day 25

Effingham, Illinois, to Shawnee, Kansas, 359 miles.
Let’s talk about religion for a minute. All over the country, I’ve seen religious icons of sorts, from back-road Baptist churches in Mississippi to the mormon temple in salt lake city to amish country in ohio, the national cathedral in d.c., the native spirituality in the west and the Krishna temple in West Virginia. and much more. Today, there was the biggest cross I’ve ever seen alongside the interstate in Illinois. Not sure how tall it was. 100 feet? Taller? Big, bold and pure white. No signs of any kind; no advertisements. Just the cross. I guess what I’m saying, with this 60-second sermon, is that a big chunk of this country believes in and practices some sort of religion, that another big chunk doesn’t, and that we’re somehow able to pull this off as a nation and not get into any knock-down drag-out holy wars with each other. Sorry, didn’t mean for that to sound either like I’m running for office or pontificating. I suppose it’s that as this trip -- perhaps the first of who knows how many -- motors toward its conclusion in the next week or so, I’m starting to pull some disparate pieces together from around the country and say something about how, to me, they’re all important parts of the country, that they make the country. Does that make sense? And if elected, I promise to get us out of iraq. Now.
So let’s talk military history for a minute. I made a point in d.c. of going to The Wall, the memorial to the 58,000 or so u.s. servicemen and women who died in Vietnam. Not ready to talk about that one just yet. This part of the country also contains some of my military history. After basic training at fort lewis in western Washington, I was sent to fort ben Harrison in Indianapolis for training. Passed it yesterday. Now, I’m in the same state as fort riley, Kansas, where I was sent for jungle training as a prelude to going to Vietnam. Except that it was November, and I doubt the temperature outside at fort riley ever exceeded 40 degrees. Plus, the wind chill probably took it down to 20 degrees. But there we were, being trained on how to stay alive in the jungle while trying not to shiver to death in kansas.
Today was uneventful on the road. Stuck to the interstate to get here in time to party with relatives. The keys were my uncle gerry and aunt jane. Gerry is six years older than me and the closest to me in age of all my uncles. So when we were kids, he got to be my big brother. It worked for me, and it seemed ok to him at the time (whenever one of his older brothers was blamed for something, they’d blame it on him and he’d blame it on me). He went on to get a degree in Russian, then flew around Europe on spy planes, listening. So naturally after his time in the service, he started working for the post office in Omaha. Still does.
Gerry played a big part in my surviving Vietnam. He sent me all kinds of stuff in the mail. A cheeseburger that we heated and tried to eat. Tapes he put together of high school basketball games and other things, including him reading the community news headlines and quirky stories. His tapes introduced me to the music of tom Paxton, of whom I’m still a big fan. Everyone in the barracks gathered around when one of gerry’s packages arrived. He also tried to get me put in prison, which would have been just up the road from here in Leavenworth, kansas. He subscribed to the soviet version of life magazine, which came to him in a brown wrapper with “moskva” stamped all over it. He’d take the wrapper and use it for the things he’d send me. At least once, he sent me mao’s little red book, along with literature from north Vietnam. If I had been caught with any of that, I’d probably still be in Leavenworth. It was the kind of stuff I didn’t even dare just throw away. I took it to the office and put it through the shredder we used for secret documents, then bagged it up with the other shredded stuff to be burned.
So tonight I was able to have dinner with gerry and jane, their son neil and his wife maria and their kids, and gerry and jane’s daughter amy and her fairly recently acquired husband nat. just missed seeing gerry and jane’s son danny. I had a great time. Even if they weren’t relatives, they’d still be great people and fun to be with. When I hit the road in the morning, a part of me will still be in Shawnee with them.
Tomorrow: Shawnee to hopefully somewhere in the high plains of western Nebraska. Good night, everyone.