As I read the letter by Mrs. Brennen in the WDT talking about the Cape Vincent community, my wife reminded me of a place we visited on the American high plains called Kimball NE.
Coming and going on our annual migration from Flagstaff, AZ to Cape Vincent, NY and back we often fly commercial airlines. But many times in the past we have driven that trip both ways by various routes just to see the country. And sometimes we would purposefully get off the interstate and cruise the back roads. I have not traveled abroad yet beyond Mexico and Canada. I decided I wanted to first see what my own country was about in more detail. Kimball NE was one of our explorations and held a stark weird reality.
One such trip took us out of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado out across the vast American high plains. One place of interest we wanted to see and camp was the national grass lands that have been preserved to leave examples of the sweeping high plains as they once were. And I loved cruising through the little communities along the way.
This trip took us on route 71 south of Kimball, NE. We noticed repeated bunker like facilities all along the route into Kimball. It didn't take long to figure out these were underground nuclear missile silos. I had seen similar facilities near Tucson, AZ. The signs on the fences saying it was a govt. facility, and as politely as they could telling you, you could officially and legally be shot dead if you attempted to cross onto the facility.
The next day we went into Kimball NE. to get gas before we hit I-80 the black strip conveyer belt of semi trucks and cars heading us on the long trip toward CV.
Kimball is an idyllic little high plains town. A place right out of the movies. Nice well kept prairie houses, pickett fences, mom and pop store fronts,some big grain silos common in many prairie towns and a nice lazy town park.
It was a classic post card town, a nice quiet lazy place where everybody was probably friendly and the cares of the world seemed a long way off. Much like Cape Vincent really...the friendly caring CV Mrs. Brennen AND Mr. Landers describes in their letters to the WDT.
Well maybe not exactly.
What struck us as extremely ironc in Kimball, was what was erected in their park. You might have thought a statue to war veterans, or a town leader or founder, or something like that...maybe a fountain.
Nope... a full sized decommissioned Titan I - ICBM nuclear missile!!! A device we would use to rain down a hellish nightmare of fire and brimstone on other countries if it came to that! And right here in idyllic, peaceful, friendly little Kimball with kids and dogs running around on a lazy warm June high prairie afternoon, was the vivid monument to that freakish potential holocaust! What a mind bender!
The only thing that seemed to be missing was some vapor spewing from the rocket and a countdown as it sat there looking ready for launch with a payload that might help end the Earth as we know it!
http://www.lasr.net/travel/city.php?Titan+Missile&TravelTo=NE0705006&VA=Y&amtp;Attraction_ID=NE0705006a003
It was an odd reality. Then it dawned on me. This little idyllic high plains town representing much of the best of Americana without a care could be vaporized in a millisecond by some commander in the Soviet Union 1000's of miles away. Actually with the concentration of nuke silos in this area the entire region could become nothing more than a burnt nuclear crater.
Kimball's idyllic atmosphere was in many ways a façade. Oh the town was real and idyllic all right, and the people we spoke to were very nice and friendly and genuine. But when you pulled back the curtain a bit the other reality was like a weird Twilight Zone episode. As people in Kimball went about their peaceful friendly small community lives, just behind the veil was a horrible unspeakable nightmare reality that at any nano - second and one button push and Kimball would simply cease to exist. The absolute best and worst of human kind wrapped up into one little peaceful Nebraska community, as the moms pushed their kids on swings, and dogs chased balls, and kids chased each other playing tag and elders sat on benches having a conversation about the old days or town events. In the next second it could all be ashes, and they just went about their lives as if it simply didn't exist. The strange experience in Kimball and the extremes that were expressed there has stuck with me a long long time. It's right up there with the strange experiences we have had around the secret CIA airbase at Area 51 NV as the security patrols stalk you across the isolated desert on public land trying to keep you away from some of America's deepest and darkest military secrets. Another American experience we have run into on America's back roads!
It occurs to me that with the onslaught of industrial wind in Cape Vincent we are much the same as Kimball, NE in some respects to the tourist who cruises through. In many ways we are still an idyllic quiet, friendly, small town nestled against the beautiful river and lake. Yet when you pull back the curtain there is a horrible nightmare we have been suffering through when the wind developers targeted our community, not for war but for profit, and in effect dropped a social nuclear weapon on the heart of our community.
Mrs. Brennen's letter as a reaction to Mr. Lander's letter at first glance look very opposed. But they aren't really. Both are frustrated and to their credit are simply trying to somehow deal with it as survivors of the horrible reality thrust upon our community. A reality were someone 1000's of miles from CV saw our community as a target on a map, simply because they thought our town might be breezy, and pushed a button setting into motion a freakish nightmare to descend down on the social fabric of our community. And the developers pulled back the veil and refuse to let it shut.
Harry Landers and Liz Brennen and all of us no matter which side we are on are the survivors of the nightmare wind developers brought us, hoping to somehow piece the community back together. Back to better days, back to better times. That may not have exactly been CV, but it was what we thought it was, and if nothing else something we could hope for.
That is what they took away from us. Hope!
Before the wind developers turned us from living our lives in relative peace into struggling as survivors. Yet behind the façade of nice hellos and helping your neighbor in a small town, still the nightmare just won't go away, no matter how polite we are and how many piano concerts we have even though we try to ignore it or simply survive within it somehow.
We don't have a monument in the park like Kimball that openly expresses a frightening reality. The monument we have is hidden and is personal, a burden and frustration we all carry deep inside. Something both Landers and Brennen are trying to deal with like the rest of us.
Kimball NE really had no choice. They were sucked up into the frightening reality of geopolitics, and their landscape became a tool to that end.
But the reality in CV may be slightly different.
The reality and choice all of us must face here is that the nightmare isn't going to go away, no matter how many letters we write to anybody and no matter which side you think you are on. We must take control and make it go away ourselves. Nightmares only end when you shake yourself from a deep sleep!
And we can't do that by ignoring the ugly reality that keeps forcing itself on us and appeasing and compromising with the very forces that pushed the button and brought this nightmare to our community and to ourselves forcing us to be mostly survivors.
Kimball NE has never suffered a nuclear attack, and hopefully for all of us they never will. We in CV on the other hand in effect have, and at best will be only survivors hoping for the good old days until we actually do something substantial and lasting about it.
Art Pundt
I must say ,you have a flair for the dramatic. The comparison you have drawn between these two communities is obtuse at best, and represents considerable literary license. The parallels you make are quite a stretch .
ReplyDeleteyour synopsis of the situation in Cape Vincent is somewhat off, in that, unlike the folks in Kimball who likely had no say or input into their plight, there were a good number of decent folks who willingly participated in the rending of the social fabric of the community, Even still its hardly credible to compare the angst caused by this controversey to that of the folks in Kimball who live with the fear of potential annihilation in a fiery radioactive ball of fire.
Ms. Brennan was simply trying to point out that in spite of the strained and contentious atmosphere that has evolved in the Cape ,many folks are able to not let it define themselves, when it comes to helping others, or simply being pleasant.
And wouldn't that be great!