so we snuck in this weekend. the ninth ward is still closed off, but we told the nice man with the big automatic assault rifle that we were checking on a barge in the industrial canal- AND showed him a photocopy of a letter that my uncle had procured that said we worked for a nearby construction company. i don't think he believed us, but he eventually let us through. everything is crusty and dead, and smells a lot like grand isle on a bad day. everything in our warehouse is gone. you can see for yourself at www.hotironpress.com. the water was lower than we originally feared, but higher than we were later led to believe. the water line on the building was taller than me by several inches, and there wasn't much in the shop that was ever taller than me since i was a main user. the only really salvageable thing was my compound miter saw, which i was glad to keep. somehow the table that it floated atop didn't crash over, but slowly came to rest on our front porch bench. all seven presses are totaled, including our pride and joy Vandercook Universal I seen here before and after krazy katrina.
just about all of the neighborhood cars were still around, which really worries us.
helicopters kept flying overhead, and after a while one lowered towards us and just hung there in the air- someone hanging out the open door staring us down. we hid, and a few minutes later a hummer full of guys comes barreling down our street to check on us. we just smiled and waved (as i'm cramming a printer from upstairs into the truck) and they kept going. another privilege that the color of our skin afforded us. so what now? we WERE really homesick, but now... we just don't know. we did manage to get some MRE's, and i'll be damned if they aren't quite tasty. there should be a way for civilians to come by these in non-catastrophic-natural-event times. some even come with peanut butter m&m's!
