Bunkie, LA: Music & Mexican Food

Fifteen minutes south of the Bayou Boeuf River we rolled into Bunkie, a Main Street mix of local joints, small businesses and national franchises. And, today, live music.

“Check it out,” Jon said, pointing at a parking lot on the right side of the road where a four-man band in cowboy hats was twinging their twang up on a flatbed trailer.

“Time to pull over,” I said as Jon was pulling over.

A modest mingling of people stood in the hot sun watching the band while others sat in the shade of a white canopy tent. “We’re celebrating the Grand Opening of Karen’s Kitchen,” they explained, pointing over to a small blue barn-like hut that could have housed an ice-cream parlor in a former life. “You guys hungry? Go get yourselves some lunch. Good home cooking for you!”

Excellent. Right there in the middle of Louisiana, in some small town along a two-lane road. Could there be a more perfect place to grab some real Cajun cooking? Some genuine Creole cuisine? Some mudbug jambalaya, or a heaping helping of down-home, authentic…Mexican food?

That’s how it goes when you decide to just see how it goes. (Karen, by the way, could make a mean enchilada.)

By the time Bert, Ronnie, Jason and Chad had finished their song the crowd, consisting mainly of Karen’s extensive family tree branches, was listening to Jon and passing around the brick. “We’re police officers,” said Chad, motioning toward Jon’s truck. “So this really means something special to us.” After having Jon climb up onto their flatbed stage to say a few words into the mike, Chad thanked him for bringing his project to their small town and asked everyone else to make sure they did the same. The band then fell into a seemingly spontaneous rendition of John Cougar Mellencamp’s Pink Houses.

With a population of four thousand Bunkie was by far the largest town we saw along the hundred-mile route between Alexandria and Baton Rouge. For two hours we rolled past the farms and fields and the homes that dot the flat landscape, no evidence of the wood-porch towns we were hoping for. When Route 71 ran into Route 190 we cut left and ran through the northern reaches of the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge, habitat for Louisiana black bear, American alligators, bald eagles, white-tailed deer and the eastern wild turkey.

We saw none of them as we rolled along through the northern tip of the thousands of acres of rich bottomland hardwood swamp they call home. Just south of us, running parallel to 190, were the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad. Interstate 10 brushed the southern boundary of the refuge. Somewhere in between, in the middle of all that green land, bordered on the west by the Atchafalaya River, all those bears and gators and turkeys were running wild. I would have given almost anything to see them.

Coalgate, OK: Why We're Doing This

Coalgate, OK Police & Fire Dept.

The cartoonish Coalgate Fire & EMS logo painted on the glass front door looked like an invitation if I ever saw one. We knocked anyway. Twice.

No answer. Twice.

We stepped inside. It was cool, dark and quiet. Sooty yellow turnout gear for a dozen men, maybe more, hung in a row along one wall. Helmets rested neatly on the shelves above. Below, big rubber boots stood in pairs. On the frames of the red metal racks were names written in black marker.

A hand-drawn memorial banner, dedicated to the New York Fire Department, hung on the wall at the top of the stairs.

Out of the silence came the sound of footsteps, followed by a lanky man in a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and the thickest moustache this side of Wyatt Earp. He smiled as he walked up to us. “Can I help you gentlemen?” Roger Wilson was off duty but still welcomed our odd intrusion with the kind of warmth you just can’t fake.

“How ya doin’?” Jon said. “Sorry to bother you like this, but uh…we want to show you something.”

Understandably, Roger looked a bit confused. He stroked his moustache and asked what it was we had to show him. Ten seconds of explanation and that confusion turned to intrigue. Mr. Wilson followed us outside.

“Man, we gotta show this to the rest of the guys! They’re just down the road! Come on, let’s go!” Three minutes later, in the parking lot behind the Family Health Center of Southern Oklahoma, we met with as good a bunch of guys as you could possibly imagine.

They spoke earnestly with Jon. They spoke quietly with each other. They held pieces of paper against the sides of their trucks or on their bent knees, writing notes and messages.

‘After 9-11, you know, all across the country and all across the world, we were brothers.’ On paper such a statement can come across as contrived, but when a guy like Berney Blue speaks you know it’s coming from the heart. ‘It means so much to us that you guys are here,’ said Assistant Chief Aaron Blue, Berney’s brother. 

On the edge of town Jon pulled over. “I gotta do something,” he said. The urgency in his voice made me think he had to take a whiz. The spark in his eye said he had something else to let out.

Jon dug into the pile of stuff in the back seat of the cab, pulled out a long blue sack and walked to the back of the truck. In that sack was an American flag tethered to a four-foot long flagpole that fit perfectly in one of the holes along the top edge of the side of the truck bed.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to do that,” Jon said to me as we pulled back out onto the road.

“Put the flag up?”

“Yeah. I’d been thinking about it but until now it just didn’t feel right. I felt like it would look like, I don’t know, some kind of political statement. And I didn’t want this trip to turn into some big Rah-Rah USA thing.”

“So why now?”

“Because I think that this is bigger than 9-11.” Jon paused, staring out at Route 75. “I mean, not that what we’re doing is bigger. Or more important or whatever because it’s not. But at the same time, you know, this is for all the people who died, obviously, but I feel like it really is for all the first responders who went down there, to Ground Zero, and then never came back. It’s for people like that who make this country great. And these guys we just met, they’re risking their lives to help other people. Maybe they’re not running into a hundred-story building that just got hit by a plane but still, all these guys are putting themselves on the line. That’s the attitude, you know, the spirit that made this country what it is. It ain’t about politics. It’s about people. And I kind of knew that when we started, I guess. But meeting all these people, and then talking to those guys back there… It all just came together.”

Jon’s words hung in the air. There was nothing else to say.

We rolled on, Jon’s flag whipping around in the breeze.

Oklahoma City: Past and Present

Heading east from Santa Fe the mountains turned into hills, which slowly gave way to flat desert horizons. Across the plains of the Texas panhandle and into Oklahoma we spotted dust devils and smoke from what might have been a huge brush fire. Miles and miles of open space along the eternal highway, rarely a farm or a windmill, an occasional town, and wire fence lining the road on both sides the entire way.

Jon noted that it was a blessing, perhaps, that our departure was delayed two days while we waited for our camera crew – otherwise we might have gotten caught in the tornados responsible for all the debris and bent, twisted signs and the dozens of uprooted and broken trees we saw along the several miles leading into Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City sits like a huge centerpiece on a vast dinner table, surrounded by overpasses of tarnished silverware and scraps of civilization scattered like crumbs. The downtown area, once filled with warehouses, now hums with the vibrancy of the young, promising cultural and entertainment district known affectionately as Bricktown.

Outside the Chesapeake Arena hundreds of purple-robed graduates laughed and talked and snapped pictures. The brick walls of the raised railroad tracks running through town were decorated with colorful painted murals depicting the historical side of the state. More painted scenes brought life to the walls of the old warehouses lining the canal, a spruced-up waterway that lends a romantic face to this once-dusty town.

It was after midnight when we pulled up to the corner of North Robinson Avenue and NW 5th Street. In front of us was a huge gray wall with an open doorway. This was the entrance to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. There was no traffic disturbing the peace; no noise to distract us from the brooding, beautiful, surreal atmosphere.

We descended into the memorial grounds, walking past the pool of water and along a path, through the tree-lined garden where those chairs sat, over to the one remaining section of the Murrah Building’s eastern wall. Behind us, over the doorway we had walked through, was a 9:01, signifying the moment right before the blast. Across the Memorial grounds, on an opposite wall, shone a simple 9:03. In between we stood, emotionally suspended in place and time, feeling very much connected to a moment more than twenty years ago.

“What are we doing?” Jon said quietly as he looked around. “This journey, this trip…feels so insignificant compared to all the stuff that’s happened. And everything happening now even, in places like Joplin.”

Jon could find a wisp of solace in the words of the people we’d met so far, and all the people we were going to meet the rest of the way to New York. His work was not insignificant.

There just seems so much work to do.

Santa Fe: Bridging a Cognitive Gap

The road today led us across some beautiful high country desert. Rain pelted our windshield as we rolled into Dolce, the snow-covered peaks of the San Juan Mountains still visible to the east. We had hoped to make a detour through Taos before heading to Santa Fe, but by the time we stopped for lunch at the High Country Restaurant & Saloon in Chama (altitude 7860 feet) we had decided we would have to skip that extra slice of this beautiful state. As we rolled on southward the rain turned to snow.

Battalion Commander Dave Trujillo met us as we pulled up to Santa Fe Fire Department’s Station #1. I had spoken with him over the phone on two separate occasions, to explain what we were doing and to set up a time to stop by, so he basically knew why there were two trucks in his lot, one of them with a huge piece of metal tied to the back.

The other men and women in the department were totally clueless.

Captain Gerard Sena summed up the mood around the fire house after September 11th. “There was a definite sense of loss in the following days. Across the nation you have brothers out there going to work, kissing the wife and kids good-bye and hoping for the best.”

Captain Naranjo and Engine 1 led the way to Santa Fe Plaza; Rescue 3 followed behind.

With our firefighter friends standing in a curved line behind the cross Jon eased into the spiel that was becoming second nature to him. As he was still speaking one of the women in the crowd interjected.

“These guys do a great job for us,” she said, pointing past Jon toward the line of firefighters in blue. “It is so wonderful you are involving them in this.” Her name was Patty. She was a Victims’ Services Volunteer in Travis County, Texas. A few other people chimed in, with words of affirmation and scraps of applause.

I’m sure that woman meant what she said. But I wondered if she in particular, and the greater public in general, had always been that ready and willing to sing the praises of the local firefighters. Not that they hadn’t always deserved it. But had the proverbial fireman rescuing the cat from the tree been replaced with the image of those first responders rushing into the smoking, smoldering towers? Were these men (and one woman) of the Santa Fe Fire Department now on a level with the 343 firemen who were lost on that day trying to save people they didn’t even know?

Jon and I would debate it later, to no definite conclusion though it seemed plausible to think that this cross bridged a geographic and cognitive gap between those firefighters in New York City and those here in Santa Fe – and Los Angeles, and Grand Canyon Village and everywhere else across the country. Or maybe it was just a reminder of an idea that had already taken root in the minds of the people we met.

Or maybe it was nothing of the sort. Jon could tell those who asked what this cross meant to him, where it came from, where it was going and what he was doing with it in between. Any significance beyond that would be ascribed, aloud or in private, by the people who saw it along the way.

Grand Canyon: Common Ground in a Beautiful Place

In the parking lot near the Grand Canyon Visitor Center was a large group of Americans of South Asian descent, separated from us by a half dozen empty parking spaces. Five or six of them came over and the biggest guy asked, bluntly, “What is this for?”

Jon, in an explanation he’d already given a few dozen times but continued to do so with sincerity and humility, explained the connection of the I-beam cross found in the Trade Center rubble and this one. Then he invited them to write notes and put them into the heart of the cross.

For the first time, we saw people balk at the idea.

“You mean, like a prayer?” one of them asked.

“Could be,” Jon answered. “Or just a quick message, whatever you want.”

“But we’re not Christian.”

The idea, the question, had never come up until this moment. I wondered if Jon had considered the thought. I know I hadn’t.

“It’s all right,” Jon said. “To me this cross is a symbol for all people, all races, all backgrounds and religions.”

“How does this represent all religions?” asked a young man named Malind.

“Different parts come together to make this piece,” Jon explained. “On 9-11 all these firemen, and other people too, were all running around trying to help people. It didn’t matter who was what color or race or religion, it was just people sacrificing themselves to help others. It was people coming together. And I guess that’s what this piece means to me.”

I’m not sure if they were wholly convinced, but Malind and his friends quietly wrote notes and put them in the cross. I couldn’t hear what they were saying when they were back with their group. I only saw Malind and the others gesturing and pointing at the cross as they spoke.