Text
My brother is a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and he invited me to take over his Sunday column in September 2017 to share what it was like to be in Houston during Harvey. This is what I wrote for that column.
****
The hometown I don’t live in is under water.
I haven’t lived in Houston since 1981, when I moved off to Mizzou and then on to the east coast to work. I come back frequently for family visits and to help care for my mother, but I don’t live here. But one good hurricane, and suddenly “my hometown” is everything.
A week ago Friday, I came back to Houston to help evacuate my elderly mother from the family home of 46 years in southeast Houston. We knew we needed to get out in front of the rains, thanks to previous hurricanes and tropical storms. It’s sadly so frequent, we know them by name: Claudette, Alicia, Allison, Rita, Ike….
Unlike many, we had a place to go and a way to get there. We left on Friday, when it was barely sprinkling. The only road closures we encountered were the usual Houston construction zones. The northwest side of town was dry and safe – until it wasn’t. There was a tornado nearby, and the neighborhood saw significant street flooding. Surrounding neighborhoods were devastated.
In short, there was nowhere to go to escape the Wrath of Harvey. It was like a weird horror movie where the villain keeps stalking its prey. I was indignant that this was happening in my hometown.
I thought the flooding would be bad, but not this bad. I did some basic evacuation preparations. I moved low-lying valuables to the second floor and put a few things up on the furniture before we left. We pulled furniture to the center of living room in case water started coming in from the back. That seems like a lifetime ago when we thought maybe “just the back part of the house” would take on a few inches of water.
I gathered up a week’s worth of essentials like medication and clothes, thinking it was probably too much. I gathered up “comfort items” for my mom: her pillow, her blanket, the fuzzy socks she likes to sleep in, her favorite coffee-flavored yogurt. I gathered up completely non-essential items: an apron that was in my backpack, handweights, my knitting. I took food from the freezer: a pan of brownies, a pork tenderloin, some red beans and rice, some Girl Scout cookies. I took milk, orange juice, grapes. At some point, I knew I wasn’t thinking straight, but I couldn’t help myself. It seemed to make sense at the time.
The Joads took less stuff with them when they left their Oklahoma farm.
Friday night, when the rains began, all we could do was watch and wait for them to stop. But they didn’t stop. They kept coming – louder and heavier. It was relentless for days. I watched the non-stop news coverage until I couldn’t take it anymore. A reporter was doing a live shot of people being rescued in boats two blocks from my mother’s house. Her rescued neighbor was in the background under the freeway underpass, waiting for a dump truck to take them to the local shelter. It’s one of those things that you think “can’t ever happen in my hometown.” Until it does.
Ordinary heroes were coming out of nowhere. The local newspaper publisher managed to secure the high school as an emergency shelter and donations started coming in. No FEMA, no Red Cross, just a bunch of local people getting it done. The neighborhood Facebook group was blowing up with pleas for rescues of elderly parents trapped and stories of a random person with a boat going to get them. It was community spirit like I’ve never witnessed. My local pride swelled as my heart was breaking.
Where are these feelings coming from? This isn’t even my town, I kept telling myself. I live in the Washington, DC area, and the first questions when you meet someone are, “what do you do?” and “where are you from?” I always say, “I grew up in Houston,” but rarely do I say I’m “from” there. I’m a Nationals fan, for crying out loud! I call carbonated drinks “soda”!
But this hurricane has flipped a switch in my brain. I just bought a “Texas Hell or High Water T-shirt.”
Witnessing this devastation has made me feel more connected, so I can only imagine the #HoustonStrong pride that long-time residents feel. This is what is going to carry all of us through the dark days of recovery that are coming and that are going to last a long, long time.
****
The hometown I don’t live in is under water.
I haven’t lived in Houston since 1981, when I moved off to Mizzou and then on to the east coast to work. I come back frequently for family visits and to help care for my mother, but I don’t live here. But one good hurricane, and suddenly “my hometown” is everything.
A week ago Friday, I came back to Houston to help evacuate my elderly mother from the family home of 46 years in southeast Houston. We knew we needed to get out in front of the rains, thanks to previous hurricanes and tropical storms. It’s sadly so frequent, we know them by name: Claudette, Alicia, Allison, Rita, Ike….
Unlike many, we had a place to go and a way to get there. We left on Friday, when it was barely sprinkling. The only road closures we encountered were the usual Houston construction zones. The northwest side of town was dry and safe – until it wasn’t. There was a tornado nearby, and the neighborhood saw significant street flooding. Surrounding neighborhoods were devastated.
In short, there was nowhere to go to escape the Wrath of Harvey. It was like a weird horror movie where the villain keeps stalking its prey. I was indignant that this was happening in my hometown.
I thought the flooding would be bad, but not this bad. I did some basic evacuation preparations. I moved low-lying valuables to the second floor and put a few things up on the furniture before we left. We pulled furniture to the center of living room in case water started coming in from the back. That seems like a lifetime ago when we thought maybe “just the back part of the house” would take on a few inches of water.
I gathered up a week’s worth of essentials like medication and clothes, thinking it was probably too much. I gathered up “comfort items” for my mom: her pillow, her blanket, the fuzzy socks she likes to sleep in, her favorite coffee-flavored yogurt. I gathered up completely non-essential items: an apron that was in my backpack, handweights, my knitting. I took food from the freezer: a pan of brownies, a pork tenderloin, some red beans and rice, some Girl Scout cookies. I took milk, orange juice, grapes. At some point, I knew I wasn’t thinking straight, but I couldn’t help myself. It seemed to make sense at the time.
The Joads took less stuff with them when they left their Oklahoma farm.
Friday night, when the rains began, all we could do was watch and wait for them to stop. But they didn’t stop. They kept coming – louder and heavier. It was relentless for days. I watched the non-stop news coverage until I couldn’t take it anymore. A reporter was doing a live shot of people being rescued in boats two blocks from my mother’s house. Her rescued neighbor was in the background under the freeway underpass, waiting for a dump truck to take them to the local shelter. It’s one of those things that you think “can’t ever happen in my hometown.” Until it does.
Ordinary heroes were coming out of nowhere. The local newspaper publisher managed to secure the high school as an emergency shelter and donations started coming in. No FEMA, no Red Cross, just a bunch of local people getting it done. The neighborhood Facebook group was blowing up with pleas for rescues of elderly parents trapped and stories of a random person with a boat going to get them. It was community spirit like I’ve never witnessed. My local pride swelled as my heart was breaking.
Where are these feelings coming from? This isn’t even my town, I kept telling myself. I live in the Washington, DC area, and the first questions when you meet someone are, “what do you do?” and “where are you from?” I always say, “I grew up in Houston,” but rarely do I say I’m “from” there. I’m a Nationals fan, for crying out loud! I call carbonated drinks “soda”!
But this hurricane has flipped a switch in my brain. I just bought a “Texas Hell or High Water T-shirt.”
Witnessing this devastation has made me feel more connected, so I can only imagine the #HoustonStrong pride that long-time residents feel. This is what is going to carry all of us through the dark days of recovery that are coming and that are going to last a long, long time.
Creator
Kathleen Butler
Title
#HoustonStrong: A Letter From a Very Wet Home
Type
personal narratives
Language
en
Rights
The creator of this item retains all rights not granted under the Terms and Conditions for the Harvey Memories Project.
Source
This item was contributed via the Harvey Memories Project "Contribute an Item" form.
Date Created
2017-09-02
Date Submitted
2018-08-27
Date Available
2018-08-27
Spatial Coverage
+29.597776-095.219545/
Sagemont 77089
Temporal Coverage
start=2017-08-26; end=2017-08-31; scheme=ISO 8601;