‘I just wanted to have a beer’

Posted: 9:38 a.m.

Gregory Popelka wasn’t even nervous. After all, this wasn’t his first hurricane. He’d weathered plenty of storms before.

So he didn’t stock up on anything — no water, no dry food, no

rainboots.

But that’s hard to do when you’re homeless.

Sure, he could have gone to a shelter.

“But I just wanted to have a beer,” he said by way of explanation, as he stood amid Galveston’s flooded streets.

So he chose to hole up in an abandoned downtown building with a few comrades — including the woman he gave his last pair of socks.

And so he stood sock-less and grimy on a dry patch of post office sidewalk Tuesday afternoon, staring in dismay at the broken bicycle in front of him. In this sudden mid-day deluge, it was his only way to get to the Salvation Army — and find a warm meal. And now it was broken. “I just need a screwdriver,” he says. “Do you have a screwdriver?” No. Popelka dipped down to wash off his bleeding, grease-covered hands in the murky floodwater a few feet away in the street.

A man leaned out a nearby window screaming obscenities for no apparent reason.

Popelka ignored him and started searching the nearby parking lot for anything to yank on his stuck bike chain.

And that’s where he was 20 minutes later when the Galveston Fire Department forged through the 3-foot-deep waters on the roadway to pick up him, possibly headed to a dry place to sleep — but at least headed to a warm meal.