Panhandlers to the rescue.

A beautiful thing.

Left to right: Cory Wildes; Jeff Puckett; “Big Poppy” Thomas; Tabitha Williams; Ryan Williams; Jake Muirhead; Brandy Muirhead; Jeffrey Reynolds.

FEMA? What's that? What does it do? There are folks in Panama City, FL, and elsewhere, who understandably don't think much of that outfit. So while western N. Carolinians were literally holding on for dear life while helplessly and naively waiting on the government to help, contractors from Florida answered the call. On Friday night six trucks and six tandem-axle trailers loaded with vital supplies, rolled into Haywood county, and on Saturday morning the men and women in those trucks hit the road to do the work of an incompetent government.

Haywood native Jake Muirhead, who lives in Panama City, proposed the convoy; and he and Panama City friend and colleague Rob "Big Poppy" Thomas, recruited other contractors and organized the road trip. On Monday after the flood a Facebook page was established that has generated more than 15-thousand dollars in cash donations, to be distributed as needed. Meanwhile the generous citizens and business owners in the Florida panhandle donated the goods that filled all the trailers to capacity.

Thomas and Muirhead and his wife, Brandy, were joined by friends and colleagues in Panama City who were eager to help. They included Ryan and Tabitha Williams; Cory Wildes; Jeffrey Reynolds; and Jeff Puckett. They all earn their way in the world in the various building trades, and, living where they do, they understand the horribly destructive power wrought by storms. Muirhead was also assisted in planning and delivering supplies by his Waynesville friend, Ryan Guest, who drove with the convoy.

The convoy's first stop was at Spring Creek, NC, where a couple of dozen volunteers worked in the community center next door to the fire department, unloading and organizing supplies. There was not a federal agent in sight. The Panhandlers unloaded two trailers of every consumer good imaginable, under the efficient supervision of Rebekah Trantham and Alice McVey, of Spring Creek. They and their volunteers, men, women and children, worked tirelessly to load and unload and deliver life sustaining supplies to their community.

In the days prior to heading north to the mountains, Muirhead had been in touch with Trantham, and when they met on Saturday the two realized they had been schoolmates years before.

In Spring Creek the convoy learned that Burnsville, NC, residents were in dire need of supplies, so they headed that way. Since road conditions were unknown, the Panhandlers had left four trailers behind, until they could verify that roads could accommodate the longer trailers. As half the convoy pushed on, the others returned to retrieve their trailers, with plans to rejoin the group further north. They later rendezvoused in Mars Hill, and forged ahead toward Burnsville.

Every item in every trailer, and every drop of the 700-gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel delivered by the convoy was donated by businesses and individuals in Panama City. And all of that was in addition to the cash that has been so generously contributed by fellow Americans all across the country. America may have lousy leadership -- make that non-leadership -- but the citizens are solid gold.

The convoy passed through the ravaged town of Hot Springs where, a week after the storm, people were stoically shoveling mud from their stores, and doing what they could to help one another. Most buildings are intact. Some were undermined, some collapsed, some were condemned as unsafe. The stores that withstood the flood were left with tons of mud deposited by the floodwater.

Apparently many, many people in the southeast had anxiously awaited Saturday, so they could assist in relief efforts. On that day the roads in and out of all the small towns from Waynesville to Spruce Pine and beyond were jammed with trucks and trailers owned by private citizens, all loaded with food, water, medicines and essential goods.

Traffic came to a standstill just outside Burnsville, where a damaged bridge forced traffic into a one-lane bottleneck. The convoy creeped along, and the trucks eventually made it to Mountain Heritage high school in Burnsville, where the drivers were told that supply deliveries had already flooded the place, so to speak. It was the same story in Hot Springs, Barnardsville and Spruce Pine. Determined and undeterred, the convoy reversed course in hopes of getting back to Spring Creek in time for the needy people there to accept more supplies.

One thing is abundantly clear. The government is incompetent. One might presume that of the 2.1-million government clerks, a few of them could have found their way down to the southeast to help the people who pay their salaries. There has been a lot of indignant and defensive posturing from the government. To hear them tell it, FEMA has and does have and will have everything under control. This is a revelation to people in the southeast whose homes and livelihoods were washed away in a muddy torrent.

The Panhandlers roared back into Spring Creek at about 5:30 p.m., to find a few people still milling around the fire department. But word got out soon enough, and in a few minutes three dozen or more residents magically appeared to offload the remaining supplies. It was a lot! And since a sizable portion was perishable food and there was inadequate refrigeration in the community center, the trailers were moved to the Baptist church across the highway, where freezers and refrigerators were available.

When the trailers were empty at last, the church fellowship hall was full. The Panhandlers had delivered enough food and water and supplies to sustain the little community for weeks to come. And there in the midst of all the death and destruction and misery, still were those stunned and storm-weary people able to laugh and cry and carry on. So grateful and so humble, they were beautiful, every one.

Whenever the term "the backbone of America" is mentioned, I do not think of the leaders of industry or the so-called masters of the universe in Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Such men and women are incidental, and they could not exist were it not for people like the Panhandlers. They and the hundreds or thousands of other Americans who this minute are up and down the roads and highways, delivering food and water to their fellows in need, THOSE people are the backbone of America.

The Hollywood crowd and the other incidentals who spend their lives enviously pretending to be each other will deny it, but they know that without men and women like the Panhandlers, their ivory towers would collapse. They consciously loathe those they think to be unworthy commoners; but they, they who cannot drive a nail or change a tire or flip a circuit breaker, they cannot hide from the truth that it is not the commoners they loathe, but their own inadequate selves.

The convoy returned to Panama City on Sunday, although Jake and Brandy Muirhead remained in Haywood county for a few more days, and on Tuesday he began using his skid steer to help people in the community clean up mud and debris. The towns of Clyde and Canton were wrecked by the storm, and the salvage and repair work will take years. But life will go on. As Gore Vidal wrote, "sometimes going on is the only thing left to do."