Three years ago, on August 9 of 2011, Bart Tucker and I came over to Tuscaloosa to see about establishing Fuller Center Disaster Rebuilders here. Bart is a long time friend from Northern Virginia and was head of the Habitat affiliate there. He also is the one who invited me to come for a week to fix homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi, Ms. Funny how life goes. On Bart's first trip to the Gulf, it was just on a last minute whim that he pulled into the Home Depot in Falls Church, Va. where I was working at the time and invited me to tag along. My first trip down there was in November of 2005. Katrina had passed thru in August of that year, with a 30 foot wall of water from the Gulf of Mexico completely wiping out masonry houses right down to the slab and floating a number of the smallers houses right off their piers like little boats floating down the street. In Biloxi, there were four or five massive 5 storie barges that were the offshore casinos that Katrina picked up and spit them wherever she would. One landed on a 3 storie Holiday Inn.
      After working in Biloxi for 2 1/2 years and getting over 100 families back into their new home in the old boxes, we shifted over to Bridge City Texas to help people deal with the results of Hurricane Ike .
     Next stop was Port Sulphur, Louisiana, where Bart (his name is Tucker, but he's a good Talker) russled up funding for four new homes. These all had to be up on 15 foot tall piers. A pile driver subcontractor set those 30 or so 55 foot inverted telephone poles into the ground with a special head on the arm of his excavator.   D-r-r-r-r-r--r.   The ground would shake across the street from were they were being driven. They would then bolt the floor frame system to the poles and we would take it from there.   One of the houses, oops, the foundation was set a foot and a half too low. So, that one ended up having a little two foot crawlspace under the house. Worked out well for the plumbers, actually.
     Bart had a little too much on his plate those days.   He was expecting new baby #2 with Heather, they were buying a home up in Massachusetts and when it looked like it wadn't gonna happen, I ran into Brandon up on a roof on the first house the freshly re-booted Habitat affiliate was doing in Tuscaloosa . I knew Brandon from Biloxi days. He was working with Bill Stallworth, a local councilman who had set up a non-profit to do all of the casework for people who needed help in Biloxi. Brandon was writing all of the construction scopes of work and doling out the houses to the 4 or 5 groups that were bringing volunteers in town, of which Samaritan's Purse and Habitat of Northern Va were two.
     Bart recently sent out an email to all announcing a 10 year anniversary build in Biloxi that would complete on Aug 29th, 2015. Looking forward to the reunion aspect of that one.
      So, what a better way to celebrate my 3rd year building homes with volunteers in Tuscaloosa than to build a home with volunteers in Tuscaloosa.   This one started on Saturday in the west end and will be the home of Mr. Albert Witherspoon. He's been working down his sweat equity hours already on a number of homes on Juanita Drive.
     Last week saw the second coming of Bradenton group from Florida. Father and son Bobbys plus three. Hard workers all. Backfilled with sand and set the rebar for the safe room foundation at 110, final finished all the touchup and punchlist at Jennifer Miles at 115 and worked on the outside of 46 Juanita (our 46th house) for Ms. Dallas.
     Brandon surprised me with a pnhone call one morning last week. Oops, I forgot to tell you, we have 30 sorority girls showing up for work today. He thought it was next week. We divied em up into three groups and did final cleaning at Jennifers, painted siding at 24 and moved topsoil for the final landscaping at 46,   Gotta be flexible. They did pretty well not texting or FBing on their phones the whole time.
     We got rained out, actually, thunder and lightninged out on Saturday, so we went home after lunch when Ellen, our ED, called it. At first, I was a little upset that we wouldn't be able to set the trusses, but later in the afternoon, while chillin at the LD, I turned my thinking to- hey, an afternoon off is not so bad every once in a while.
      That's all for this week. Ciao. Love to all.   Peter