As you can see from these pictures, the sites were not prepared in time for the blitz. The foundations were supposed to be in place and the decking on over the basement before we arrived. The house that I was assigned to was a vacant lot. The site was excavated and the cinder block foundation laid the week the blitz was supposed to occur. Rather than building a house I helped haul cinder blocks, back-filled the foundation with a wheel barrow and shovel, and helped put the decking on. Then it was time to go home. It was a ten day blitz and when I left the site was to the point where the blitz could begin.

And if that wasn't enough of a disappointment, a young punk on a bicycle saw fit to shoot a b-b gun at the volunteers guarding the cars in the parking lot. He came back a second time and shot one of the blitz's organizers above his lip. Until this incident I had felt relatively safe. I thought that the no matter how poor you were you could see that Habitat's efforts were a good thing. Sadly, I was wrong. I left a day early, just after this incident occurred. If the people in the neighborhood don't get it then there is no point in helping them. I don't think I would go back again as I have done in Detroit.

The only redeeming part of what was mistakenly called a Blitz was the couple who housed me. As an out-of-towner I asked for housing and was assigned to the parents of the director of the local habitat. I was treated better than if I was family. Each night they would move their car into the street so I could park in their garage. Each night the man would relinquish his recliner to me. I would recap the day's events while he retrieved cold beers. Twice his wife did my laundry. Each morning she made me breakfast. The first and last nights they took me out to dinner and refused to let me pay or even replenish their supply of beer. Coincidentally the woman and I have the same birthday. Naturally they sent me a birthday card and we exchanged cards at Christmas. This couple in their seventies simply could not have been nicer to me.

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