Time to let it linger, on Veteran's Day

First appeared on November 10th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Francis Scott Key penned the Star Spangled Banner after watching the British shelling Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Fortunately for us Mr. Key didn’t have a Smart Phone or he’d probably have missed most of the rocket’s red glare. For you and I this means our national anthem would most likely be “YMCA” or something by Dylan we’d all be forced to mumble in unison.

The first time I realized the flag was special was watching my older brother playing varsity basketball. The way a gym packed to the gills would rise together in silence, the energy of the impending contest and eager conversations of the blustery hayseeds suddenly tamed by a sober reverence for the flag.

And when the people sat down and the ball went up, I watched my brother throwing himself around on the floor, playing his guts out and he became a hero. November is reserved for heroes of a different lot. Those who personified honor, sacrifice and duty. The words often fall short for those of us on the outside looking in.

However, the flag bridges those two worlds. An omnipresent reminder that the duty of those who never served is to honor those who have. The flag is a one dimensional time machine capable of dropping you onto a battlefield in Gettysburg where you’re asked to charge across a vast open plain with nothing more than a blade of grass to hide behind, all the while a hailstorm of hot metal rains down upon you. And above the din of cannon fire and muskets, the piercing cries of men surround you, haunting and final.

It can take you to Normandy, where you’re shoulder to shoulder with a kid a country mile from the prime of life. And, when the panel of that landing craft drops, he glimpses for the first time the insurmountable odds awaiting him. The flag stands for the courage he showed to vault himself into the waist-deep tide. Water stained pink from the blood of friends, Nazi flak buzzing and ricocheting around him.

So you catch your eleven year old fooling with his phone during the Star Spangled Banner and, oh say, you can definitely see you’ve failed as a parent. This was it, your Final Exam and you just posted the old one legged A.

Mortified, you tell little Johnny he won’t see his phone until he’s 25 before throwing him in the car. You tear out of town, barreling east across the Ohio, pointing your wheels towards D.C. And somewhere around Harrisburg you find yourself hopelessly lost and have to ask Johnny to Google a new route.

By dawn’s early light you find yourself at the intersection of history, architecture, tradition and new ideas, the seat of change and heartbeat of freedoms continued evolution. But Washington is also a living celebration of those Americans who dared to defend our ideals. Stone figures with strong jowls, faces racked with determination, men who gave themselves up for a nation, a nation of people they would never come to know.

Old dead men who today find themselves surrounded by hot dog vendors and tee-shirt hockers, googly eyed tourists lost in a jungle of copper, bronze and limestone. And the limestone, my god the limestone, walls and halls and corridors, benches and arches, cornices, balustrades, everything we so proudly hailed carved from limestone.

Streets choked with slow moving tour buses carting anxious, pimply faced pre-teens. Kites of bright red and yellow, tails dragging in the wind, waving high above the rangers in broad-brimmed hats. Brave men and women charged with corralling the interest of these precocious pre-teens.
Bleary eyed, over medicated and restless children who don’t know George Bush from George Washington. And all this exploration and congestion and protestation rages before the watchful eyes of Honest Abe from his perch at the end of the Mall, his brow bent with uncertainty over the scene before him.

So stately upon his throne, high overlooking the reflecting pool, Lincoln has become the poster child for standing up for ones ideals. And as great as he was, how easily we forget Honest Abe’s line in the sand was defended by the hearts and souls of thousands.

We have to find a way to stop our lives, forgo the order and rigid scheduling and prioritized lists that shape our time. We owe this to all who’ve protected the freedoms we as Americans cherish.

So there you stand, in the shadow of Lincoln. You and little Johnny and little Johnny’s Smart Phone. And you linger as the pimply faced pre-teens race up and down the steps before an incredulous Ranger. You linger as the kites race higher and higher. You linger with little Johnny’s hand in yours. You linger so that these dead shall not have died in vain.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Colts Season off to Inharmonious Start

First appeared on September 17, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Abraham Lincoln once said “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. And while that crusty old history teacher, the weird one whose short in the leg slacks were funnier than his jokes, told you Honest Abe was speaking about the unraveling of the United States, for all we know he could have been talking about the Republican Party in 2016 or Caitlyn Jenner’s closet.

Those in the non-part-time pretend media would argue Lincoln was editorializing about the Indianapolis Colts Front Office. And as rumors swirl over West 56th, the little people get wind that Grigson hates Pagano and Pagano loathes Grigson while, at some point, Jim Irsay sets his pail down long enough to tweet “all is well” from his flooding deck.

Yet, here in the cheap seats, we’re left struggling to understand why it really matters if Pagano and Grigson hate each other, neither one of them catch, throw or run with the ball after all. It would seem we’re beating the bushes for someone to blame, some underlying issue or the dreaded “circumstances beyond our control”. Something to explain why those things we want most from life continue to elude us, for an American life is not complete without a handful of convenient excuses.

Unfortunately for fans of the Horseshoe, harmony isn’t available online, even for Amazon Prime members. Harmony is a warm summer evening, standing bare footed in cool grass, spraying the petunias and coneflowers as the soft sounds of Wheel of Fortune drift through an open window. And beyond fluttering lace curtains, the wife ponders a tricky crossword as the children share space, shoulder to shoulder on the couch, each completely absorbed by some non-electronic form of entertainment; perhaps Jenga, a deck of cards or maybe even a book, if those even exist anymore.

And for every flower sprinkler out there, there are a half dozen or more tossing cups out their window in a parking lot, mean faced monsters screaming profanities across an interstate lane or mocking a strict teacher in front of their children. Harmony isn’t free and it isn’t cheap and it isn’t easy to find, which is why most Americans are of the belief it doesn’t exist.

Harmony doesn’t win Championships and it doesn’t help nail that interview. The power of harmony should never find itself in question however. Harmony is greater than the rush of a new speedboat and more welcoming than a vacation home, and yet for most of us it lingers in the shadows, just beyond our reach.

Rex the big Royal Blue Dinosaur doesn’t exactly exude harmony but he does win football games. Sunday was an unfortunate witch’s brew of Luck’s inability to perform in season openers, the energy of Rex Ryan’s first game as Buffalo Head Coach and a dash of Pagano’s teams always laying an egg once or twice a season.

As for front office chasms, if a rift between the Colts Head Coach and General Manager is only a myth, the good news is Jim Irsay will likely tweet about it just to let everyone know and, if a rift does in fact exist, the good news is Jim Irsay will likely tweet about it just to let everyone know.

Yet they say where there’s smoke, there’s likely fire. And anytime your performance is best compared to that of a team that has never played the sport before, there will always be questions. Questions like “Who taught the Colts’ secondary to tackle?” and “If Lincoln was so important, why did we put him on the least valuable coin?” And even Honest Abe, who boasts being the tallest president, would have been unable see what the end of this season will bring; though he probably could have done a better job tackling and fielding punts.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams