Plight and Fight

First the Plight. As you may have heard on the news, we had some more rain yesterday and it caused some flooding to the point that several local school districts cancelled class. It wasn't a problem for my commute but the underpass at I-10 and the west belt. That area always floods but this time it was bad enough for news crews to show up and also for people driving by on the freeway to act like idiots and pull over and act like it was a big party.

It wasn't much of a problem for Garden #2 which has the melons and squash but Garden Number one got hit pretty hard. The Spinach and Lettuce that were starting to come back got pretty much obliterated and the peas were hit pretty hard also. The mounds of dirt I had created pretty much all got flattened out and quite a few roots were exposed on the tomato and cucumber plants. Still, It looks like it will probably come back if we can get a break from the heavy rains. I will just have to wait and see.

Today, K-Love, one of my co-workers and friends, decided to head over to Sams Diner to get a Hamburger. As we drove up the feeder street to the turn-around/underpass, I noticed one of the local hobo street people walking across the street. There was a guy on the right side of the street who had a cardboard sign and was working the traffic. There are about 8 or 10 lcal hobos in this area. They all pretty much look like homelesss people and I had never thought about the fact that they all happened to be white but the New Dude that was working the corner on the right was a black guy. The white guy had long hair and a beard and walked up to the Black guy and it was pretty obvious that he was being aggressive. He started raising his hands and trying to intimitdate the black dude. It was pretty clear that he was telling him to get off the corner. He raised his hands a few time and made some agressive type motions but did not touch the new guy. The new guy then kind of repositioned his stance, threw a fake with his left and then came across with a Right and the white street guy was on the ground. It wasn't a true knock-down as far as official scoring. He did hit him but the guy also tripped backwards and did catch his fall with his hands and came back up. He backed away a good distance and continued with the verbal assault so the new guy walked on towards him and at that point horns were honking and we had to move on. Off to the left a group of the local orignals had come out from under the underpass and were just watching thier friend get his ass kicked.

We then took the U-Turn and came around to the other side of the freeway and I see all kinds of flashing lights and vehicles about a quarter mile down the road. There were news crews and also many curious bystanders. It was the location where a 43 year old hispanic man accidentally turned right into the cement drainage culvert which is pretty deep. Apparantly it was flooded and he thought he was turning onto the street but instead ended up in the water. They found his body today and you can read about it in the news. It is really sad to think about how out of the blue, this guys life was just over.


After we ate and were headed back to the office, I asked K-Love if he wanted to drive by and have a look to see if the black dude was still there with his cardboard sign. He actually was very positive about the idea so we drove on. It turned out he was still there and we pulled up and K-Love handed him a couple of bucks and let him know it was for the right hook. It was a pretty clear that the other poeple were being fairly nasty to him and it was good to see that he stood his ground.

That is all for now.

Please get some sleep. It is good for your health.