Gas Tanks and Church Steeples
Jackson, Mississippi — January 17, 2021.
There are tanks in Ohio, lined by the dozens outside of the Capitol.
In D.C., there are 20,000 troops in an area only a couple times larger than my college campus.
In Michigan, there are SWAT trucks, aided and abetted by police officers, black fences, and barriers.
The images flowed through my mind as I filled my gas tank on the edge of my sleepy town as the sun rises on a reverent Sunday morning.
Sundays hold a particular significance in the South. In the Christian Bible, they are set aside as rest. Now, in our liberal ways, many Christians interpret that rest to be taken in a deer stand or on a ball field. But the break from a normal routine still stands. Those who live in the South, whether they are religious or not, abide by the happenings of this religious day...even if they don't notice it.
It’s in the small things. Deciding against going to the Mexican restaurant for lunch because of the crowd … or heading out to KFC an hour earlier than normal … shopping on another day because the Sunday afternoon bunch is suffocating.
Good luck buying alcohol. Not that you would risk that look in a sleepy Mississippi town on a Sunday. After all, the parties were all on Friday or Saturday night anyways. Recovery is the back pew at 10:00 toward the end of the morning’s sermon.
As I put the cap back on my tank, grimace at the rising cost of gas, and hop in the car heading south, I can’t help but think about what the Bible would think about my Sunday.
It's certainly a break from my normal. Now, I confess to trying to live an abnormal life. But having a teargas respirator, helmet, bulletproof vest, and goggles in my trunk is a new for me.
Not exactly the normal sun-proof, Sunday Stetson.
My mental checklist has been checked about 5 times by this point. Cameras, lenses, batteries, socks … more socks. Hurricane Zeta taught me not to forget socks.
While passing the Becker railroad tracks and watching the looming steeple disappear in my rear-view window, the anxiety I'm carrying as my passenger is irrefutable.
The possibility of danger is a peculiar motive. I have been in dangerous situations - that is nothing all that new. I have called 911, stood in front of the barrel of a gun, ran from an alligator in the Delta (another story for another time), but I always seemed to fall into those situations. I never knowingly drove toward them. And they certainly didn't take place in a situation or place I called home.
Growing up in rural Mississippi, palpable and large-scale danger and violence seemed so far away. Even when someone from my home was facing it. I remember singing on the football field as a second-grade student, anchoring a going-away program for our National Guard Unit deploying to Afghanistan. My brother was in that unit....going off to some far-away world to fight in a far-away world for reasons most people didn’t and still don’t understand. Back then, I knew he was heading into danger. But it didn’t feel real. It all felt so far away. Whatever happened in Afghanistan would stay there, and he would come back. Back to sleepy Amory...to Mississippi...to the United States.
That was a naive view then, and it is even more so now. Because danger is here. As I ride south toward Jackson, I know my role. I document history. There is a saying that news is the first-draft of history. I like to say that imagery is the anchor of the news, and therefore the basis for history.
But it's a precarious spot. In a country splintered, one side has taken up a hatred for the media. And now, with photos serving as a basis for tracking down those that broke into the National Capitol, I fear for what term we will be labeled with following the dimming of "fake news."
But greater than any fear I harbor is an intense feeling of respect. I respect those that came to Mississippi 60 years ago to fight for change, knowing good and well they could lose their life. And I can't help but think about those men, women, and children who know nothing but danger...born in and trying to survive what seems to be never-ending war over resources and struggles they can't control.
Danger is a possibility now. And if history tells us anything, when danger becomes a possibility, it will eventually become a probability.
It's just never felt so close before. Even though it has always been at my proverbial doorstep. I think that's a privilege in itself.