It gets long attempting to give detail. I keep remembering things that I need to add like how Buddy Spell shouted out at Camp Casey on Thursday night that he guessed there wasn’t going to be any arrest, or how Tim Goodrich in his many travels knows the IHOP menu by heart and ordered over the telephone for quick pick up as we left the Fort Hood area, or how also on Friday a woman drove from Waco who was Filipino and made lumpia for us and it was so good I should have had to pay for it….not kidding, it was gourmet. I ate well on Friday.
As Friday wound down at Camp Casey I drove to Peace House and a parking place could still be found out front but we were all scrunched in about as scrunched as we could be. I sat on the porch for awhile and then joined a group in chairs out in the yard. The Veterans were starting to show up by the bushel full. One Vietnam Vet was in that group who reminded me so much of my Uncle. Very fit and sharp and full of energy and life, and he had just finished fighting cancer and they had given him disability considering the agent orange. That was why he was there, because he could be there.
Cindy was at Peace House in her P.J.s and she was so happy. We were beginning to hear rumors about vigils taking place elsewhere and people who may come to Camp Casey tomorrow. She came over and hugged me and asked me if I thought this was all just wonderful, and I did…I never really thought I would see the day when the Iraq war was getting the challenge it so so so deserved. Maybe my husband won’t go back. Maybe more will survive on both sides!
There was an extremely huge guy sitting across from me who said very little. There was a cooler in the middle of the group and frequently he would lean forward and take a beer out of it and it would disappear. I asked who he was and the Vet told me that he was just a local Crawford neighbor who had taken a shine to us and thought that we were okay. I asked if I could have a beer and they said sure. I picked a Budweiser bottle out and tried to open it and couldn’t. I got my car keys out and tried to pry it off with my key but my key is too well worn. The huge neighbor guy gets up and grabs the top of the bottle and twists the cap off and smiles nicely at me.
After my beer is gone so is most everybody else, all gone to bed. I looked in the cooler and there was one Corona left. I looked at the top very closely and it definitely wasn’t a twist off! I swear! I got my keys out again and tried to pry it off with them, but it didn’t even work for the twist off before. I slipped and the cap gouged my finger pretty good. I was so tired, I put my gouged finger in my mouth and sucked on it and started for my car to find something to open it with. In the car I checked the glovebox, nothing…….all the little cubbies, nothing. I was so tired. I thought that maybe if I just laid back for a moment I would think of something that would get the cap off. I positioned the front seat to lay back and immediately fell asleep and yesterday my husband asked why a Corona was rolling around all over the car.
Saturday morning dawned and Peace House stirred early. I went into the kitchen and found some trail mix and granola bars. Drank two cups of coffee and went out to Camp Casey when shuttles began coming back and asking people to take their cars out there and preserve some parking for Camp Casey because counter protesters were showing up and parking in our parking place.
When I arrived at Camp I called Cat (still snoozing), Diane was ill, called Susan and got a hold of Susan. As we talked I looked up and saw a blazer in front of me that had just parked and the gent in it began pulling out flags on poles and sticking them in the gap between his vehicle body and front and rear bumpers. When he was done he had two large American flags floating in the wind and one large Texas flag. He also had about six or seven different ribbon magnets on the back of his blazer, I swear to God I didn’t know there were that many different colors and slogans. He also had a bumper sticker that read Heritage not Hate, I really hate that one! I was complaining about him to Susan on the phone, then we hung up and I took a really long hard look at him.
He was pretty thin and bearded and had a T-shirt on that was something about Midland Texas. He walked around like a rooster looking for a fight. Here comes another true confession from me, the guy looked a lot like my third cousins who still live at the Ranch East of Colorado Springs. A couple of Easter’s ago we went out there for Easter dinner and no kidding, one of my thin bearded cousins came to the table with a double shoulder holster on with the guns in it. Since my daughter is a chip off the ole butthead she asked him if he had been having trouble with the Indians again lately and we both dissolved into a fit of giggles. The same cousin also got a tattoo that he was so proud of of a skeleton running holding the rebel flag. He was born at the same hospital I was in Colorado Springs a few months before I was so I couldn’t help asking him what the hell the rebel flag was about. He told me that his great grandfather had been a Reb and I said that’s funny how mine was too but he decided to LEAVE the South and settle in Colorado! Hmmmmmmm! So suddenly I became unafraid of and unpissed at the guy parked in front of me.
I got out and went over and shook his hand and he offered me a seat on one of his lawn chairs and we talked for about an hour. His name was Gary (so is one of my redneck cousins, will the coincidences just stop already!) He didn’t say much about Iraq. He mostly talked about the minutemen and how we needed to protect that border and we were just giving our country away, and he talked about how he and his wife had never been able to have a child so he doesn’t understand abortion at all. He said that he had driven from Midland, Texas and wasn’t sure if he had the gas money to make it home. All in all he seemed kind of confused about what statement he was trying to make there, but was excited because for some reason he thought that Hannity was going to be there. Maybe he was, I never saw him though. He gave me my first soda with sugar in a long time. It was one of those mini Dr. Peppers. I love Dr. Pepper and it was small so I didn’t feel too guilty. Some people from Camp Casey would mosey by and shake there heads, they probably weren’t blessed with redneck cousins. The back of my neck was really getting sunburned and I showed it to Gary and we both laughed that we were both rednecks. Then we began talking about Iraq and a woman approached and said that she agreed with me. She shook our hands and said that she had come because she had a son over there. She showed us his picture and she took over talking to Rebel Gary and I began walking to camp from parking.
It wasn’t long before more counter protesters began showing up. They were parking at the ranch below Camp Casey where Bush had had his BBQ fundraiser the day before and they were walking up the road and assembling in the same ditch where the Gallagher protesters had been the day before.
At the start of the line of counter protesters was a large woman dressed in red, white, and blue and a sun visor. She held out a large sign that said Cindy, my son was killed in Iraq! Let him rest in peace! Doesn’t she know that all of the noise in the world that we could ever make will never disturb his slumber? I thought it was a very odd thing for a parent to put on a protest sign. There is no doubt that he will rest in peace…..I think it is her who doesn’t want to be disturbed by us and doesn’t want us bringing up facts that could make his loss even more painful for her! In my personal handbook on parenting she is failing miserably, she has placed her own personal comfort ahead of the comfort of her children. She has used her children to make her own life more comfortable in the fashion that she wants it to be comfortable in! I will never sell the lives of my own children in search of a place to “fit in” in this society!
Then of course there was my favorite guy in the whole world. The guy standing hip deep in counter protesters holding the sign towards us that said Help, I’m surrounded by American hating idiots!. Do you guys think I should have run over there and held out a hand to pull him out of the ditch and save him? As Cindy pointed out also there were several signs held out to us that read Stay the Course and we all decided that we would and we really appreciated the support.
