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When this latest round of electrical madness started last week, I heard about crews from other states coming to our aid, since our own utility company is pretty fucking useless. Except the workers. They're great. It's the business side that sucks.

Anyway, crews were coming in from Louisiana and Mississippi, even. "You know we're up shit creek when the utility companies on the Gulf Coast look our way and say, 'Damn. Our stuff can wait while we come up to Missouri and bail your sorry asses out. Again.'" It was a tongue-in-cheek jab at our utility company's inability to withstand anything sharper than a 20 MPH stiff breeze, not a jab at the good folks on the Gulf Coast. They've been through so much in the past year and a half, and still have so far to go, and yet they're sending workers to us.

There were three utility trucks on my street when Clara Jane and I got home this afternoon, all with Louisiana license plates and a New Orleans address painted on the doors, and my smart-ass remark suddenly turned into gratitude so strong I couldn't do anything but sit in my truck, shaking my head in disbelief.

I've got a crock-pot of Italian beef and barley soup cooking today, and at that point all I could do was wish that it was my sausage and chicken gumbo so I could give it to these guys, who hauled up here in the butt-ass cold after everything they've been through.

I pulled myself together and carried Clara Jane down the block to the nearest truck. "Excuse me," I yelled to the first worker I saw. "Did I read that right? Are you from Louisiana?"

"Yep," he barely looked at me since he was busy working his freezing ass off.

I just stood there on the sidewalk, trying to stay out of his way, yammering about how I was amazed that they were here, after all they've been through.

"Well, we're from northern Louisiana," he said. But I kept yammering my thanks. He probably thought I was too stupid to 1) stay out of the way of men doing dangerous work, 2) form coherant sentences, and 3) understand that Louisiana is a fairly large land mass and not all of it was gobbled by Katrina. At least I refrained from saying, "Northern Louisiana? I know someone in Shreveport! Do you know Janey?"

They spent the afternoon trimming trees and clearing fallen branches from the powerlines, the ones that probably caused the momentary power outage in my neighborhood last night. The power outage that filled me with so much anger and fear. Not this shit again. We pay how much a month to a utility company who does so little in maintenance that we've had four major outages in three years, outages that could have been less severe had they maintained the equipment properly, instead of eliminating jobs to improve profit margins?

Oh, I can't even get into that. Not here. Not now. I'm so fed the hell up with everything electricity-related. I just want to know how much of this latest mess can be attributed to shoddy service and, if it's a considerable amount, which rail we're supposed to use when we run the current company out of town.

Anyway, this isn't about ranting. It's about how incredible it is when people who've been through so much - and even though they're from northern Louisiana they still went through it. Katrina and Rita were huge drains on the entire state, not just the places that took direct hits. I hope they're getting paid well to be up here in the cold, away from home, helping the people in a city that they have absolutely no obligation to help.

Since I didn't have gumbo, I almost took them a few jars of homemade jam, but thought better of it. There's nothing worse than a thank-you gift that forces you to stop what you're doing so you can accept it, find a way to store it so that it doesn't break and leave you driving back to Louisiana in a dirty utility truck that's filled with rotting jam and the bugs that love it. The urge to give back is so strong, and I've been at odds with it all day. I wonder if it's the same urge that led those guys from Louisiana up here.