He-Man Moment No. 341

I am trying to change things up a bit with this blog posting. I’m not writing this from either of my normal spots (the Community Coffee on Magazine Street or my house). Instead, this posting is being brought to you from 30,000 feet in the sky. That’s right. I thought I’d catch up on the blog while flying from New Orleans to Chicago and on my way to seeing family and friends. Since I have a couple of hours to pass, I’m going to make sure I take my time and deliver a solid posting. I don’t know why, but there’s a heavy smell of mayonnaise coming from somewhere around me. Kind of grossing me out. Anyway, here it goes…

As I mentioned in my last posting, I was going up to Lake Charles, LA for a week of service. I had done a similar trip like this back in January when I went to New Iberia, LA. Details of this trip can be found in the posting from February 3. Lake Charles is approximately 3 hours and 200 miles away from New Orleans. To give you a little background on the trip (and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I figured I’d mention it again), Rebuilding Together New Orleans has 26 AmeriCorps House Captains. There are two separate grants that make up the 26 House Captains. There are 19 on one grant and seven on the other, including myself. Along with the seven of us from New Orleans, there are 30 or so other AmeriCorps members working at different Rebuilding Together affiliates throughout the country on this grant. The 40 of us on this national grant were the ones who met up in Lake Charles for the service week. I’ve been with this group of people twice before, at the service week in New Iberia and during orientation back in September. Each time that we’ve all hung out, we’ve become a closer group. The seven of us from New Orleans are a close-knit group but aren’t as close with the other members of the national program, mainly because we are out working at houses all of the time and rarely in front of the computer. Conversely, many of the other people are close with each other because they are always talking on the computer, emailing each other, and bouncing ideas off one another. This service week would be the last time we’d all be together, so I tried to go into it with an open mind, even though I was not looking forward to the trip at all.

I rode with my friend Leo over to Lake Charles late Sunday afternoon and arrived to the church we’d be staying at around 7:30 p.m. The church had both positives and negatives about staying there. The positives were that there were two indoor basketball courts, a weight room, a pool table, and ping pong. All meals were provided to us and the food turned out to be pretty good and healthy. Double bonus. The negatives were that I’d be sleeping in a small room on aero-mattresses that were no more than 6 inches off the ground. Also, there was no real area to just kind of sit or lay down. Overall, it was a pretty decent place to stay but I was worried about how well I’d be able to sleep given how much trouble I had in New Iberia. Sunday night we had a couple of activities planned for us, but afterwards, we got a group of 6 of us and played basketball for a couple hours. Monday morning we ate breakfast at 7 a.m. and were split into the two groups that would be going to different houses. I was grouped with a lot of the people I had worked with in New Iberia, so I was happy with how we were split up. The house we were working on was about 30 minutes away from the church. When we arrived, we were told what we were going to be working on for the week. Since nobody else had any tiling experience, Leo and I volunteered to tile the family’s shower. The other members of the team were going to build a handicap ramp and fix the sub-flooring in one of the rooms. The couple that owned that home was two of the nicest people and probably the homeowners that have had the most effect on my time in Louisiana so far.

Chester and Eva Whatley have lived in their home in Lake Charles for over 30 years. Back in August 2008, right before Hurricane Gustav, Chester had a stroke. He is slowly recovering but he can’t walk without a walker anymore and has trouble speaking. The plan was to put in a new shower pan and tile the shower because Chester was having trouble with the big step it took to get into the bathtub. Eva told us that since the stroke, Chester doesn’t talk or laugh much. But when we showed up to fix his house, he came out of his shell a little bit. He was joking and laughing with all of us and you just got the sense of how appreciative both of them were to have volunteers working on their house. They have two sons, Chester Jr. and Wally that are both absolutely hilarious. They spent a lot of the week working with us. Every time that they’d have to lift a lot of weight or worked on something and thought they did a good job, they would always say “That was He-Man moment number 165 (166, etc). Just really friendly, funny guys. On Thursday, Eva cooked us gumbo, potato salad, and cake for lunch to thank us for everything. So the ten of us or so sat around her kitchen table, ate lunch, and shared stories. We all talked about our backgrounds and our service. Eva shared stories about driving around the country with Chester and when he was a truck driver. She also told us about the stroke and how they had to evacuate which made it hard to move Chester around. Even after all of this time, you could see that when they looked at each other or talked about each other just how much they still loved each other. It was honestly a very touching moment and I think one that all of us at the table will remember for a long time. On Friday, the local news station showed up to do a story on the Whatleys that was to be aired on the 6 o’clock news. They filmed me mixing tile mortar and did interviews with a couple of the other volunteers. I’m not too much of a media whore so I thought that since I was Volunteer Nation’s first ever Volunteer of the Week, I could let other people have the spotlight. We ended up working late that day and were able to watch the story on the news with the Whatleys. They really enjoyed it and their phone started ringing off the hook after the story aired. There was also a news article along with the television footage, which I’ve attached below. Working on the Whatley’s house and getting to spend time with them made the whole trip worth it.

http://www.kplctv.com/Global/story.asp?s=10372259

As for tiling the shower, it turned out to be much more difficult than Leo and I anticipated. On Monday, we ripped out the old shower and put together a list of tools and materials that we were going to need for the week. Before we could start tiling, we had to add extra framing to the shower to make it sturdier. Also, the shower pan that was bought was a little smaller than the old bathtub. Because of this, Leo and I had to build a wall that came up to the edge of the new shower pan. There turned out to be a lot more prep work than we had anticipated. Without getting into a great deal of detail, we ran into other problems tiling the shower based on the materials that were purchased and because of the plumbing. Needless to say it wasn’t the best tiling we’ve ever installed, but the shower was functional by the end of the week, and that is what really mattered. Our group worked well together and I enjoyed spending time with everyone and getting to know them better.

Out of the six nights that I spent in Lake Charles, I played basketball during three of them and went out the other three. The basketball was a lot of fun and it felt great to get back out there and play. We played 5-on-5 full court for a couple hours for three nights and I was surprised I was in decent enough shape to last. We also just shot around a lot during the week because there was nothing else to do and I feel like I’m starting to get my shot back. The other nights we went out and grabbed drinks. One night we went to a bar at the casino, another local bar, and the last night of the trip we went to a karaoke bar. Leo and I had planned on leaving right after dinner on Friday night but we ended up deciding to stay and go to the karaoke bar and had a great time. For those of you wondering, I didn’t sing. I know I don’t have a good voice so I didn’t want to get up there in front of all of those people. I am so happy I stayed the last night because we ended up hanging out until 4 in the morning. I really feel that I made some good friends on this trip. Most of them I may never see again or may only see once in a long while, but the people I spent time with have good hearts and our passionate about what they are doing. Everyone brought such a great energy that it was hard not to have a good time and enjoy everyone’s company. Overall, I was surprised that I had such a great time and was very happy I changed my attitude and opened up to the trip. I’ll miss a lot of the people I met and am hoping to stay in contact with a few.

Leo and I drove back to New Orleans on Saturday morning and arrived back at around 2 p.m. I was absolutely exhausted and getting a cold. I slept pretty well on the trip after the first night. But the mattresses were very uncomfortable, so no matter how well I slept, I woke up feeling like I didn’t get great sleep. I laid in bed all day on Saturday and Sunday. I was feeling pretty crappy on Sunday night so I decided I was going to take the day off on Monday. I spent the rest of this past week just kind of hanging out and trying to get healthy for this week. I watched the Lost season finale which may have been the best two hours of television I’ve ever seen. Absolutely incredible. I feel a lot better now and am looking very forward to returning home for the weekend. I have been ready to come home for a few weeks and can’t wait to see my family and friends and party my face off. I hope to see as many people as possible this weekend. When I get back to New Orleans, you can bet that I’ll have a good blog of the weekend’s events. See y’all soon.