“Well, it could be worse. These fools could be in Congress and be mucking us up on a federal level.”
“Woody, I hope, before I die, that the Lord teach me how to be as optimistic.”
“Robert, we gotta laugh both to keep from crying and going and shooting folks up.”
Cousins and fellow veterans R.E. Ludlow, H.F Lee, and Ironwood Hamilton were all out surveying the damage Hurricane Mneme had done just throwing an arm over Lofton County, VA. Tinyville, VA, where all three lived, had been spared major damage, but, the road to Big Loft – “where it still exists,” Col. Lee had commented more than once – was an eye opener.
“So this is what happens when you cancel emergency prep and never had tornado warnings set up,” Capt. Ludlow said as he observed where he should be seeing Wallacia Flats, but only saw a low mound in the distance.
“You know Wallacia Flats was named after that paragon of the old way of doing things, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama,” Maj. Hamilton said from behind the wheel, leaving Col. Lee to carefully ease a hand up to put his face in his palm while Capt. Ludlow jumped. “No Black family has ever been allowed to live there … and now, that will be a permanent situation, because under today's building codes, that settlement cannot be rebuilt.”
“When the Lord decides to answer your bigoted requests, permanently,” Col. Lee said. “Sooner or later, payment always comes!”
“It is deeper even than that, because the rain falls on both the just and the unjust,” Maj. Hamilton said. “The problem for the unincorporated communities of Lofton County, built before and after Wallacia Flats, is that if the county does not put up the infrastructure to protect them, they always take a beating. Yes, the communities are exclusive, and yes, the county has winked at how they have stayed that way, but every winter they pay through the nose because they are not connected to town infrastructure in a meaningful way, and their closed systems have some age on them. But also, a lot of the locations were selected more for beauty and exclusivity and not for where they are in the county fall lines, slide lines, and flood plains. It has come to the point that you need to be rich to live in those places just to account for what you are going to have to pay to fix every spring. By no means were those communities ready for a hurricane with no support from the county.”
“Wait a minute,” Capt. Ludlow said. “And these people have been voting for these same county supervisors to let them continue to live like this, just so they don't have to live next door to Thomas Stepforth and his family?”
“Not that Thomas Stepforth would ever,” Col. Lee said. “You don't get to be a triple billionaire having to fix the community septic system backing up through your whole community every year.”
“It's deeper even than that – remember, these folks are voting for their neighbors,” Maj. Hamilton said. “When you are a county supervisor, and you don't protect your own house with emergency preparations from the county just so Thomas Stepforth cannot live next door, but mainly so he can't ride through and laugh you to scorn, never mind that his grandson Thomas Stepforth III already rode with me on the first survey as we were bringing out emergency supplies from Tinyville, and has all the photos .. so you did all that, and still.”
Capt. Ludlow burst out laughing.
“Vanity, vanity,” Col. Lee quoted as he noted another place some houses should have been standing but weren't, “all is vanity.”