A Labor of Love
January 13, 2018
The Business of Family
January 13, 2018
For close to a year, Houma native Reese Vedros’ wife Allyson has been asking for a new refrigerator – a request which would always fall on deaf ears.
“I looked at her and said, ‘Baby, the refrigerator still works,’” Reese said. “She looked at me back and said, ‘It’s more than 35 years old, it’s rusted and it won’t last for much longer.’”
Reese wasn’t just being a defiant husband. Deep down, he knew good and well the refrigerator needed to be replaced, but he didn’t want to add a note to the family’s monthly expenses with work slow and paychecks being a day-by-day thing.
“So we pushed it back,” Reese said. “I made every excuse known to man. I told her we’d get one after her birthday in June. I told her in June that we’d wait until autumn when there would be good sales. I told her anything I could to buy some time.”
Flash forward to the present and this holiday season, Allyson finally got the kitchen appliance she’d been longing for.
While at it, Reese even bought a little something for himself, adding a barbecue pit to his outside patio.
What changed?
The area’s local economic landscape, which is finally trending upward after a multi-year slump.
Consumer confidence is reasonably high in the Houma-Thibodaux area to start 2018 – as high as it’s been in many, many moons as oil prices have crept back above $60/barrel.
Sales tax numbers reflect that confidence, as collection figures this past fall increased for consecutive months – the first time since 2014 that’s happened locally.
“I think it’s going to come back,” well-known economist and LSU professor Loren Scott said. “In that area, things are so dependent on the oil and gas industry. When things are going well with oil, everything benefits. When things are bad with oil, everything is hurting. Forecasts are getting better and I think the trickle-down effect will be felt right away – for everyone.”
The numbers don’t ever lie.
In September and October, Terrebonne sales tax collections beat numbers from the previous year – a sign of quality growth for the economy.
October was particularly noteworthy because revenue increased in every measured category – the first time in nearly three years that that’s happened.
Sure, the numbers are still nowhere near where local leaders would like them to be. But the collections increases do show that perhaps the worst of the local recession has passed and brighter days are ahead for all.
Sales tax collections were colossal locally in 2013 throughout both Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes when the price of oil was more than $100/barrel.
But those figures tanked in 2014 when a Middle Eastern oil glut flooded the market, which caused the price of oil to plummet below $30/barrel, which led to the loss of thousands of jobs.
As one might expect, our area felt the pinch hardest with cuts affecting every, single aspect of local business and society – from major oil companies themselves to even our area’s schools, which pool from tax collections and have since had to make cuts to adjust to the tough economic time.
“Everyone has just been sort of hanging on,” Port Fourchon Executive Director Chett Chiasson said. “It’s been a tough time. A lot of people have been through a lot. Everyone is just hanging on as best they can. This is a really resilient industry.”
And that resiliency is showing in how locals are planning to spend their money.
For the Vedros family, that meant a new, brand-new refrigerator and the barbecue pit, which put smiles on the faces of both husband and wife this Christmas.
Reese, a welder, said worked picked up at his lot in the fall, thanks to a repair project he and his co-workers did to help relief efforts in Houston after Hurricane Harvey.
He said he returned home and expected work to slow down again after the Houston project was done, but he was pleasantly surprised, which led to his surprise holiday purchase for his wife.
“It had been so slow for so long. So many days, we were playing cards or getting sent home early,” Reese said. “Honestly, I am thankful to have kept my job because there are many days and weeks where that was in question. But lately, it’s been better – much better. People are starting to think that it’s going to be really good soon and they’re starting to get some projects ready for the future. There’s no way we’d have had as good a Christmas if not for this little stretch. It’s been nice. It’s felt normal.”
The same warm feeling has been felt in the Guidry household in Lockport.
Like the Vedros’s, both Sam and Holly Guidry have had a lot of things on their personal wish lists that have been left abandoned because of a lack of spare money lying around the family treasure chest.
Sam, a salesman, makes long trips and his car was pushing 200,000 miles and wasn’t working as well as it once did.
“My wife always told me to text her when I made it to my destination,” Sam said. “It’s because I knew that she was worried that I’d get stranded somewhere on the side of the road and would be in danger.”
Holly, a housewife, laughs, but concedes quickly that her husband is right and the text messages come from a place of concern.
But she, too, needed a few things a few months ago – namely a special mattress to remedy a severe back injury she sustained when she fell off her bike a year ago.
Thanks to a big sale Sam maneuvered to an oil and gas client, the family felt secure enough to indulge this past November. Sam got a second-hand car with good mileage and a small note, thanks to a trade-in.
Holly is sleeping better these days – in part because of the mattress she and Sam bought, but also because she knows that her husband is safe and out of the vehicle that they’d purchased back when the economy was great.
“It isn’t what is used to be, but I think more and more people are getting confidence that it is going to be and I think that is really good to hear,” Sam said. “Hope is a strong thing sometimes. And honestly, when it comes to work and jobs and everything else, it’s something that we haven’t had around here for a long, long time.”
