The South will Rise Again

I was looking for Helen Ousalet. She lives in Moss Bluff north of Lake Charles. Her home is set far off the road on a once heavily wooded lot. The handpainted sign on her driveway read 1612: the sign on her other driveway read 1261. The house was set back too far to read the numbers above the door. I knocked and was met by a sprightly mid-80s year old woman.

She proudly gave me a tour of her yard while I measured her home for a blue roof. "Lived here some 50 years. Should have seen my garden before the storm." She had fled. Her son had stayed "to keep an eye on thangs." After about two weeks, her son finally reached with news of her home. "Mama, it's fine. All the trees, every-a-one, came down. Narry a one hit the house. All you lost was one pane of glass. You can come home now."

I looked over the large, carefully raked yard. "I take car of the place myself. Good exercise." Huge piles of stumps, logs and branches lay along the road awaiting the debris trucks. I praised her cleanup job and she proudly told me her boys had done it. "Took out my lilly garden, though."

On the left some color; a tree I'd never seen was flowering. I commented how remarkable that so soon after the storm, amoung such distruction, to find a beautiful flowering tree. I asked what it was. "Why honey, that's a Confederate Rose", she answered brightly. We laughed. Lake Charles will rise again.

I was done. I shook her hand and said, "Mrs. Ousalet, the contractors should be by in three or four days to install your roof; long before the next rain." She looked at me, "I'm not Ousalet. She lives down the street. I'm a Brien." After a moment of stunned silence, we both laughed again. I promised she'd still get her roof. She invited me back "anytime" for a glass of sweet tea. As I walked down the driveway she called out, "You keep up the good work."

Mrs. Brien never got her roof but Mrs. Ousalet did. I made sure of that.