Storms came through this evening and were not bad at all. Just dumped a pile more rain on us, Thundered and some lightning. Lightning was a lot of cloud to cloud variety so just a light show really. Hardly any wind. More tropical downpour type weather.

I talked to Ricky today (the guy that owns the place that got hit. It is right next door to his place and the place where Baby Gavin was) He seemed to be in better spirits and was very grateful and just shocked at the number of people that turned out to help him and his Family. I asked Him how Ashliegh (Gavin's Mom) was doing and He said she is still in shock and it has not fully set in yet. He said she has a lot of family and friends surrounding her right now and that is great. Not many People know it but Ashliegh has another Son By a previous Guy. His name is Noah and He is around 6 or 7 years old. He rides with Ricky a lot on tractors and is a Good little boy and has dealt with this whole deal like a trooper. He was at his Dads place the night the Tornado hit so that was real fortunate. His Dad kept him sheltered from all this for a couple days at Ashleigh's request. I grew up with his Dad and went to school with him. He is a good Man. Ricky told me that Last night storms had him spooked a little bit and when the lightning got to flashing a bunch, Ricky told Noah, I think I'll pull the blinds down Bud and Noah told him "I think that's a good idea Pop Pop."

Ricky is not blood to Ashleigh or Gavin or Noah. He has been together with Ashleigh's Mom for a long time. Ashleigh has a sister too and she has a little girl named Briely. Briely was in the house when the tornado hit and she is the 10 year old that they talked about on the news climbing out of a window and running for help. She is a hero. Back to Ricky. Ricky has pretty much adopted this whole family and they treat him like a father figure of their family. He has never been married and has no children of his own. But He has a big family. He has a lot of friends and this past weekend he found out he had more friends than he ever thought. he had only called and asked about 3 people to come help with the mess. By Sunday evening, He had 20 people show up and ready to work with more promising that they were coming. he was really touched. I told Him that that was about the only good thing to see in tragedies like this. Everyone comes out of the woodwork to give a helping hand in the community. He has thanked My Dad and myself multiple times for helping him out. I told him He didn't have to. We know He would do it for us too and that one day He probably would have too.

I have lived through Some terrible hurricanes and now a Tornado in the Community and have noticed some good and bad differences. Our average strength hurricanes and on up to what we lived through in Isabel cause widespread damage and kind of ties up resources because everybody has to clean up their own messes before they can lend a hand. You have to rely on people outside of a large area to come in and give help. A Tornado is different where the track is confined, The damage is Catastrophic but the people from right down the road will give You more help than anyone ever could from the outside areas. Isabel Hit on September 18th 2003. It was January of 2014 before Dad and I finished cleaning up trees. This was with a man helping us full time and we were pushing with a Caterpillar D6 bulldozer and tractor with front end loader. I hauled 33 dump truck loads of trees out of the half acre behind my house. We wanted to help others but could not and no one was able to help us. This tornado, everyone showed up on Sunday after church that was not affected. You can really concentrate Your efforts with the tornados. We do not know people that are further down the destroyed path but others do know those poor folks and just like we did with Ricky, showed up in large numbers to help their friends and families.

I have another story to tell. Down about a Mile further from Ricky's another Guy We know lost 3/4 of his roof. His house was on the news too on fly overs from Chopper 10. Well, in between He and Ricky is another string of houses that got wrecked. Some federal response team was down there checking on those people. The Fella a mentioned a couple sentences ago (Tony) had called a friend to bring an enclosed trailer down to his house so he could get furniture out before it got ruined. So his friend is heading down there and runs into the federal response team ( I don't know if it was FEMA or who?). They stopped him and told him to turn around that He was not going through. He told them what He was doing and the said No, Your not getting through. I guess they had their chest's stuck out and were showing their authority. The Guy was driving a big truck with a diesel motor. he told them that he was not going to leave, that he was going through and that if they did not get out of his way, he would push every one of their vehicles in the ditch and go on anyway. They complied and got out of his way. I had never seen that in my experience with a lot of weather disasters. There is no room for that crap and a good recipe for somebody to get shot with that type of government attitude. At the very least, they are lucky none of them ended up put down on their tails. People grab another gear to help their neighbors in these deals and are not going to tolerate for one second any minute amount of BS.

I had to cuss out a deputy Sheriff one night after Isabel. We had a county wide curfew for about a week. It was 2 hours after curfew and I was coming home from my Dad's house (only 3 miles away) after cutting him out of the woods. The Boy pulled me and started giving me the riot act about being out after curfew. I got out of my truck and laid a blue cussing on him like he had never had. I Told him what I was doing, that I was going straight home and was done for the night and told him he could follow me. I also told him I was not only tending to My dad's problems but also the hundreds of acres that I had to deal with that I would never see him on lending a single hand. I told him that he only had to worry about his lot and home. I had to deal with 1000 of them with just Myself and 2 others. I told him that I was not in the mood for stupidity, that I was not going to tolerate it, that He could TRY to arrest me but would probably wind up rolled down in the ditch. He backed off and calmed down after I told him after that day of work, I was wore out and tired and was not going to put up with any crap from anybody whether they had a badge on or not. He told me I understand but please try to obey the curfew. I told him I would do my best but I also told him that it was not in the city. We were out in the sticks where a curfew was stupid and the only thing it was good for was to keep people from out of the county from coming in because we did not know them and that they could be looters. If he had came to me from the start with the calmer attitude, Things would have gone very smoothly and i would not have had to get ugly with him. I was lucky I did not end up in jail that night or shot but at that moment, I really did not care. That Group down the road from Ricky's the other night reminded me of that and Made me mad too. I'm glad that fella stood up to them so he could help his friend. I am all for Law and order... When It makes sense.CF