Sometime in the morning…<\/em><\/p>\n “Do you need anything?” a woman asked as she got out of a van that had stopped in front of the house.<\/p>\n They gave us a roll of heavy duty garbage bags and a bucket and a mop and a broom and sponges and gloves and breathing masks and bleach and Lysol. They carried them to the house from the van and left them by the front door.<\/p>\n “Thank you,” I heard one of the others say to the woman. <\/p>\n Then the woman got back into the van and rolled to the next house down the street.<\/p>\n Around noon…<\/em><\/p>\n “Are you hungry?” a woman asked from the window of a white pickup truck that stopped in front of the house.<\/p>\n There were three of them: a man, and a woman and their daughter. They had driven from Minnesota.<\/p>\n “How many do you need?” she asked. <\/p>\n The bed of the pickup truck was full of styrofoam to-go boxes each packed with a chopped beef BBQ sandwich, baked beans, and a cookie. There were easily several hundred.<\/p>\n “Thank you,” we said. I gave her a half-hug (hugs not being a thing when working in flood water).<\/p>\n We sat down, some of us in the driveway, some in the grass. We devoured the food in silence.<\/p>\n Sometime in the afternoon…<\/em><\/p>\n “Do you need anything to drink?” a woman shouted from a truck that was slowly rolling down Oak Drive.<\/p>\n “No…” I started to say.<\/p>\n “…water? Juice? Gatorade?”<\/p>\n I had been taking a break, sitting in the grass in the sun. Three rooms of flooded books and the morning had caught up with me.<\/p>\n “Gatorade!” I said. “Oh… Gatorade. Please.”<\/p>\n I stood up and walked to the truck — very slowly. <\/p>\n She gave me a 12 pack of bottled water and an arm-full of bottles of red and grape Gatorade. <\/p>\n “Thank you so much,” I said.<\/p>\n Before I was seated in the driveway, I had sucked down two bottles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. Supplies Sometime in the morning… “Do you need anything?” a woman asked as she got out of a van that had stopped in front of the house. They gave us a roll of heavy duty garbage bags and a bucket and a mop and a broom and sponges and gloves and breathing masks and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4806"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4808,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions\/4808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Chopped Beef Sandwiches<\/h3>\n
3. Drinks<\/h3>\n