Auntie Maim Enterprises faired better than many through the ravages of Hurricane Ike, and our prayers go out to those who lost so much. We may be cleaning up trees and debris for months, but we’re up and running, and we have power back. So far, we’re still boiling our drinking water or getting it out of bottles, but the potable water should be back up sometime next week. San Leon, Texas still has checkpoints set up by the sheriff’s department, and only residents and repair-type contractors may enter the area where so many homes were damaged or destroyed.

I personally got a chance to see the San Leon Cemetery today, and got a little muddy righting some of the statuary that had been knocked around by the storm surge and wind. I haven’t enough oomph to set all of the headstones to rights (some of them are four-foot long granite slabs) but hopefully the volunteer council that manages the place will be able to fix that when things settle down a bit more.

My father’s grave, and the Navy man near him whom we’ve adopted, have flat markers, so they are just fine. Once we get the crab grass beaten back and new flowers put in, it’ll look like new. Unfortunately, the cool markers closest to the edge of Clear Lake, all of them wooden and too old to read anymore, are completely gone. I wish I had taken some photos of them, but I never took the time.

Southeast Texas will be awhile in recouperation, and the storm demolished a lot in its path beyond Texas borders as well, all the way up through Ohio and into Michigan. I sincerely hope these storms will stay in the far Atlantic for a good while and give all of us in the Gulf region a much-deserved reprieve.