Hey everyone,
Sorry for such a long time between posts. Towards the end of my time in Joplin, things got super crazy and very stressful. I had to have a few of my WIBs fired for showing up after lunch intoxicated. That lead to a series of events where I had to get in contact with my WIB supervisors and tell them to get their small teams to be better productive and to actually get something accomplished. But other than that, I very much loved my time down in Joplin. I felt that no matter what, every day the ERT was able to do something productive.
On one Friday in particular, I was dropping off tools at sites when I came to a house where a group of nursing students were to break up, remove, and put in a new sidewalk. Whenever I had the chance to hit something, I took full advantage of it. I pulled up and saw the students working and they needed some assistance. They weren't have the best of luck with breaking up the concrete, so I took over and went to town on the sidewalk. There is something to be said about how much fun it is to break things.
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| Nursing students trying to break the sidewalk up |
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| Removing the concrete after I got there |
After things got broken up, I found out that the volunteers had to leave. Unfortunately, the homeowner already had the cement ordered and it was on its way. I used my Nextel and called the office looking to see if there were any volunteers available, but they was none. And right then, the office found out they had a deadline to meet on the demo board, so I couldn't recruit any of my ERT friends. I then realized that I would be pouring all the cement with the homeowner all by ourselves. We were able to do it, I learned a lot, and it looked really good. When I was done, the homeowner was so very happy and started crying and thanking me for sticking around and helping him get this done. The only thing I could do was to give him a huge hug and tell him that we were there for him.
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| Finished project |
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| The homeowner put in a cross |
A few weeks later, I remembered the homeowner told me his birthday was that week, so I bought him a cookie cake and brought a few of my ERT friends and gave him a little surprise birthday party. It was nice to see him again, and he was as thankful as ever. He loved us.
Like I said earlier, I got really busy and didn't take many pictures of what I was doing. I got a team of NCCC AmeriCorps volunteers from Denver who came to Joplin to help us out. They helped me out a lot, I put them right to work in the field as site supervisors to make sure nothing got out of control.
One of the last projects I was involved in was gutting a house in preparation for demolishing it. It was rainy and cold, but for about a week, I had volunteers out there working really hard. Sometimes I forget that in these houses, people use to actually live there. This house was abandoned after the storm, leaving everything still inside. I found a lot of things that just made me sad and realize how bad the storm was.
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| This was one of my favorite views. I finally got a picture of it on a rainy day. This is in Duquesne, just East of Joplin. |
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| Bird's nest in the food cabinet. |
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| Gutting |
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| Volunteers from Texas who took down a shed finishing taking apart the roof. |
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| Illinois students gutting the house |
One of the other projects that we always did was raking properties so that we could clear the property off our database. Now days, that is practically all we do. These are pretty boring, but I get out and help every once in a while. The property needs to be able to be mow-able / seed-able.
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| My volunteers. My NCCC is to the right, wearing the black coat. |
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| Action picture! It was really cold out and snowing. |
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| 95% done. but it looks great. |
Another day, when it was snowing out, a group of volunteers and I helped Habitat for Humanity lay sod at 5 houses. It was yet another thing that I didn't know how to do, but I figured it out pretty quickly.
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| Man that looks really good. |
Last week was my first week on conservation. We went down to southern Missouri to Peck Ranch. It is a wildlife refuge that is literally in the middle of nowhere. I stayed in a trailer for the week, which was really nice, but I didn't have phone service to call Sarah. The only place that I could get service was 2 miles away up on top of a hill that is called Phone Booth Hill.
At Peck Ranch, we maintained a fire line so that in the spring, they can do a prescribed burn. We literally picked up any stick within 60 feet of the road, and carried it further away from the road. I've never done so much back and forth walking in my life. It snowed one night leaving us a cold, wet mess the next day. However, it was fun to drive in though.
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| Road in the middle of nowhere Peck Ranch. Spent all week on the left side throwing logs around. |
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| Look at that park job. |
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| Looking awesome. |
Well thats about it, as I am writing this on Sunday evening, I found out I am going back to Peck Ranch in the morning. I'll take more pictures, or at least try to. Until later.
Love - Shamucas
