One small step to reconstruction

I passed this house on November 12 of last year, and spoke with the owner. I complimented him on his early Christmas decorations, which I took as a courageous sign of recovery. "I had to dry 'em out somewhere," he replied.



Here's how the house looks now.



Progress is visible. The debris in front of the house is cleared away, and there's a FEMA trailer in the driveway. But mostly I was impressed by two small details. One is the sign on the garage entrance that says, "Welcome Home Lakeview." The other, much more hopeful is that the owner has scrubbed the dirty watermarks off the house.

And here's a pile of his stuff, out on the sidewalk back in November.