A few more images

Here are a few more images of the house and the area. We did sustain roof damage and the sheetrock in the bedrooms and living room ceilings ended up on the floor. I am happy that our new kitchen and bathroom were virtually untouched. It is an eerie feeling when you see that the dishes you washed on the last trip are still on the counter and just fine, while the living room looked like a gorilla had jumped through the roof. We are lucky that our son, Juan had a contractor friend who was kind enough to get to the West End and tarp up the roof.

I think we fared rather "midland" in regard to damage. Once we get a roof, we can repair the sheet rock and put in new flooring. Allen, his brother Cal and friend Kevin [who came down from Ohio] ripped up the carpet and tossed it over the deck. That pile is growing fast.

Many of you know that this is the year that we decided to NOT rent it to vacationers anymore. We loved our rental company, Century 21 Bayreef [Kevin!] but after 30 years, we decided to take it for ourselved. We made a lucky move to replace pilings, windows and siding last year and THAT paid off. The second row houses east of us all have pilings now that resemble tangled spaghetti. That blue house that was first row in front of it? Well, it vanished off the face of the earth entirely! I cannot even find the pilings. It must have been taken by a tornado.

We have tried to ascertain just how high the water came up on our pilings but the wooden legs are not talking. There are no marks to show where it ended. We are very happy that the waves were not lapping in our living room! No windows broken in the house but the garage seems to have hidden anything that washed by it. We can hardly see our bikes or the Chihuahuas' stroller. We prided ourselves on not having much in that garage but now we have everyone else's junk and then some! Washer, oven, tiles, a futon and more are all resting soggily under the house.

Through all this, we work on, as do the men on the street. When we finally drove off into the sunset, those men did too...

First Trip to the West End Post Hurrican Ike

Several friends have asked how our house fared

after Hurricane Ike. Here is the first view that

we saw after driving through a new passageway in back of our house. The circle that our house is on is completely covered in DEEP sand and is totally inaccessible.

I could not believe how many trucks [huge ones!] were moving sand from our yards to a huge pile on the beach side. In the course of our seven hours working there, they had moved all of the sand and made one "monster pile" at the end of our street.

I commend the men who really had a great attitude about moving sand around so that the crazy people who own these houses could get back in. After nearly 30 years of having a house on the West End, I have found few Galvestonians from the East End come out here except to work.