Stuck in the Mud

Let's start out with a joke.

A town in the Midwest was experiencing a terrible flood. The water rose very rapidly, and everybody was ordered to evacuate. Soon the water was so high that it began to cover the roofs of many buildings. A priest was standing on the roof of his house when a rescue crew came by in a boat.

"Father," they said. "Get in! We'll take you to safety!"

The priest shook his head and said, "The Lord will provide." The safety crew were surprised, but went on their way to help whoever else they could.

The water continued to rise, and a while later another rescue crew came by in another boat.

"Please, Father!" they cried. "Get in! The water is getting higher! We'll take you to safety!"

Again, the priest shook his head and said, "The Lord will provide."

The crew was saddened, but went off to help other people.

The water rose up to the priest's waist, and a helicopter came by to help him. "Father, this is your last chance! Soon the water will be too high for us to help!"

For the third time, the priest shook his head and said, "The Lord will provide." The helicopter flew away.

Eventually the water rose over the priest's head and he drowned. When he got to Heaven, he saw God and said, "Lord, I had faith in you! Why did you not help me? Why did you let me drown?"

God said, "Hey, I sent you two boats and a chopper! What more do you want?"

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The end product of my project thesis is a guidebook of cemetery preservation recommendations, and it is geared towards those in Natchitoches Parish. The parish is home to part of Kisatchie National Forest, which contains within its borders around three dozen known cemetery sites. My recommendations had not yet included anything concerning cemeteries in the middle of a forest, so on Wednesday (3/24) I headed out to find some. I stopped at the Work Station in Provencal, LA to ask if they knew where any were, particularly the Beasley Cemetery. They gave me a map that showed all the ones they knew about.

I first went to the one close by, and Geoff Lehmann from the station came out and talked with me for a few minutes. Then I got in the car and drove a few miles to the turnoff to the Beasley Cemetery. If you haven't clicked on the link already, here's one of the notes about getting there:

From this point the road is passable only in very dry weather, preferably using sport utility or all-terrain vehicles."

I got onto the dirt road, which was made up of hard clay, sand, and a bit of gravel. At times it was single-lane with high banks on the sides. About half a mile in, I saw the first sign that the road was not dry the whole way there. A muddy spot lay ahead of me. I went on ahead, but as I got into the muddy part I felt a danger signal go off in my brain, as it seemed like I may not make it through. I made it anyway. A couple hundred feet ahead I saw a fairly large puddle that stretched from one side of the road to the other, and I decided not to press my luck.

There was a side spot for cars to use to turn around or back into if there was something coming the other way, so I pulled into that, turned around, and headed back the way I came. This time, I was not so fortunate going through the mud. Three of the wheels were okay, but the front right got bogged down in some wet red clay mud and wouldn't budge. Further complicating matters was the fact that a lot of mud was very high up under the carriage, having the effect of lifting me up a little and preventing the other wheels from getting any sort of traction.

I got out and spent about half an hour trying to wedge branches under the stuck tire. I could get the car to go about an inch forward or backward, but it wouldn't really go anywhere. I even got down in the mud and tried to dig it out from under the car, but nothing worked. I picked up my cell phone to call my dad and let him know I might be late in helping out for the party he was hosting for about fifty people later that evening.

"SEARCHING FOR SERVICE"

Son of a *****.

I started walking back to the main road and called once I got a signal. I was pretty lucky to get one, as the Forest Service does not allow cell towers to be put up on their land. I told my dad where I was and asked him to call the work station to let them know what had happened. After getting off the phone, I started to wonder if the forest was home to Louisiana's state mammal (it turns out it isn't).

Once I got to the main road I stopped at a trailer and asked the owner if I could use his phone. "Don't have one," he said.

I kept walking, and someone I had spoken to earlier at the work station came and picked me up in his truck. We went back to my car, and he tried to pull me out with a chain. The chain slipped, and on its way loose pulled something else along with it. We saw a little hose-thingy (technical term) sticking out from under the front of the car, and saw and smelled fluid leaking. We digured we wouldn't be pulling it out with a chain, so he took me back to the station and I called a tow service. As it turns out, I called the one that everybody recommends. I'd like to think I made an educated decision, but they had the biggest ad in the phone book and it had the words "24 hour" and "heavy duty" in it.

While I was waiting for the tow truck to arrive, the Mayor of Provencal stopped by to make sure I was doing okay. He was as nice as could be, and he knew where I was going and where I was stuck. He's been to the cemetery I was trying to get to. And he had two big doberman pinschers in the back of his truck. The people at the work station were very hospitable, giving me water to drink and papers so I could do the crossword while I waited.

The tow truck got me out with no trouble and took me all the way home. The next day I took the car to the repair shop, where they said it was something related to the power steering that got pulled way (wayyyyyy) out of place by the chain. We had thought they would have to order a part, which would take who knows how long and costs who knows how much. Instead, he said he could repair it without the part, and I got it back the next day for several hundred dollars less than it could have cost.

When all was said and done, I ended up safe and sound, a little bit wiser and out a bit of money. My hands were sore and my fingers a little nicked up from trying to dig away at the red clay of the Kisatchie hills. I got taken care of by the best people for the job at every step of the way. I also learned that apparently 500,000 people in Natchitoches Parish (total population 39,492) have been to the Beasley Cemetery I was trying to find. My cousin told me I could use his four-wheeler to go back out there if I wanted. To which I said:

"I'm never leaving a paved road again."

Snarkiness

I know I have previously written about trying to restrain myself when commenting on the status updates of my Facebook friends. I even considered giving up commenting for Lent. I've decided that instead of risking offending people by pointing out the nonsense that they put up for all the world to see, I'll put it here, where nobody can see. On the Internet.

These are my responses to status updates, which I shall not be quoting. You'll probably be bright enough to figure out what they said anyway.

"Based on your terrible taste in men, I'm so glad you're single too."

"You named your daughter after a city in Texas? And it wasn't Paris?"

"I'd be more likely to join that group supporting/opposing the health care bill if I thought you had any idea what was in it." (NOTE: I'm sure at least two or three of you do know)

"When you're not posting song lyrics, you curse too much in your status, and your friends who comment sound stupid. The next original thing you post will be your first."

"Your post implies that I would have at some point actually loved 'Tik Tok', and I can assure you that that never happened."

"You praying for your 'haters' is admirable, though crowing about how it makes you better than them rather defeats the purpose, does it not? By the way, you seem to have an awful lot of haters on a regular basis. Are you sure you're not the problem?"

"You do know you're a school teacher, right?"

"The 'gotcha' example you're trying to use so wittingly is 17 years old, was done by different people than those who are trying to do something else today, and isn't 'the exact same thing' at all. I know the point you're trying to make, but there are better, more current ways to do it."

"No, my question makes perfect sense, you just didn't understand it. I'll keep the reason why I think you didn't understand it to myself. And since you apparently can't understand anything I've ever posted, I'll go ahead and hide you to save us both some trouble. You're welcome."

Strange Feelings

Sometime around the second week of August, the first of the NFL preseason games will begin. When preseason news and predictions start going around, I'm sure the thought will pop into my head, "Who won the Super Bowl last year?" I'm going to have to think for about a beat and a half before I remember, "Oh yeah, the Saints won!" At least that's how it's gone so far. I'm still in a state of disbelief that it actually happened. I can only figure that it hasn't fully sunk in for me yet. It's just so utterly unimaginable that I can't really wrap my mind around it. It's like believing in leprechauns or unicorns.

I hadn't planned on going to Mardi Gras this year, but when they announced that Drew Brees was going to be the King of Bacchus, I started thinking about it. Then when the Saints won, I had to go. I watched the parade from the corner of St. Mary and St. Charles. He looked good in his outfit, but he was just tossing beads underhand to people closest to the float. I was hoping that he'd show off his arm a little and throw them to people 30 yards away. Several other players, coaches and management people from the team rode in parades, including the owner Tom Benson, his daughter, Reggie Bush, Sean Payton, Will Smith and Jonathan Vilma. Those are just the ones I saw, and it doesn't count the Tuesday parade after the Super Bowl they had for the whole team. They used twelve floats from some of the big krewes like Bacchus, Endymion, Muses, etc. Crowd estimates were around 800,000 people. As a point of reference, New Orleans currently has about 400,000 living there. I couldn't get over how happy everybody seemed. I know New Orleans is a party town and a lot of people are happy for various reasons, but I've never seen such a strong sense of joy coming from everywhere. It was like nothing would ever go wrong again.

One of the most important consideration when going to watch the parades is to have a place to go to the bathroom. In recent years we've had some friends who had access to an apartment, but that wasn't the case this year. So managing--how should I say this--input and output became a major issue. I had a bowl of gumbo Saturday around 2pm, and then didn't eat again until around 12:30 Sunday. I went with two cousins to the Camellia Grill on Carrollton, which is a great place to have breakfast. Since I was just a tad hungry, I had some ice cream from Cold Stone while we were waiting in line outside. Once inside, I had a ham and cheese omelet with fries, and a New York strip steak with fries. I had a lot of fries. The staff there are lively and entertaining, and the people sitting next to us were really pleasant. A good time was had by all.

By far the most surprising thing about Mardi Gras this year was the amount of love my cousin's husband got from wearing his script A Alabama hat. We couldn't believe it. "Roll Tide!" "Alabama!" "Roll Tide!" all over the place. Guys on floats would point at him, throw him a bunch of beads, then point at his hat or at their head, signifying that they liked Alabama. I can only assume that there's a surprisingly (disturbingly) large contingent of Gulf Coast Alabamians who have made their way to New Orleans and joined krewes.

NOTE: the word editor on this thing underlines "Mardi Gras," "krewe," and "Carrollton," but leaves "Alabamians" untouched.

I used to ask myself which I would rather have happen: the Cubs to win the World Series or the Saints to win the Super Bowl. I think I came down on the side of the Saints, because it was a Louisiana team and it had never happened before. I made the right decision. The sheer elation and long lasting joy that took over the state was really amazing.