Joplin

The pictures and film on TV just don't capture the desolation at ground zero. Where we stood yesterday, as far as I could see, in any direction, total destruction.  Unfathomable.  In any event, our young AmeriCorp leader (from Austin, Texas) walked us from our drop off point to the lot site we were tasked to clean up.  No address, no home, just a foundation and a homemade book shelf sitting in what I imagine was a living room.  As it turns out the address is 902 W. 26th Street and if you look at Google Map street view you can see what it looked like.  We were armed with shovels, rakes and wheel barrows. Our task...haul all the debris to the street where it would be picked up by the Corps of Engineers.  Off in the distance sits St John's Hospital, abandoned and waiting to be demolished.

There were 12 of us from our company, all based in Missouri, to do our part as well as about 20 others who were in our group.  We dove into the task.  Hard manual labor under a sun that was hot, but could have been hotter.  Dusty and dirty, a layer of grime quickly attached to any exposed skin.  The requirement to wear protective masks was a pain but it wouldn't have been very smart to take the chance of breathing in whatever we were disturbing in the ruins.  The debris was a mixture of personal items, vegetative matter, rubble and garbage.  2x6s, 2x4s, shingles, bricks and plywood were strewn everywhere, some whole pieces, some in small junks like it had gone through a gigundo blender to be picked up with a shovel.

About 1 hour in to the task, a young woman (I'd say in her 20s) walked up to our leader and asked if there were spare gloves and a mask.  She explained the lot we were cleaning up was her grandmother's house.  We briefly chatted as she waited for her equipment.  No, her grandmother didn't make it, she was one of the fatalities and as her granddaughter put it, was "in a better place now".  I might add as we picked through all the stuff on the ground, if we found any items we felt were important to the owner we placed those items on the foundation.  Later in the day I was working on removing brick rubble from a collapsed wall and found the complete homeowners insurance policy, ironic.  I was also standing next to the granddaughter when she looked down at her feet and blurted out, "that's my bra!".  She giggled as the bricks yielded to her tug on her lingerie.

The day went quickly.  We began our trek back to the pick-up point and I talked with the gentleman next to me, James, who I would say was in his late seventies.  The leader had pointed him out to me earlier, saying he had been volunteering for them 35 straight days.  Very tanned, he was lugging a small chain saw.  We struck up a conversation and he commented on how much there was to do.  Indeed.  His take on the situation was this, "You get more than you give".  He recounted all the wonderful people he had met and all the acts of kindness he had observed.  I think he was right.              

902 W. 26th