"Haven't seen you in a hot minute."

  "Yah, time flies!" 

  "It's been real and it's been fun, but it sho as hail ain't been real fun." 

  "What would be real fun darling?" 

  "Not listening to underclassmen screeching and all abuzz." 

  "They're trendy!  Remember when you were?!"

  "Naw.  What year is this?"

  A this-side-of-middle-ager was off-loading surplus medical equipment and supplies from a van with a flat.  "Where's it gotta go chief?" 

  Bit of a huff and puff, "Not a chief." 

  "Yet." 

  "If I could get it down to one job or career or whatever this is.  Match these tags boo." 

  "Holy whazham!" More people walked up.

  People had saved and "saved" since the storm back then and being before "organizer" was a real job, thete were people with the natural tendency.  Because a lot of the storm recovery had phases and stages many of us "jacks and jills of all trades" almost seemed to be taking turns at what needed doing.  We felt behind the rest of the country in terms of jumpstarting the economy.  But it turned out, there was so much debt to pay down, and mis-management disasters to recover from we were in good shape as the states of TN and NC. 

  Even as prices fluctuated in mass retail while US retailers adjusted to world changes in making, buying, and selling, locals and locales became really more community-minded.  Country people were in their "element" with helping each other and using ingenuity and creativity to work around and save our livelihoods and homesteads.  

 "All in a day," a young mother running the "office" of multiple landscapers and carpenters said as she unloaded a minivan of people needing a "ride up the hill."  I asked her how it went with all the shoes that had been donated.  Their area had had some musicians stalled like a lot of people on their way to somewhere else and they all had macaroni salad, music, and a "Boot Shuffle" in which nobody left without footwear. 

  A medical student had been with us for the drop off and had one of those germ-lights to show why so important to wear non-holey footwear.  The pastor's wife from a church in Candler, NC pinched Bigfoot's working arms muscle and said, "See Bigfoot, the germ thing is real." 

  "Yes, sister, but Jesus himself often went barefoot.  Just saying." 

  The WNC and TN churches were working hard to maintain a peaceful commonground even as warring in the world included money stuff and violence.