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Reflections of America
A Father and Son's Call to Duty
by Bruce Gardner
The driving distance between Hamilton, Montana and Washington D.C. can be accurately determined by the number of music CD’s played on the trip. If one takes such a trip and listens to 46 CD’s with an average playing time of 54 minutes and 15 seconds at an average speed of 60 miles per hour, one can reliably determine the length of the jaunt. Imagine CD’s owned by a nineteen-year-old male with a decided preference for loud rock music. Further imagine this young man being accompanied by his fifty-something father with a decided preference for quiet contemplation. Now you have all the parts of the formula needed to determine the distance traveled, the time necessary to travel that distance, and a working definition for the depths of a father’s love and tolerance in the face of adversity. I recently took such a trip.
My son, Ben, is a newly minted Private in the U.S. Army. Upon his completion of Basic and Advanced Training he was assigned to the Old Guard at Fort Myer in Washington. While home on leave before reporting to his assigned post, he accomplished the first priority of all young soldiers. He bought a vehicle. Rather that flying across the country and finding a vehicle that suited him at his new duty station, he decided that only in Montana could he find what he wanted: a Ford Ranger 4 wheel drive pick-up truck, complete with a sound system with enough bass to shake the seats and rattle the windows. Ben persuaded me to ride along and help with the driving. Actually, I wanted to go and was honored to be asked. This might be the last time a father and son can spend three uninterrupted days together. My little boy is no more. A young man has taken his place.
Early Friday morning the family was up and enjoying a delicious and heavy breakfast guaranteed, in the absence of little physical exertion, to stay with a traveler for at least the three days planned to make the trip. With the sky just showing pink we set out. We headed south over Chief Joseph Pass and through the Big Hole Valley where herds of antelope grazed the plains that stretch beneath the snow-covered mountains that ring this valley. The roads were clear of ice and snow. We made good time, both of us excited to be on our way. Within two hours we hit the interstate and would remain bound on America’s Autobahn for the rest of the trip. Traversing across the southern segment of Montana we passed through the ‘B’ towns of Butte, Bozeman, Big Timber, and Billings and stopped for lunch at the Little Bighorn Battlefield. I reminded my new soldier that our stop was a great deal more peaceful than that of an earlier soldier named Custer.
Dropping into northeastern Wyoming, and on to South Dakota, the terrain became flatter as the great mountains of the West, and Ben’s childhood, receded behind us. Our plan was to make Mitchell, South Dakota before turning in for the evening. Mitchell claims fame via an excellent café called Fanny Horner’s, where we enjoyed another large breakfast. We settled the tab in an arm wrestling match. I did my best but was happy to buy.
Ben is a voluble conversationalist and as the miles rolled away we discussed most of the events of his short life. We analyzed the successes and the shortcomings of both father and son. We recounted the entire journey that had taken him from his beginnings on a hill farm in Tennessee to a small town in Montana and on to an assignment in the Nation’s Capitol. Most of our talk was good-humored with occasional lapses into the serious, such as, “Dad, do you think I will get yelled at if I can’t do a hundred push-ups in two minutes?”
 Ben’s attire for the journey included an Army sweatshirt. That sweatshirt and his military haircut led folks at stops along the way to speak to Ben, always supportive and friendly. Our military men and women are held in high esteem in these troubled times. I recounted to Ben the sharp contrast in the country’s mood now compared to the early 70’s, when being identified as a member of the military often subjected one to ridicule and worse. Now, everyone has kind words and good wishes. Ben took it all in stride, enjoying the attention. He was able to display his pride; pride that I wish could have been openly displayed by my generation three short decades ago.
As the miles rolled by, I was aware of the untold number of farms through which we traveled. Today’s interstate highway system is a model of sterile efficiency. We covered great distances without coming into direct contact with the folks through whose land we passed. I thought of the small communities and the people in those small communities whose lives had been altered for the sake of my four-lane convenience. Here lay a farm through which this ribbon of concrete slashed, making it necessary to drive six miles or more to reach the back forty. There sat a home of perfect utility, abandoned to escape the noise of never-ending traffic. I knew that small townships a few miles off an interstate exit often lost their country stores as the locals fled down this same concrete ribbon to the cities beyond, the fabric of community life disappearing as their town evolved into a bedroom community for some larger burg. Fast, efficient travel comes at high cost to small communities.
As we continued east, the stream of traffic steadily increased with the gathering momentum of humanity as car after car joined us. Through Wyoming and into South Dakota we could set the cruise control at the desired speed and not touch it for the span of a tank of fuel. There was more traffic in Minnesota, and even more traffic through Illinois and Indiana. “Where were all these people going?” we asked each other. We stopped for our second night outside Springfield, Ohio. Surrounded in bumper to bumper traffic, we both felt the peaceful lunch we enjoyed in Montana just the day before was a long, long way from where we now found ourselves.
 There were other changes as we continued east. The evergreen-clad slopes of the Rocky Mountains gave way to the nearly treeless plains and Badlands of South Dakota. Treeless plains were replaced by the beginnings of the hardwood forests of Illinois and Indiana. Birch trees punctuated the woods with their pallid bark. On our third day we saw the giant ghosts of the eastern forest, the sycamores, whose great, spreading branches of white are held aloft from trunks that shed long slabs of umber bark from their girth. Accompanied by our coterie of fellow travelers, we entered the wrinkled ridges of West Virginia and southern Pennsylvania. We straddling the Mason-Dixon Line, slid east then southeast through Maryland. Late in the evening, midst the fog and the darkness, we entered the Capitol, found our motel and collapsed in a rather inauspicious ending to our journey. As I laid in the dark on another unfamiliar bed, I could still feel the vibrations of three days on the road and Ben’s new stereo.
Ben and I had a full day together in Washington. We visited as many prominent sites as we could. He and I stood together and read aloud Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address inscribed on the wall at the Lincoln Memorial. At the Jefferson Memorial we paused beneath ponderous Jefferson and quietly talked of the foresight of the man and our debt to his wisdom.
Ben stood by my side as I located the entry for a high school friend, whose name is inscribed in the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial Wall-- Albert Ray Hankins, born September 2, 1949, killed in action May 8, 1971, Panel 3W, Row 26. Walking down the path, I found Ray’s name and turned squarely to face that name. With my son’s arm around my shoulders, I told Ben of that young man--his ready smile that showed perfect teeth, blue eyes that gave away his sharp intellect, quick reflexes that allowed him to slip past me on the basketball court, and his quiet but obvious leadership skills that led to his election as class president. Ray, my friend, the same age then as my son now. Ray, one of 58,196 names etched on The Wall, brethren all with stories and lives that ended too soon.
Leaving The Wall, we drove past the Pentagon, the work of terrorism clearly visible from the roadway. We made our way to Arlington National Cemetery. Ben and I walked through this national shrine, discussing the meaning of hallowed as we approached The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Old Guard unit to which Ben is assigned is charged with ceremonial duties that include guarding The Tomb. A young man, on guard in dress blues that day, covered his course in measured steps; twenty-one paces, a pause of twenty-one seconds, another twenty-one paces. The silent solitude of his vigil matched our own silence in the face of great sacrifice. On that sunny afternoon, two thousand five hundred miles from home, we were both blessed with the surety that Ben was ready to take his place in the world and to distinguish himself by earning that place as a fellow defender of liberty and freedom.
The next morning, as I flew non-stop to Seattle, I looked down on the landscape of America that had taken three hard days to cross on wheels. I thought of the western settlers, who a scant century and a half earlier had exhausted a generation to cover this distance. From thirty thousand feet I could not see the homes of the families of America, but I could feel them, homes of the families that have spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific, homes of the families that have given up their sons and daughters when America called. I could see the faces of fathers like me in the reflection of my own face in the window. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, me, and now my only son, in an unbroken continuum paying our just dues for the life we have and for the world we wish for our children and grandchildren.
I’ll be seeing you out there.
January 25, 2002
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