Vicksburg, MS

While evacuated in Jackson, MS for Hurricane Ike, we ventured over to Vicksburg National Military Park to tour to famous Civil War battlegrounds in Vicksburg, MS. We had a couple of car loads, with Blake Bensen riding with us while his mother Suzann, sister Savannah, and their grandmother followed in the car behind.

I wasn't 50 foot into the drive-thru park when, while attempting to read the inscription on one of the hundreds of monuments located along the drive, I jumped the curb onto to the grass, causing screams from everyone in both cars.

The screams quickly turned to laughter while I gathered myself and tried to keep my eyes on the road. The park design makes that hard to do at times, since many of the less-significant monuments are designed to see from the road and have no particular pull-over. For more prominent monuments there are pull-overs where you can park your vehicle and explore. After our earlier trouble, we soon adopted this method of taking in the park's sites.

We also purchased the driving audio tour at the visitor's center, a narrated CD that is timed to the park's speed limits and explains the monuments your looking at as you drive. This proved very useful and helped us get the most out of the few hours we spent there. The park ends at the cemetery, where therer are several dramatic overlooks of the cemetery and the Mississippi River. I got the shot of Alex & Eric, below, atop one of these overlooks.

Ike = Ouch

Well, we have now evacuated for two hurricanes this season in as many weeks. While Gustav went farther east into Baton Rouge, leaving us pretty much unscathed, this time we were hit much harder.

Due to forecasts showing Ike causing poor weather as far north as Austin, we decided to evacuate to Jackson Mississippi. There, we stayed at a hotel suite that allowed pets and sat around watching news of the storm. Things got ugly very quickly and, while we tried to keep busy with friends who had also evacuated to Jackson, we spent a lot of time worrying. We took in some museums, the Natchez Trace, the battlegrounds in Vicksburg, and a couple of trips to Cock of the Walk for fried catfish. We even fished a while in a local reservoir, even though we were warned it was pretty much barren (it was).

Still, our minds kept returning to what was happening at home and when national news on the storm dried up in favor of news of the financial meltdown that had begun that same week, we became totally dependent on news from the web via my laptop. It's subsequent "crash" left us blind and feeling very isolated until the great tech-guru's at Circuit City got me running again.

It turns out, we had good reason for our fears. The Rozells are blessed again with minimal damage. Where we had more than $30,000 in damage from Rita, who roared in 4 weeks after Katrina in 2005, Ike has left us with exterior damage only, mainly our fence.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Bonny & Steve, and many of our other friends, family, and co-workers. Bonny & Steve's Bridge City home is likely a total loss. Not protected by any seawall of sorts, the storm surge inundated the entire municipality of Bridge City. By some reports, only 13 structures in the entire city was without some degree of standing water. As far Bonny & Steven's home, what with them being essentially on the marsh, they took the brunt of the surge and had at least six feet of moving water, marsh mud and debris. It will take some time to get a full grasp on the damage but, for now, they have arranged to live in a friends trailer in Buna while cleaning up the mess and trying to salvage what they can. Numerous of my co-workers also lived in Bridge City, all suffering serious damage due to the storm surge.

Also lost is much of our beloved beach in Crystal Beach, on the Bolivar Peninsula. The photo on the left is a well-publicized photo from the Associated Press of the devastation there.  We have many friends and neighbors that apparently have lost their property there. Our friends and next-door neighbors Jim & Donna Wade, from whom we frequently rented, have lost both rent homes they owned there. They had two beautiful cabins on the second row. Today, only the slabs remain.

If you read my previous post concerning our evacuation from Gustav only a few days earlier, Ike seems to be the fulfillment of some unintentional foreshadowing. This one was no vacation.

Gustavacation

We ran from Hurricane Gustav after local officials issued a mandatory evacuation for our area of the Gulf Coast.  We camped out at Scooter & Claire's house in Austin along with Bonny & Steve and Vickie & Bailey Moore.  Scooter & Claire were traveling, but we made ourselves at home knowing they expected us to use the place like it was ours. 

Boy, did we take over the place!  What the neighbors must have been thinking!  We had taken all the cars to avoid flood damage and had around 6 vehicles between us.  Of course, we had to take the dogs too!  

The kids played video games (we couldn't very well have evacuated without those!) while we ran around town like we were on a vacation.  In fact, after getting the all-clear and returning home to no damage, Bonnie dubbed the trip our Gustavacation and sent me these photos.

Even Honey looks like she's enjoying herself.

I hope the next evacuation goes as well.  They are a pain, no doubt, but would be fair worse if accompanied by massive damaged upon our return home.

Thanks for the hospitality, Scooter & Claire.  Our only regret was that you weren't home!

Drago Supply sells to Motion Industries

As expected, Drago Supply completed its sale today to Motion Industries. Joe Drago will be retiring as CEO in the near future. His replacement, if any, is yet to be named. There's plenty of speculation to go around, though.

After 77 years as a family-owed firm, Drago is now a subsidiary of a company with over 500 branches in the US and Canada with around 5,000 employees. Motion themselves is a subsidiary on Genuine Parts Company (GPC), a fortune 500 firm with more than 3 billion in sales and more than 30,000 employees. GPC's automotive parts division (NAPA Auto Parts) is the largest of it divisions, but has significant sales from it industrial (Motion) and electrical divisions. In other words, Drago is a very small piece of a much larger pie.

As far as my job is concerned, the official word is for no change. The reality, however, is that my position is in corporate, where there will be inevitable overlap of functions between the two companies. I would expect that when Motion has caught their breath and are ready to take another bite, they will swallow the corporate functions of Drago and eliminate duplication.

That's not to say I won't have a role to play in Motion, it just won't be current role. Or, I may be out altogether. The next several months, maybe even couple of years, are going to prove interesting and full of change.