Nine Days in America
Sunday, April 30th, 2006
Denise and I just returned from a nine day work/vacation road trip through the north eastern states — mostly D.C., Virginia and North Carolina. Apart from doing our part to help deplete the world’s supply of oil (we burned up 3,000 KM worth), our plan was to make a kind of pilgrimage to Washington, explore the Great Dismal Swamp and visit some of the wildlife refuge areas in the N.C. Outer Banks.
Despite its name, the Great Dismal Swamp is a spectacular place to visit, both for its strange and sad history and its rebirth as a "managed" natural habitat. The Swamp’s place in American capital-H-History was cemented in 1763 when George Washington formed a company to purchase the area for logging. The founding father surveyed the Dismal Swamp and employed his own slaves to dig a series of 4 1/2-mile ditches. These waterways were used to drain the wetland and provide canal transport for the logging operation. Washington evenutally sold his share, but logging continued into the 1970’s until the Union Camp Company donated the land to the Nature Conservancy.
The old-growth forest is long gone, but there is still a lot of life in the old Swamp. During our two days in the area we tallied over 50 bird species, including numerous Prothonotary and Hooded warblers. We came across several deer and a large bobcat that was slouching across the trail a few hundred yards in front of us. Even in the afternoon heat, the air was ringing with the birdsong of spring migrants and nesting species.
While walking along the Washington Ditch, I kept thinking about our time in D.C. from the previous day. We spent hours trapsing around the National Mall, gawking at monuments and statues. Take the 555-foot Washington Monument, for instance. For a man who started out chopping down cherry trees, and who then moved on to begin the wholesale deforestation of a thriving wetland, it seems entirely fitting that his monument rises like an upraised middle finger from a treeless field of well-worn sod. Does that sound a little bitter? I shouldn’t be too hard on that George. After all, for him the American Dream was a vivid waking dream. He couldn’t turn away from his destiny and any of us might have done exactly the same thing. I’m sure George wasn’t flipping the bird, but I think someone was. Or perhaps Robert Mills, the Monument’s designer, has unwittingly built the world’s tallest Viagra ad. A terrible way to end this, but there it is. I have more respectful things to say about Washington and the National Mall in the days to come.
This week’s Toronto-area crime news has been dominated by front page pictures of eight murdered Bandidos motorcycle gang members and related stories of gang activities within the GTA. It turns out that the Bandidos and other gangs have been using tow trucks to haul drugs around the city. In fact, the Toronto Star reported that on the night of the Shedden massacre, police tailed a tow truck along highway 401, but were unaware that the car in tow was weighed down with 200 KG of cocaine. The three men in the truck were gunned down after entering a farmhouse owned by Bandido member, Wayne Kellestine. The tow-truck connection made me re-think an old children’s story called Matthew and the Midnight Tow Truck. After losing a favourite toy car, young Matthew goes to bed and dreams he sees the flashing lights of a tow truck outside his bedroom window. When the Midnight Tow Truck Driver calls up for help, Matthew sneaks out of the house and the two of them cruise through the night, hauling vehicles to a special car wash facility that shrinks them down to pocket size. The drivers seem to eat nothing but "red licorice" and they even give some to Matthew for helping out. When he wakes up, he finds his favorite toy truck in his shirt pocket and insists that his mother buy lots of red licorice. He tells here to leave some on the windshield of her car so that it will never be towed away. It was a fun story and both of our kids enjoyed it 14+ years ago, but shrinking cars and red licorice pay offs? Were the Bandidos already involved in the murky underworld of children’s literature? Such meta-narratives! It’s all too much for my small brain! Time to legalize red licorice? Now I personally am not big on the stuff, but I do believe it may be time to legalize "red licorice" so that society is no longer held hostage by these midnight tow trucks. Imagine if you could walk into any LCBO — Licorice Control Board of Ontario — outlet to purchase enough for your own use? It just might take a little business away from the Bandidos and tow truck drivers of the world. Perhaps this was the unspoken message that Michel Auger, a Montreal crime reporter, had for CBC’s The Current last Wednesday. Auger, who took six bullets in the back from a Quebec-based motorcycle gang in 2000, spoke of the futility of expensive police stings and undercover operations. He told The Current’s Gary Simmons: