Dinner in the zoo

Jen and I try to get away for a weekend trip at least once a year without the children. We are fortunate enough to have family members nearby that enjoy taking care of and then giving back our children. This year we planned a getaway weekend to Austin and invited some of our best friends, Terry and Mary to join us. On a Thursday, we all loaded up in the Suburban and headed northwest to Austin.

We all started to get hungry once we left I-10 and made the turn onto Highway 71. I remembered eating at a good Mexican food place somewhere between LaGrange and Bastrop. As we were clipping along at or about the speed limit, I saw the sign for La Cabana and asked everyone if Mexican food sounded good. No one had an opinion, so Mexican food it was. I put the Suburban into a controlled power slide, made a quick u-turn and landed safely in the La Cabana parking lot.

To enter the restaurant, there are two doors. We selected the door on the right. We entered into a small rectangular shaped room with a few tables and booths. Upon entering, everyone inside looked toward the door, which seemed normal for a restaurant. We did not see a hostess stand, nor a sign that said "seat yourself". So, we stood around for a minute, and then one of the many kind waitresses approached us. In a strong country slang that was barely discernible as English, she asked if we wanted to sit in the smoking section, which was to our left and approximately the size of a large barn, or the small non-smoking section which we were currently standing in. We chose a booth in the non-cancer causing section.

A different waitress came to our table and in as friendly a way as possible, took our drink orders and then fetched us some of the best chips and salsa that we had ever eaten. A few minutes after we sat down, the door opened again and children began walking in. Not 1, not 2, not Jon and Kate + 8 either, but a bunch of kids followed by what appeared to be grandma and dad came in and sat down at a nearby table. I think I heard grandma call the kids Ricky, Dale, Jeff, Ernie, and Jimmy. Like true southerners, the kids were named after Dad's favorite NASCAR drivers. At least they were not called the #8, #24, #88, or Bud, Dupont, or Mountain Dew.

The rest of dinner was uneventful, except we ate at least 10 baskets of chips and 20 bowls of salsa, good stuff I tell you. We went up to the register to pay and that was when we all received confirmation of what we had been feeling the entire time. Everyone in the place was watching our every move. At least three of the waitresses along with almost all of the patrons eating in the cancer barn section of the restaurant were just openly staring at us as we paid our check. Now I realize that the four of us are all good looking people. But this was not the "wow, he/she is hot" quick look and then casually glance back a few times. This was "WOW, I have never seen a one-eyed, bearded, 8 foot tall lady with three arms and 4 legs" STARE! It actually made me self conscious, which is incredibly hard to do. I began to wonder if something was amiss, I began the mental checklist: hair/nose/teeth/is my pistol showing/zipper. I did a quick check and everything was fine. I checked the others and they all were in order. Then it hit me, we are city folk, outsiders, non-locals. I would venture to guess that everyone in the restaurant knew everyone else's name except for ours.

The experience instantly reminded me of going to the zoo.

Everyone crowds around the lion exhibit when they are active to see what they are going to do. Why? Because we do not live in the semi-arid plains and Savannah grasslands within the southern areas of the African continent where the lions live naturally. We do not see lions on a day to day basis. So, at the zoo we press our noses to the scarred plexiglas and watch.

In Smithville, the home of La Cabana, they do not see big city dwellers daily. So, when city folk stop in town, everyone stops to watch.

Photo courtesy of Valerie Renee on Flickr

Hurricane Ike (the event)

The department ordered us in to work on Friday at 1400 hours, or 2 PM. We were told that we would be working through our regular shift which is 2200-0600, or 10 PM to 6 AM. They added a qualifier that in order to leave, we had to be relieved by a day shift officer. The storm was scheduled to come ashore at about 1 AM in Galveston, so 6 AM in Houston would be in the middle of the hurricane. None of us thought that we would be going home on time and many thought that we probably could not make it home anyway.

At roll call, after the Captain spoke for eons, a fellow beat officer told all of the 1A20 beat officers that he had a key to Langford's Grocery, which is a small restaurant located in the beat. He told us to meet over there a little later and that we would cook some burgers. Over the course of the two weeks of the hurricane Ike mobilization, we spent a lot of time at Langfords.

We were all told to find a safe place to "hunker down" once the storm rolled into Houston. We were also told that once winds reached a sustained 50 mph, we were to head to our spots to ride out the storm. Calls would not be dispatched until the winds slowed and it was safe for us to respond.

A few hours after roll call, I had to drive down to south to fill the patrol car with gas. The department was worried that the underground gas tanks at a southern station were going to be flooded and ruin the gasoline. On the way to the station, I went down to my parent's neighborhood which is just north of the Galveston causeway. The water was already very high. The exit for their neighborhood was under water and the water was already out of the canals and rising. The water was white capping and starting to blow sideways. There were only a hand full of other vehicles on the freeway, mainly news people and law enforcement. I took a few pictures and then headed back north.

Our "hunker down" spot was Bobby's apartment complex parking garage. He lives in some nice new apartments that are close to the station. At about 2200 hours, we made our way to the apartment complex. The winds were really starting to pick up and there were no calls for service. We got out the DVD player and watched a movie on the 50 inch plasma in the work out area of the apartment complex. While we were watching the movie, we were notified by someone that lives in the apartments, that someone was stuck in one of the complex's elevators. We found the broken elevator and attempted to open the stuck doors. In the movies it appears that you can grab the doors and pull and they will open if enough force in applied. Not the case in real life, at least not with this elevator. Luckily for the stranded people, the fire department arrived and they have keys that unlock the doors. They unlocked the doors, pulled them open, and the people climbed out. We concluded that the fire department gets all of the cool equipment. We returned to the work out area a little humbled by the elevator and finished the movie.

At about 0300 hours, we all headed out to the parking garage to watch the hurricane. By this time the sustained winds in the downtown area were reported to be in the 80 mph range. We watched transformer after transformer blow up. They give off a green light when they explode. A few caught on fire, but the sideways rains quickly extinguished the flames. At 0500 hours, the power at the apartment complex finally went out. It had flickered on and off for hours.

If you are still reading, you are in for a treat. At 0600 hours, some day shift units actually made it in to work and we could hear them getting in service over the radio. Pedro decided that he was going to try to make it back to the station. He asked for my opinion, and I told him to wait. While we were very close to the station, every route had the potential for high water. Pedro decided to try to make it anyway. He threw his rookie in the car and took off. About 10 minutes later, Bobby's phone rings, it is Pedro. He told Bobby that he had driven into some high water and was now stuck. The car shut off and would not start. Pedro told Bobby to ask me what to do. I got on the phone and called our dispatcher. I asked her if the city wreckers were running. Pedro was stuck less than 1000 yards from our station under the Memorial bridge off of I-45. We found out later that the wreckers were not running during the storm . While I was speaking to our dispatcher, a supervisor gets on the radio and states that there is an officer in distress stuck in high water. The dispatcher asks for a unit to check by with him, and Bobby and myself volunteer.

Upon reaching where Pedro was flooded, I observed that he was stuck directly over Buffalo Bayou. The bayou was rising and that is what was flooding the roadway. I decided that the water appeared passable and I drove out to get Pedro and his rookie. I reached them and they jumped into the backseat. Pedro began pleading with me to back up stating that the water was deeper the further that you went. I quickly surveyed the water and once again thought it was passable. As I began to continue driving through the water, Pedro was in the back seat yelling like some crazy crackhead that we were going to get stuck. I calmly continued and dropped Pedro and the rookie off at the station a few minutes later. Pedro was dumbfounded. He could not believe I had just driven through what he got stuck in. I told him that the water was in fact deeper now, as the bayou continued to rise. This fact did not make him feel any better.

Upon returning to the stuck car, Bobby and I watched as the bayou continued to rise. As the water reached about mid way up the car, the lights on the car began to flash. I think that car was screaming at Pedro as it succumbed to the rising water. After about an hour, the car was gone. We ended up getting back to the station at 1100 AM on Saturday, 21 hours after the start of our shift. We were due back at the station at 2000 hours or 8 PM for our first 12 hour shift of hurricane Ike mobilization.