My Sunday Feeling

I was driving back from a party out in West Little Rock when the eye of Rita rolled through Little Rock last night. She had cooled off to a mere severe thunderstorm by the time she crossed the county line. Still, she packed quite a punch at least as far as thunderstorms around here go. The rain was coming in sideways. Water was blowing over the Interstate and the Pathfinder got pushed around pretty good. I thought for a moment about getting off the highway and meandering home on the city streets. Still, I wanted be home in a hurry because, quite frankly, the weird light in the roiling sky made me a little apprehensive. So I barreled on through, one of about 5 other vehicles I saw out last night.

Little Rock really didn't sustain much in the way of damage. There are tree branches and other minor debris scattered about the neighborhood. I did see where an oak tree bent and broke crushing a Geo Metro that was parked beneath it on Valentine Street. But that's about all I saw. As is typically the case with storms like Rita, the reports of property damage and injury will come limping in during the days to come.

But we have no room to complain around here. Rita had taken a chill pill by the time she visited the Natural State having laid it to Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana earlier in the day. I have a lot of friends in Lafayette. I hope they are all right. My friend Jeanette moved to Houston with her husband around three weeks ago. Is that timing or what? She rode it out in a Salvation Army shelter in The Woodlands. She called me yesterday. She and Hot Rod,her goddamn cat, are fine.

I got a call around 10:30 last night from my buddy Chris in Thibodeaux. He said he had turned on the Weather Channel and saw that the eye of Rita was over Little Rock. So he decided to call me to see how I was doing for once. We were both sitting on our respective porches 300 miles apart drinking wine and watching it rain.

We always understood each other Chris and I.

He is fine. He is a Captain of the volunteer fire department down there so he was busy the last 36 hours. But Thibodeaux is none the worse for wear. I have to think that the rates for fire and casualty insurance would have to be pretty high with him being at the helm of the volunteer fire department. But what do I know?

It seems that most of the Rita related damage is limited to the Beaumont, Port Arthur, Lake Charles triangle. ( I am not going to write about the levees breaching again. I'm depressed enough as it is.) I don't know much about any of these places except that they are supposed to be tough old oil and gas towns. Even at that, we must remember that there are people that have homes and lives, such as they are, down there and we must wish the best for them. I do know that Lake Charles is the title of a song by Lucinda Williams and that Port Arthur is the birthplace of Janis Joplin and Jimmy Johnson.

I don't know anything about Beaumont but I do have a funny story that sorta relates to Beaumont.

When I was at Tulane, Tulane Basketball came on right after the Marvin Gorman Crusade show. For those of you that don't remember, Gorman is a New Orleans televangelist who hired a private detective (or his son who was a deputy sheriff in Jefferson Parish depending on who you believe) who got pictures of rival man-of-the-cloth Jimmy Swaggart canoodleing with a hooker in a sleazy hotel room out on Airline Highway. A quick search of the Internet reveals that the old peckerwood's bidness is still extant and you can see for yourself here:http://marvingorman.com

Anyway, my friends and I always enjoyed the altar call that ended each service. The sinners would troop down to the front of the stage where Gorman would lay hands upon them whereupon some of them would immediately hit the deck. Not only was this amusing to behold, but it provided an apt metaphor for what was to generally befall the Green Wave a few minutes hence.

One night, the "Music Minister",a big fat guy who talked like Ashley Wilkes and who generally wore a Bobby Knight-type plaid jacket interrupted the usual laying on of hands and falling out to exclaim in his singsongy voice " Revvun GOH-man, Revvun GOH-man! Please come ovah heah!"

Gorman went over to the Music Minister who was standing in front of a couple of young men.

" Revvun, GOH-man! These are two HOEmohsexyooals from BOOmont!"

I remember popcorn flying in the air. I remember one of my buddies falling out of his chair as if he had been touched by Revvun GOH-man.

These are the memories that will sustain us in our golden years.

And that's all I know about Beaumont. Other than it is supposed to be a pretty tough place and I would imagine that it was short a couple of homosexuals after those two got outed on the Marvin Gorman show.

Like I said, I don't know much about Southeast Texas but I hope everyone is ok. Especially those two guys from Beaumont.