attaches to any standard drill. Since our drywall compound came in boxes, it was too thick to use directly on the walls. Each time we needed another batch, we had to add water to it, then mix it up. So I got the chance to mix the mud and try not to splatter it all over everything in sight. I managed to do both somewhat well, and we loaded up our troughs again.

We also moved some drywall out of our way so that we could finish mudding in one part of the house. When it is dry, drywall is not very brittle, and it is not very heavy either. It was fairly easy for us to move sheets of drywall with two people: one person at each end can make sure that the drywall sheet doesn't get damaged.

Lunch was different again: the home owner bought us "po' boys." One was a cheeseburger sub a few feet long, and the other had roast beef. Yesterday's planned lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches remained untouched today, and the home owner promised to make Jambalaya for lunch tomorrow.

After lunch, we walked up the street to see what the other houses were like. On the way up the street, we met another volunteer who was installing insulation and drywall in a house. After we talked to the other volunteer, we looked at an earthen levee which was at the end of the street, and crossed a bridge to walk to the top of the levee. There was a marsh on the other side of the levee. After that, we went back to the house we had worked on for three days.

On our way back, we saw a house that still had the "X" logo on it, with the date it was searched, the code for the regiment responsible for that search, and the number of bodies below it. I had seen a lot of zeros, but this one had a number: one person had been found dead inside. It was a sad reminder that even as rebuilding could help some people return home, others would never return.

We sanded some of the areas that had been mudded earlier, and I had to touch up a window where I messed up the mud that somebody else put around the sill. The rest of the day, we continued mudding the house. There was still so much left to be done.

When we got back to Hilltop Rescue, I found out that a couple of the people from the team had managed to join a mucking crew. They hadn't done that kind of work before, so they had stories to tell of all the things they had discovered. It brought back memories--some happy, some very sad--from my other trips.