And we thought Back to School Week was bad

There are, according to news reports, an extra 1.5 million people in Austin this weekend. After having been out and about this morning, I think they missed a few when they counted, and they are all at Wal-Mart.

The store we frequent is the one closest to the DelCo Center and LBJ - the largest of 13 refugee centers now open in Austin. The parking lot was full of RVs, campers and loaded-to-the gills automobiles. Multiple families were camped out on the few grassy medians outside; more were just occupying space inside the store, and many, many more were desperately loading up on diapers, water and non-perishables. Store clerks were parking skids of foodstuff in the aisles as fast as they could and heading back for more.

There was a youngster we dubbed "Hurricane Andrew" running wild in the store. He was not creating as much havoc as his extra-loud extended family was by chasing him, yelling "Andrew! Andrew! Get back here!" Mom said he was actually doing pretty well, after have been yanked up from a familiar context, spending 8 hours in the car and spending last night in a big room with 350 of his closest friends. She also saw a couple looking at a stroller, contemplating spending their bill-paying money for someplace the baby could sleep tonight (most refugee centers do not provide beds).

She remarked how grateful we were that our house was not going to get flooded this weekend, and we did not have to leave our home and have to spend money we did not have just to exist, let alone lose income because we couldn't work.

Anderson High across the street from our church is often a refugee center, and the folks at the high school have become very dependent on us to help in these situations. This is a dependence that we welcome and cultivate. Early this morning there was a call to stand by for cooking duty this evening; they roll the grills onto the covered driveway and cook hamburgers and hot dogs for the masses. Later the word came that Anderson was not going to get pressed into service this time.

Mid-week we were all prepared to hunker down in survival mode as the path was predicted to come right over Austin. Now it looks like we'll be lucky to get any rain at all - certainly we'll get less than dry, dusty Lubbock! Maybe we can send them some extra people to help mop up. We have plenty!