location, location, location.

 

A dream tormented me last night. Tormented me like a fly during a Sunday afternoon nap in September. It just kept buzzing around my subconscious. I would put it away and get back to blissful sleep and then it would come back; pestering me lik this blankity blank "e" ky. It is rally slowing m down.

Back to the dream; I dreamed that the snow had finally broken my spirit and that I was ready to move to a warmer climate. Somehow Bev and I ended up in Waco Texas, looking at a suburban brick house across the street from an elementary school. It was late February. The children were on the playground in colorful light jackets. We could hear the distant squeak of a swing chain as they rode their happy parabolic track punctuated by the screams of delight from being untethered from their desks.

The front lawn had broke dormancy and was a lush green. Some of the early bulbs had pushed their heads through the sod. Then going inside, we found that the house had not been taken care of and there would be a large amount of work to get it back into shape. We were negotiating a fair price for that labor when suddenly it hit me that it was Waco Texas. In about two weeks the sun would cross the equator and start paying attention to this little quarter acre lot and it would turn into Hades on judgment day. You would walk outside for Memorial day and feel the sun stripping the skin off your bones like it had done to all of those longhorn cows in every western tableau ever painted.  Arghh.

Besides that, it was Waco Texas; home of the branch Davidian compound. The home of the Davidiots, the Waco Whackos, Reno’s last stand. We couldn’t live in Waco.

Why is it that some events become so tied to their geography? Waco, Columbine, Lake Placid, Little Big Horn, Valley Forge, Gettysburg, Wood Stock, Tiananmen Square, are names that evoke immediate emotional responses. True most of them are tragedies but Wood Stock, and Lake Placid both elicit positive responses. Valley Forge, while a place of great suffering, resonates as a place of the power of perseverance through dark and difficult times. After the events are over, we flock there to see what happened. Our imaginations aren’t big enough to take it in unless we go there to see where it happened. Bev and I just finished a book about Columbine and its aftermath. We were both saddened by the part that recounted all of the tour buses that came through to look at the outside of the school and how it affected the survivors in the community; sharpening their  memories; reminding them over and over that they had become a curiosity that needed to be examined.

I must confess that I am the same way. I have read dozens of books about Gettysburg. The best ones are where the author can describe the geography the clearest. In spite of all of that knowledge, I was there last summer; one of the curious gawkers, going from front to front looking at the distances, the elevations, learning the place; the space that contained the event.

That is why we go look. We want to make sure that the events are contained. No matter how big the event, it was not larger than the space needed to contain it. By definition, that is the case but we don’t believe it. We have to make sure. People go by the thousands to make sure that the events that affected people so much were contained; making sure that they had not escaped the boundary of geography. Even the best books can’t describe the setting well enough. No, after reading we have to go and see the story’s fuzzy edges to make sure it didn’t go any further. We don’t even trust maps. How can we be sure that events did not escape off of the edge, and aren’t lurking just past the page? We have to see the place; make sure that geography captured every thing

We have to make sure the big events are in their place and we are in ours.

Take care,

Roger

Post Script

I found out today that I may have to explain the Branch Davidians to a large number of the readers. It was a small cult of people who made bad choices and followed David Koresh to a small camp ground in Texas and set up shop and then in 1993 after buying guns creating a bunch of bunkers, the ATF tried to arrest them. They shot at the ATF killing some officers and some Davidians died in return fire. A standoff and siege started and lasted  51 days. It ended when the FBI tried to knock down a wall with a tank. A fire started, and many people died including children inside of the compound.

I am a bit astounded that I have to explain it. But my daughter, son, and niece who are at the house this weekend had no idea what I was talking about. I pointed out that they were alive when it happened and if they were too young to remember shouldn’t a modern US history class cover an event where 76 of its citizens were killed as a direct result of actions taken by the government. No matter what you believed to have happened there isn’t it worth discussing.