Ike and His Victims...All But Forgotten...

Random Thoughts on Paper

By Crystal Laramore

Edited by Deborah Martin


Ike and His Victims…All But Forgotten…



Really? Why? Where are Brad and Angelina? Where is Bono? Where is Elton? Where is Harry Connick, Jr.? Emeril Lagasse (I have looked all over my kitchen and cannot find him)? Where is Band-Aid? Where oh where are our saviors?
We Texans aren’t upset that these people don't care; we just wonder why they don’t care about us. We support them. We trade our hard earned dollars to watch their movies and listen to their songs and purchase the tabloids when they are naughty or when they’re helping the hungry in Africa. What is it about us that warrants their blatant absence? I believe we’ve been snubbed. I guess we're just not needy enough and maybe that's the more important point. We don't need them.
Maybe our expectations are too low when it comes to hand outs and we need to raise them. One thing is for sure, our expectations were exceeding low when the Army showed up with MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat). And wasn’t everyone surprised! Maybe that is the key to success…lower your expectations so you can be pleasantly surprised. Anyway, the MRE’s showed up and the lines were long. I wasn’t in the line. I was in Baghdad. I’ve had MRE’s.
I’m telling you, I WISH I could get people to talk as much about my Shrimp Crystal as they did (and still are) about the MRE’s. The food critics gave raving reviews; here are some of the comments from the galley:
“Mine had a dreamsicle cookie! We got: lasagna, star fish tuna with fancy crackers, Ravioli, fajita chicken, stew, Mac & Cheese, chili w/Mexican corn; we got cookies, sweet bread, Reese’s, M & M’s, Red Hots, power bars, spearmint gum, Tabasco, salt & pepper, sugar & creamer to go with the cappuccino and hot coco and yes, even milkshakes! They had cheese and potato sticks. Now, every box had a mixture of each so it was like Christmas when everyone was opening their presents: “Oh, look what I got! Hey! I want one of those. I’ll trade you my jalapeno cheese for mild cheese. I’ll trade you two chocolate cookies and a cappuccino for your dreamsicle cookie”!
The dreamsicle cookies were the most coveted of items! And the biggest surprise of all-you could heat them up! Everyone was thrilled, simply thrilled to have hot food. No one cared that you had to set the bag to the side, so as not to breathe the mysterious gray smokey stuff, while the magic little chemicals worked together to create heat. No one questioned the heat gods. They just did what the box said and ate with wild abandon!
Whoever is in-charge of the Army MRE Institute of Culinary Food in a Box needs a big fat raise. Hey I know, maybe we could give him some of that 700 Billion…
And we didn’t wait for FEMA or our insurance companies to show up before we started patching our holes (in our homes and in our hearts). All over Southeast Texas the same scene of non-neediness was repeated; people in communities coming together to help each other. Restaurant owners opened their doors even when there was no power to give folks a place to gather and commiserate with one another. Guys broke out their toys - lowboys, backhoes, bulldozers, generators and chainsaws and went to work. If your gas pumps didn’t work two of our fellow Texans displayed the best of redneck engineering and rigged up a way to get the gas out without using electricity!
Those who had food shared it. Strong backs lifted and toted. Roads were cleared. Trees were lifted off houses. All over tarps were spread over holes in roofs till a more permanent solution came along…still waiting. And to make things festive we had tarps in red, blue, camouflage and even purple! FEMA did its usual song and dance and got some stuff done. But the real heroes were and still are our churches, our local organizations, family members, friends and individuals who rounded up ice, food and other necessities (like beer and tequila) and took it where it needed to go. I have never been more proud to be a Texan.
Having said all that, there are still thousands of displaced families who desperately need help (and probably beer and tequila). Why are you not hearing about it; cuz I’m sure you’re not? Maybe it’s that good ole Texas pride. That’s all I got. I don’t really know the answer. Maybe the news reporters who were trying to make a name for themselves, on the tragedy that’s on our backs, have lost their GPS and can’t remember where we are. This hurricane promises to be the most expensive hurricane in HISTORY. So can someone tell me where our benefit concerts are? Where is Michael McDonald when you really need him? He wants to take back his country, he could start with Galveston; it’s a clean slate…

Or, maybe he could start with sitting in a circle with the insurance companies and singing Kum Bah Yah. Maybe a little Zen and meditation will help them decide exactly how it was that our homes were destroyed during hurricane Ike. Apparently Ike isn’t very forthcoming with information so they are having to guess who’s at fault; was it the rain, the wind or the flooding (caused by the storm surge)…If you’re the flood insurance folks, the rain caused the damage which was propelled into your house by the wind, and if you are the wind insurance the storm surge washed your house away not us…really? How in tar nation (all Texans must know this word…) do they know THAT? Were they there? Did they call Ike? More importantly, did he answer?

Speaking of answers-I wanted to see for myself how forgotten we are so I logged onto YAHOO!, the most popular web browser in the world, and the only (semi) mention of a hurricane was a story about no gas in Atlanta. Seems Ike is to blame for that too. Guess he left them a note. The top SEVEN postings on Yahoo! were NOT about us. No concert postings, no benefit concerts slated for this week, nothing. Not a peep. Or a tweet, tweet, Twiddle dee.

Yahoo’s top story: Kim Kardashian is getting a lot of attention from the Dancing with the Stars judges for her non-swinging hips and low performance level. Kim said she joined the show as a personal challenge. Well Kim, no one is appreciating your personal journey. Maybe you cold waltz your way to Texas and do something really challenging…like help some people with some clean up or bring big satchels of cash from your friends and pass it out…I’m just saying…

So listen, the next time a hurricane blows through a distant region or an earthquake shakes a country a thousand miles away and you Hollywoodites run to the rescue-you will probably lose some of your fan base. I know one fan many of you have lost already.

Back to Ike: My step-father used to have a two-story house on Bayou Vista. Now he has a one story house on Bayou Vista. Luckily the bottom half was the blown away part and the piers are still there. Unluckily, Ike didn’t leave him a note to tell him who did what. My friend Jim Ray used to have a house on Trinity Bay in Anahuac. He now has a nice foundation. Ike took the house and the pilings. Again, no note from Ike. So, he and my step-father, along with tens of thousands of others, have to rely on the genius of insurance adjustors to meander their way through the forensic investigation to uncover the real culprit. It’s really fun (unless it’s your pile of debris) to watch people argue over who did what when no one was there. It’s like you want to say “Look, here come your friends in the white coats-just in time too, I’d say”. How do these people sleep at night?

Texas Wind Storm Insurance Association and the Federal Flood Insurance agencies are fighting over whether twenty feet of storm surge caused by Ike is a flood or a wind storm issue. Are you kidding me? TWIA is saying it’s a flood and the Federal Flood Insurance is saying…you guessed it…the Wind is at fault! Both agencies, GOVERNMENT agencies, are trying to cheat folks out of the help they’ve PAID for.

There are some jobs you couldn’t pay me enough to do and one of them is trying to keep people from getting the financial help they deserve in the face of total devastation to their homes and families. And when I say deserve let me be clear-help they’ve paid for. They do not deserve it because they need it. They deserve it because they’ve paid for it. (Read Atlas Shrugged people.) Whether the help is coming from an insurance company or FEMA, most of us have paid our dues over the years for this help; assistance…

Don’t tell me that we have 700 Billion (read Seven Hundred BILLION) to hand to AIG and Fannie Mae and those other companies yet we have to quibble over a few thousand dollars per household in a totally devastated area of our great nation. Seriously, don’t tell me that. The CFO or CEO or something of AIG is getting a severance package worth millions and gets to keep his signing bonus worth millions. He’s been with the company 3 weeks (read THREE WEEKS!). How much have we spent in Iraq & Afghanistan over the past seven years? It’s about 870 Billion. Divide that by 7. It equals about 124 billion per year! And the media is still yapping about that.

Someone, anyone, balance it out for us.