Hello friends, A small army of friends and even some complete strangers worked tirelessly yesterday, helping Cindee and I with the remains of our house. No rain! The sun actually shone brightly for a bit. I actually got a sunburn, even though it was cloudy almost all day, but it's not as bad as the sunburn Andy got that one time. Words can't describe our gratitude. All over town are thousands upon thousands of people helping people. In the midst of all of this terrible suffering, I have not heard one single cross word from anybody. Local churches and charities are overflowing with donations, some to the point where they can't accept anything more due to lack of space. We got the roof of my garage patched up (it is now crammed with the stuff we saved from the house -- including the pianos!), then we moved on to help the neighbors who still had roofs to fix theirs up as best we could, until we ran out of supplies.
At some point, a small army of lumberjacks (actually, a large army of lumberjacks) will be needed to start clearing away all of the downed trees, but that can wait a month or so. When we moved in to the house 12 years ago, me and my boys, who were 5 at the time, planted an apple tree in the backyard. A bigger tree fell on it and broke half its branches off, but we got the big tree cleared away and I think that little apple tree is going to survive, though it may be the only three that does (we had about 30 or 40 trees, never counted them). At about 1:00 p.m. a local restaurant that was not damaged brought two big trays of hot food to the neighborhood, so we all took a break and sat on the ground to eat. I have dined in the finest restaurants in New Orleans, but I have never tasted food like that (not really, but most of you will recognize that quote). Quips aside, it was just simple fare, but the best meal I had eaten in a very long time. I hope nobody noticed that I was crying as I ate mine. Events like this make a person re-evaluate the things in life that are truly important and the ones which aren't worth a tiddly-boo. I have decided that once we get back into some sort of normal life again, maybe in two or three months, I am going to sell everything that survived from my Mayberry collection (except for the items that were personally autographed to me, which would have no value to anybody else) and donate the proceeds to help other tornado victims. It's all in boxes now but I think I still have two plates, six coffee mugs, three Hawthorne buildings, several sets of trading cards, a matched pair of Andy and Barney nodders, two or three comic books, some unopened board games (I could never find anybody willing to play those trivia games against me -- maybe because it was I who proofread all of the questions for the game in the first place?), and a lot of TV guides (the books were in plastic wrappers and may still be undamaged). The gem of the collection is a very valuable mint condition coloring book. It was professionally framed, the glass is broken but I think the book is still OK. I also still have about 40 or 50 VHS tapes, but they all got wet. Maybe the tapes will still play, if anybody even uses VHS anymore. I mainly kept them all these years for the colorful packaging, which made a really nice display on the shelf. Anyway, all of this stuff is going on eBay sometime during the summer. I will be sure to let everyone here know about all of the auctions well ahead of time. I hope to raise at least $1,000. I almost forgot, all four of our cats have returned, one looking very dirty and frightened and undernourished, but other than that alive and well. There was also a fifth cat who wasn't really ours but just sort of moved in on us about six weeks ago; maybe he found his way back to his original home. He was neutered, so he had to have belonged to someone. I guess that's all for now. Paul Mulik _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list [email protected] http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
