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| Hawthorne Community Center |
The Shell gas station in Dickson, Tennessee, right in front of our Motel 6, probably wouldn't stand out in anyone's memories of a drive across the country. Neither would the adjacent Sudden Service quick-mart (with the possible exception of the walk-in cooler. Welcome to the Beer Cave read the decal letters on the door. It was nice.) Few if any of the dozens of gas stations and convenience stores we'd seen would remain in memory except for that one reliable constant: the people.
Roberta, one of the Sudden Service clerks, kept the line of customers inside waiting as she lingered outside next to the truck. “I’m serious, you guys...This is amazing…” Her Boston accent trembled with emotion. “How absolutely, incredibly beautiful...” She dropped a note in and stood for a moment, one hand over her trembling lips, before climbing back down off the truck. “This is certainly an honor, being a part of this...”
We’d met tons of people. We’d seen so much emotion. But few in my mind matched the intensity, the unfettered purity of Roberta’s response to all the things she saw in that cross.
Standing on the oily cement she continued to stare, her deep eyes a mix of the strongest of human emotions until they began to tear up. “You guys...take care of yourselves...” She wiped her eyes and hurried back to her line of customers.
Roberta's co-worker Linda showed a much different kind of reaction. As a work of art the cross piqued her interest. As a memorial going to Ground Zero it flipped a visceral switch. “I gotta go, you guys are making the hairs on my arms stand up,” she said. Then Jon showed her the brick, explaining what it was, and she turned into a cornered animal. “No thank you,” she said, backing away. She wouldn’t even touch it, forget about hold it in her hands. “No way I’m laying a finger on that thing,” she said before thanking us and turning to make a beeline for the Sudden Service doors.
Kellie was from Bivins, Texas, and was working at a coal power plant in Mt. Storm, West Virginia on September 11th. Unlike so many people all across the country that day, he had no time to stare at the television to watch events unfold. His facility in Mt. Storm supplied power to Washington, DC. And on that day, he said, DC was eating up energy.
“It really hits something deep in your heart,” his wife Annie added, talking about 9-11 probably, or Jon’s cross maybe, or perhaps both or a whole lot more.
As Jon was replacing the gas cap Kellie pulled out his wallet. “You fellas need a little help along your way?” Jon politely refused, as he had many times before, with varying results.
In a placid Indianapolis neighborhood was the Hawthorne Community Center and a calm swarm of people, from a handful of seniors all the way down to a mass of kindergarteners who could have come straight out of a casting call for a United Colors of Benetton advertisement. After the heat of New Orleans and Memphis the Indiana sun was a gentle blessing, floating down on us as the good folks of this mellow and welcoming neighborhood gathered in a casual cluster, all ears to the story of the cross. They milled around, angling for pictures and sharing pens to write their notes, waiting politely to ask questions and offering their thoughts and thanks.
“You boys don’t realize how important this is to people,” one elderly man said. He was bald, portly and utterly confident in his words. “What this means to us, and to everyone else who sees this, is something that words cannot express. Remember that, okay?”
From the way he spoke, and from the look in his eyes, it was easy to believe he’d been on a similar journey himself.
Jon continued talking to people and helping kids get up onto his truck and down again. Jason and his crew kept filming and snatching quick interviews. I looked around, at all the children. At their wide-eyed innocence. Aside from the physical, visible damage of 9-11 their perceptions of that faraway day were naturally and blessedly vague. The abstract weight that their parents felt was beyond the grasp of their little minds. And while I wished for them it could always be that way, I knew that if the world that they would soon inherit was to be any better than the one we were living in now they would need to know how hard, and how close to home, things could hit.
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