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

Indiana Pacers will survive this Deep Freeze

First appeared on March 14, 2014
in The Lebanon Reporter

You know it’s too cold when a young and energetic State Representative, entirely convinced he was brought into this world to enact real change, surrenders and submits a bill to the Indiana House mandating the statewide erection of Penguin Crossing signs. What happened to the Global Warming goons and their rising temperatures? I suppose I need to get out and drive my car more. Turn on all the lights in my house and install a coal chute on my fireplace. Maybe that would warm this place up.

Perhaps the Indiana Pacers current free-fall is simply art imitating life. Losers of four in a row up until Boston came to town, Indiana helped the Celtics carry their bags from the bus, for nothing can stop a losing streak faster than facing a roster comprised largely of players who should be buried deep on another team’s bench.

How could a team with the best record in professional basketball appear so uncompetitive? Who knows. Why do news outlets insist on giving us poll numbers when we know they’ve been calling the same people over and over again for years? I don’t know about you, but nobody has ever phoned me about chemical weapons in Syria.

Some contend Indiana’s tailspin stems from a lack of ball movement, others blame poor defense. They look disinterested as a group, tired or it’s the impotent play of their young stud who’s been too busy reading writers far more gifted and relevant than yours truly telling the free world how talented he is. I’m sure at some point all of these apply and if I knew the real answer you’d find me interviewing Greg Popovich during a time out on national television.

Perhaps the Pacers, like their fans, have succumbed to temptation, looking past the remaining games on the schedule. The Playoffs are so close everyone with a horse still in the race can smell them. A potpourri of stale hot dogs, historic moments and 17,000 exuberant people with varying philosophies on personal hygiene sharing a poorly ventilated space in late May.

The playoffs, a place where Championships roam free in herds so large a man could sit down and watch them pass for days. Packed arenas in full throat and fervor, watching with wide eyes as careers are made and ruined with the bounce of one ball.

The unfortunate fact in all this is the Pacers are contractually bound to play the rest of the games on their schedule. Sure we’d all walk across the street to watch a seven game series with Miami tomorrow, but alas Milwaukee calls.

Milwaukee with its 51 losses and semi-professional roster, including one go-getter who stopped in mid play while his team was on defense earlier in the season to tie his shoe. Saying there are too many games in the NBA regular season is like saying Washington doesn’t work. We understand it’s a proven fact and to discuss it is simply beating a horse that died during the Stone Age.

So the Pacers are left to pick up the pieces and move on. Speaking in proverbials, they must rally, right the ship, circle the wagons and get everyone on the same page. It will warm up at some point and so too will the Pacers.

In the meantime sit back and enjoy the ride, this long and winding detour through Antarctica will soon be over and the Playoffs will be here. And if a banner is hung in Bankers Life come June, all the plunging temperatures, burst pipes and time spent digging out, which triggered an avalanche of blustery blizzard-like blues so deep and wide it buried our souls long ago, will have all been worth it somehow.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams

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