I'm a painting machine.

We've been doing a lot of painting recently... a nice worn leathery red-brown, a perky pastel yellow, a brilliant blue, an auto primer-looking grey, all in one turquoise house. Lou's new house was just started at the beginning of the month and it's already starting to look like a great new home. Lou is a character, a bachelor who grew up in New Orleans but has spent time on and off in Pass Christian since his folks had a vacation house here. He told us about how a buddy of his had a warehouse job so on weekends in the '70's, bunches of his friends would all get together for a party and weekend-long bonfire, made out of stacks and stacks of palates. 15 or 20 feet in the air, he said, the palates would be piled up and the conflagration wouldn't go out for days. Who knows if some of these measurements have been exaggerated as the years go by, but I wouldn't doubt that he threw some amazing parties. Since then, Lou's set himself up an auto mechanic business and spends his spare time restoring old cars.

Katrina wiped away both of Lou's houses--the one in New Orleans and the one here in Pass Christian. We've spent the week working on his new place. It's on stilts, like all of the new construction here is required to be--at least 16 feet in the air.

When we first met Lou, he definitely seemed like a nice, chatty guy, but he sort of poured out his whole story and told us that he was in Arkansas during Katrina and told his elderly dad that the storm wasn't going to be so bad and he'd be back soon. He tried to get in touch with his dad as soon as he could, and the cops and firefighters and everyone else told him that they checked the house and there was lots of damage, but that was the extent of it. A few weeks later, he went back to his house and was dragging junk out and found his father's body. Lou was saying that it's taken such a long time for him to finally start getting over these traumas and his friend Michelle (who gave up her day off to help out with the painting) said that she's so glad that Lou can start talking about this. It's so amazing for me to to hear stories like this because it gives me so much motivation to keep painting when I don't feel like painting anymore. For someone that has had so much difficulty in life, Lou is a sweet sweet guy who bought us McDonalds cheeseburgers for lunch. I had forgotten how disgustingly good those fries can be.