Houston Area and Middle Coastal Texans and Upward, Get Ready

Remembering driving along on a sweltering end-of-summer day with a crowded all-lanes mass migration of all manner of utility vehicles on I-10 on the far northern outskirts of my birthplace New Orleans, as immediately post Katrina as possible, heading zealously undeterred as far as we'd be allowed to go into the drowned City That Care Forgot, all craving to help, to make something amazing happen, my own little red Subaru wagon full of pet supplies, and me with directions to the main shelter in Gonzales and driving with tears flowing so very moved and proud to be alongside 100's and 100's of repair trucks of all kinds, big companies and independent craftsmen, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, truck after truck pulling their personal generators on wheels or in the pickup truck beds, trucks with cranes on them, big cement mixer trucks, pickups with a small mixer in the back, and many marked Humane Society vans and SUV's from states coast to coast, and riding alongside also one wild-maned tall skinny bespectacled hippie nerd in jeans and a t-shirt in a big gray old-style tall stepvan without any doors on either side such that you could see his whole long-legged scarecrow frame working the steering wheel and the pedals with eyes on the road ahead and with his long hair blowing back in the wind, and on the side of the stepvan were big handpainted letters saying 'Internet Services', as idiosyncratic and entreprenurial a sight as anyone might ever see, and gloriously he and I must have passed each other four or five times on the drive, beginning near Lake Charles, and each time I saw him - this techie Ichabod Crane to the rescue - having thought I'd seen the last of him each time, I would begin to laugh and then cry alternatingly and sometimes at the same time. Such is who we are, countless individuals, of all ages and colors and backgrounds and status and no doubt religions and other assorted affiliations and schools of thought or no thought at all but to get the job done no matter what was needed, for whomever needed it, with thought for the whole of us, for us, because we are each other's keepers after all, and here was the living proof all around you. Houston area and upper coastal Texans, get ready, god on Earth is coming to help.