NOTE: Our Contributing Editor, Cody Barstow, submitted this article from his home. Said he didn't want to come in to work. We checked his contract. He's allowed to do this. Contributing Editors have a completely incomprehensible amount of freedom. We suggest this position as a career goal to any aspiring writer. Note: the actual date of the event was Nov. 24.

Cody Gets Wanded.
Part II.

MOJO CITY, Nov. 30, 2001 -

I'm still working my way back to Mojo City from Tucson on the tail end of the Thanksgiving holiday. I've just landed in Boise, Idaho.

The sense of this being a landlocked smallish city in Idaho without huge sophistication is important here. And the fact that these are people who are locked into a polite tolerance for each other … the Mormon vs. non-Mormon thing. Also big-time.

It's an undercurrent throughout the entire southern half of the state. No one talks about it in public. That wouldn't be polite. It would be horribly uncomfortable.

It's a strange thing. This intermingling of Mormons and non-Mormons (let's give them a name … it seems unfair to refer to the non-Mormons in terms of the "other," so, let's call them … the Bargles.

(Stay with it, we come to an event in the Boise airport quite soon.)

The Mormons and the Bargles have come to an uncertain relationship. The problem is, most of them like each other. Quite agreeable characters who are sincerely interested in each other as people.

And then you toss religion into the mix. Things get messy. Suddenly, if you're in the Bargles, the conversation can turn into an "us versus them" sort of thing. Wondering why "they expect certain privileges." Or if you're in a group of "them," those "others" are lesser beings in need of conversion. They are incomplete, without the addition of a particular God.

The extreme perspective. But it exists. An underlying tension that, to the casual visitor, might explode with the right trigger. All the ingredients are there. Religion. Suspicion. Differences. Quite intractable.

Cody carried this 3-foot cardboard tube through four airports, and on three planes. It was scanned by only the hand-carry scanner. Try this ... roll a kilo of C-4 flat, and roll it up like a poster. Insert into tube. Use 35mm camera to carry wiring, battery, and detonator ... no one opens the backs to look inside. This is not a recommendation ... rather a caution. We need explosives-detectors at every airport. Immediately.

Previous Stories
Clowns
Fell Tyler Poofs
The Gunman
Old Glory

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Cody's Travels with Fred

It's too damned late.

The weather sucks.

But livable. Not just the insipid idea of "tolerance." But differences made actually livable, with the tension possibly forming some of the social fusion. And not the insipid collegiate notion of "diversity." But differences built on the very factors of suspicion and distrust, tempered by actually knowing the person you don't fully trust or understand.

So with this cauldron of potential social breakdown as the backdrop, the entire Boise airport is suddenly evacuated because of some idiot happening in Seattle. The word is, they had a nonfunctioning electronic gate for people to pass through, and by the time they'd discovered this in Seattle, an entire planeload of people who had gone through the defective gate had landed in Boise and wandered into the airport's secured area.

Contamination of the concourse. Disease.

Response. Evacuate the entire secured area of the airport. All people who had arrived and were waiting for planes out were evacuated from the waiting areas. All people who had passed through the inspection point and were waiting for their planes … evacuated.

The entire secured area of the airport was empty of every passenger by around 11:30 that Saturday late morning.

An airport empty of every passenger. Except for me.

Yeah. Me. I was sitting on the toilet. Had been for several minutes. I walk out of the stall when I'm done and there's a National Guard guy standing there with his hands wrapped around the M-16 he's got slung around his shoulder. I figure he's just wandering around like they do, and flick on the water and soap up the hands.

"I don't want you thinking I'm the clean-hands police," he says.

I make funny snorkeling noises at him to say I get the joke.

"But I'm here to evacuate you out of this airport."

Huh? I turn around to look at him and he hugs his M-16 and looks so damned serious.

"What's up?"

"Problems. I need to get you out of here."

"Cool." I dry my hands. Pick up my stuff. "Let's go."

We step out into the walkway. Empty. We begin walking toward the entryway where you'd pass through as a passenger to get to your friends.

Empty. So freaking empty. An airport concourse that's empty is desolation. Check it out on an 3:37 morning at your local airport. Wander around. Get the feel. It is a violation of humanity to be so desolate.

And you're the only civilian there. Because you spent some time in the stall.

We made small talk. Me and the guy with the M-16. I carried one for a time in Vietnam. And a .45. He seemed comfortable with the long weapon tight to his chest.

"You been doing this long?"

"A bit over a month."

"Your employer …"

He mentions a nationally known local electronics/computer firm, Micron. I'm asking how well they've been supporting him until he can get back to his civilian life.

" … been good to you on this?"

"Yeah. Been great about it."

"Good," I say, and tell him in a couple short sentences about how I was pressured to not ask for my old job back when I'd come home from Vietnam. The job-return guaranteed by law, as I understood it..

We're at the door and I have to leave the concourse. Become unclean by entering the outer area. Where the uninspected wait to welcome friends.

I think I nodded good-bye at him. And passed through the doorway.

And became instantly unclean. Untrustworthy. Needing the bath-and-blessing of the hand wand and the electronic gate again. I got them.

And I thought about the National Guard. This guy in Boise. I remembered the late nineteen-sixties Guard and the incredible joke it was. Then my mind comes back to the guy in Boise who did nothing more dramatic than tell me I had to leave the restroom.

By the way this guy carried himself and held his conversation, I can see that the Guard has grown up at least in the quality of personnel it has, and I'm feeling good about that. But not all of me feels good. Not all the Guard is that good.

But what about the conflict in this Idaho society? The Mormons vs. the Bargles? How did it play out in the airport during this time of tension? It didn't. I believe it is much like the rest of this country. We have become unified by our resolute anger against those who would harm any of us.

A lot of people have claimed it was the multi-ethnic/racial/religion/etc. aspect of the attack on the Twin Towers that brought all of us together. Bull. It's not that diversity crap. It's pure, comfortable, justifiable nationalism. We're Americans. The old Marine flag of the Revolutionary War 1700s said, "Don't tread on me." Today, it's simpler and just a bit meaner, "Don't fuck with us."

All that multi-crap doesn't matter. What matters is that no one can do this and think they're going to drive a wedgie into us. No matter how shattered we may seem to be.

We do very well, you see. Shattered like we are.

///

BTW … they lost my luggage.