ONE MORE TIME It has no been very long since most of us might have met with people who had lost their house and all if their possessions to flood conditions. For many weeks that seemed to be the basic element in all news stories from the southern edge of our nation and it puzzles us why so many of such victims are engaged in building new homes on the same flood-prone sites.
What thinking person would do such a thing?
If you had a chance to ask one of them, you had best be ready to hear some prepared recitations of statements which might win you over.
They are not convinced at all of their troubles were due to anything more than occasional liberation's of some finicky weather conditions. They can converse about "hundred year floods"..."five-hundred.." and they can inject some interesting questions such : "Tell me about the second, big Chicago fire; they only had one - right,?" "Frisco's earthquake! When was there another one?"
Others have there unshakable faith in knowing exactly and they don't seem to worry about libel or slander laws when they "lay it on "em" - to whom they hold as being the cause of the New Orleans flood and on the rest by association. The usual culprits are the military engineers who didn't know how to build a good dike much less care for and maintain a passel of them, or the political party persons who played petty games with funds from Uncle Samuel. Never before in all of our mixed history have we ever had so many incompetent people in charge of so many non-existent positions which the flood waters proved it would have been nice to have had in place. Someone, for instance, who could look at that big domed arena structure and have realized one cannot jam endless numbers of human beings - "people" i.e. - into such a "big" then "little" space, without sufficient food, water, medical care of the most primitive level of
basic sanitation - and small servings of compassion would have been welcomed. Many of those of those dome-dungeoned people could have been bussed out of town earlier in buses parked and unused.
The way I hear so much of it now: "Things have changed. If I want to build my house on property I own, it's far more of my business than any of yours."
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 7-17-06 [c412wds]
