By: Jefferson Weaver
I hope you will forgive me, friends, but I’m doing something a little different this Friday.
I still want you to hug your momma, roll in the grass with your dog, read to a little kid, pray for those who need it and those who don’t want it, and fiercely, unapologetically love the one closest to you.
I especially want you to lift the Princess as Brother Will Martin does the unthinkable, and sends one of his little girls down the aisle to become the responsibility of another man. And pray for the prospective bridegroom if he ever draws the wrath of The Squirrel Army.
But seriously– some things I heard this morning, which I won’t relate here, disturbed me. To put it simply — people are not only forgetting what happened on this day, but they’re encouraging our children to not even consider it at all.
As such–I hope you don’t mind the below, in place of the usual Friday missive. And as always–wake up the possums, and let us howl, howl, howl.
• Guns, flagpoles and a piece of plastic (Note from the writer—I don’t like to reprint columns, but as I thought of the anniversary coming up this week, I realized that you sometimes just can’t do something any better than you have before.) Please hold your family close this week, and honor the memories of those lost. Our neighbor and I stood shocked in the parking lot, watching the sky. It was an airliner, larger than those that usually passed over our town. But nothing was usual that day.
The plane was one of hundreds, maybe thousands, rerouted to the nearest airport on Sept. 11, 2001. In this case, the airliner was following the path normally flown by C-130s, C-17s and other planes headed to and from Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base.
We knew in our minds it wasn’t likely the jet was going to be crashed into anything, but on that morning, our hearts weren’t sure of anything.I watched the planes hit New York, as did many of you. We waited as the news came from Washington and Pennsylvania. Miss Rhonda was on the air – a little AM local station that plays country music, obituaries and the swap shop has a greater responsibility on days like that. Although she didn’t feel it, she had to provide a voice of calm and normalcy in the few breaks between the national feeds, hastily patched together on antique equipment.
After getting my wife to work, I went to my mother’s house, right around the corner. We had an office there, where my folks and I fed stories to the Fayetteville paper several times a day. I was expecting a call that afternoon for a new job, but most importantly, I wanted to be there for my mom. Sept. 11 was my father’s birthday, and she wanted to go to his grave that afternoon.
Somewhere along the line, I had to go back to our apartment; it was a practical errand, but I cannot tell you what it was for. I do know that as I unlocked the door and went inside, my head still fogged from watching hundreds of Americans die on national television, I went straight to the corner and snatched up the house gun.
I admit, I felt silly.
The likelihood of Muslim terrorists hitting a small town in southeastern North Carolina – especially one with a huge pork processing plant – was minuscule at best. But I felt better, knowing that if something bizarre did happen, my family would be protected as best as I could.
As I thought of that now-amusing moment the other day, I remembered my outdoors mentor, Mr. Woody, telling how his father (a World War I veteran) sat on the front porch of his old mill house with a double-barrel rabbit-eared 10 gauge after news of Pearl Harbor came over their radio. Woody’s dad was long gone, but the shotgun was still around when I was a kid learning about rabbits and quail and life in front of Mr. Woody’s wood stove. It was longer than I was at the time. Had a Japanese or German aircraft appeared over Erwin that day, the senior Mr. Eason would have given it two loads of paper-wrapped Double XX, I am sure.
I think that’s something many Americans did, or at least wanted to, on Sept. 11, 2001. There is a reassurance in holding a firearm, a comfort leading back to the nation’s earliest days.
When my brother got home from work that evening, we did something else many Americans did. My Old Man always made sure there was a flag for the front porch of our home. It was my job, as a little fellow, to make sure it came in at dusk, or if it was raining.
Papa came from a generation that understood the importance of patriotism and what that flag stands for, and he made sure his children did, too. Our flag was mounted on a column by the front door, but Brother Mike and I had other plans. A pulley, a heavy pipe, a length of rope and some determined digging gave us a new, taller flagpole in the front yard. It wasn’t the best flagpole, but it was taller and prouder than the one from the porch. Again, it was a matter of principle; if the Palestinian store owner down the street could proudly fly a larger American flag – possibly out of patriotism, probably out of self-defense – then by cracky, so would the Weavers.
Mother lived on a classic little street of homes from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and every porch, every yard, and many windows had a flag. When the comfort of a September breeze blew down the street, it was a picture of patriotism and pride. I doubt anyone could break down the feelings of every American over the next few days. Fear and pride and outrage, with very little joy, even when survivors were found.
A few weeks later, my brother brought home a strange little piece of plastic from work. Back then, he worked for a company that built escalators and elevators; Mike described how the whole staff was gathered together one evening for a meeting. Everyone from the janitors to the engineers and millwrights and office people were there, except for one who was with her family. They’d lost someone in New York. One of the company’s national bosses was there, and he held up a blackened piece of plastic, with chunks of metal and glass suspended in the material. It came, he said, from the Pentagon.
The workers at the plant were being asked to do something that couldn’t be done – they were being asked (not ordered) to build an escalator to replace the one destroyed at the Pentagon.
The impossible part was the schedule; it would be hard enough to do their part with easy sources of supply, but in the days after 9/11, nothing was easy. Mike and his fellow workers did the impossible, because that’s what Americans do. They beat their deadline, and even improved on the original specifications.
The piece of plastic Michael brought home was one of the scraps given to all the workers for their hard work, a reminder of the part they played in showing the new enemy what they were up against.
We’ve come along way since 9/11, but I can’t say what for. The war has been long, confusing, and misdirected more times than anyone can count. What started as a clarity of purpose has instead become a crutch for politicians.
Meanwhile, a whole new breed of bad guys are making it likely that another crop of American sons and daughters will have to go back overseas and show folks what happens when you, as the saying goes, mess with America.
I just hope that, as we head for another September morning, this one stays golden and full of hope, as ours did years ago, and that we don’t need to again desperately seek comfort in a piece of plastic, a flagpole, and a gun.
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