Okay - so this was totally exciting. The owner of a local grocery store called our office today, wanting to donate a load of bleach, through us, to various communities in our area. Cleaning up from a hurricane is a long process, and nobody will ever say no to another bottle of bleach to stave off mold and mildew and get the walls, floors, and dishes smelling fresh again instead of like marsh mud. But, in order to receive the bleach, we had to find someone to pick the pallets up and deliver them by the next morning. We could use the grocery store's truck, but we had to supply the driver.
I found a couple of churches who were willing to serve as distribution points, but there was not enough time to find volunteers to drive the delivery truck. I thought about it for a minute - could the load wait until Monday, perhaps? And then I took the plunge. I called our donor back, and I volunteered.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself behind the wheel of a bouncy, boxy, grocery store truck, peering down at the road from my perch. The pallets of bleach thumped behind me as I meandered down country roads, past cane fields and shrimp boats. At my last stop, a fire station, the fire chief and his family and the two firemen on duty got a laugh out of my arrival. "You drove dat big truck down here yourself?" the chief asked. "No. You didn't. You couldn't have."
The last pallet unpacked and unloaded, I chatted with the firefighters for a few minutes and then headed back up the road. The sun was low, and the trees and the water glowed pink. I rolled down my windows and let the air blow across my cheeks and into my hair.
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