Mother's Day on the Arsenal Island

Sunday afternoon, I drove my wife Kathleen's Uncle Bill to the Arsenal Island Cemetery in Rock Island, IL. Bill wished to visit his wife's grave, having been married to her for over 60 years and missing her sorely...she had been laid to rest here over three years ago. Bill and his wife Carmella both worked on the Arsenal Island prior to WWII. Bill went off to the east coast to train fighter pilots in flying P-49's and P-51's while Carm stayed home working as a typist during the 40's. They had two sons, William and Thomas. Bill put a single rose, for each son, amongst the two dozen carnations he placed at her headstone this sunny, cool afternoon.

I have escorted Uncle Bill to Carm's grave site several times. But never on Mother's Day. The vast cemetery was crawling with people...it was flat out busy. The perfunctory-ness and amicable attitudes of everyone attempting to enjoy a Sunday afternoon in the park, amidst their missed loved ones, only drove home to me just how deeply we are inured to the footprint of death that blankets our lands.

We are kept entertained and distracted and so-in-the dark to the lies and manipulation that keeps us in a perpetual state of war -- as something that is necessary and normative.

The more one reads about American history and world history and global economics the more one finds oneself feeling overwhelmed with the hypocrisy and myth making of the constructs of such facilities as the Arsenal Island.

This small island on the Mississippi River between Illinois and Iowa, where Chief Blackhawk and the Sauk and Fox Indians were muscled out, has cemeteries for soldiers and their spouses as far back as the Civil War.

A couple of nine irons later (there's a country club and 18 hole golf course on the island... they are running a special now for $1200 per year for new members under 40 years old) there's a display of howitzers and rocket launchers just a stones throw away from military housing where children rode bikes and chased each other around the driveways.

On Mother's Day, as I scanned the fields of white alabaster, it was a bit overwhelming to consider the amount of tragedy moms have endured over the ages...all for reasons not revealed, all for false causes sold to the people with the complicity of the news organizations we were trained to trust.

As we drove slowly off the island, past the sandstone strongholds built to last for generations and housing machinery to build equipment that decimates generations, Bill reminisced about where he and Carm used to work, used to meet for lunch. Before he became a fighter pilot trainer, Bill worked here as a "time keeper", in one of the most massive factories one has ever seen.

As we drove past the containers and trucks and humvees and heavy equipment sparsely laid out on the island, I could not help but notice the abrupt transition of camo paint jobs...old school greens and browns like the TV episodes we watched on M.A.S.H....aside the light brown sandy camo, indicative for this generation, of our new enemy we are brainwashed into believing we must fight in the deserts now.

Bill, who after the war, flew for over forty years as an executive pilot for John Deere, shared with me that his time keeper job in that massive factory was one of the most boring jobs he's ever had.

"There's a lot of waste on this island."

No truer words could have been spoken.

Thanks for the dose of reality Uncle Bill.