Posted on 12/30/2003 10:58:32 AM PST by DCBryan1
Edited on 12/30/2003 11:17:53 AM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
COMMENTARY
Information, but not answers
by DANNYE ROMINE POWELL
At the heart of it, there's only one thing to say: Seven Iredell County teens are dead.Of course I drive to Statesville and keep my eyes and ears open. And, yes, I pick up some information. But it's not information that satisfies. The information we want, you and I, I wasn't able to get.
Sure, after a stop at the Highway Patrol office in Statesville, I drove west along Interstate 40 to Catawba County Hospital. It was here two mothers were identifying the bodies of the two girls from the wreck. Yes, the women made a positive identification, a police officer told me. Yes, the girls were their girls.
A red-bearded emergency-room doctor in green scrubs said I'd just missed the mothers. The women, he said, are in that patrol car, up there, at the stop sign. Too bad. But what would you have had me ask them? [Ha! I would ask them: "Why didn't you take charge, act like a parent, and know where your kids were, and who they were with?"]
We know how they must feel -- or how we would feel. Their hearts are shattered. Life is unthinkable without their children. The sun will never again shine. Why ask? So I drive back to the Highway Patrol office, where the officers say they can talk at 1 o'clock.
I knock and knock at the locked doors, then go around back to where they've parked their cars. I can wait them out. I've done it before. And when they emerge, what would we talk about? Who was driving? Were they speeding? Seat belts? Were they good kids?
Of course they were good kids. All kids are good kids, if you hold them in the right light.
Nope, no seat belts. And, yes, the white Dodge Intrepid was speeding away from a cop, who'd turned on his blue lights. And the driver was 15.Does this information help? Does it bring the young people back from the dead?
The highway
Now I drive south on U.S. 21 toward Cumberland Road, where an officer said the wreck happened at 12:03 Monday morning, about a mile north of Troutman. It's only 3 in the afternoon, but already the light is graying, and the woods along Third Creek look stark and brittle.
I pull up behind two parked patrol cars on the right shoulder, and dart across the highway to the stream. Long minutes pass before I understand how the Dodge skidded sideways as it headed north. Here are the tire tracks digging into muddy grass angling toward the creek.
That tree on the far bank -- I see how its bark is peeled raw. That piece of green mesh is the windshield wedged low behind the same tree. This is a headlight. That a black toboggan. This a white headband.
If I stare hard enough, if my eyes keep picking things out in the landscape, maybe I will get the information we both need. But the creek quivers along, and the answers swim off downstream.Maybe, after all, there is only one question worth asking:
How do we lead meaningful lives when we know life can spin suddenly out of control?
Seven Iredell teens are dead, and the facts of the case merely beg the question.
Dannye Romine Powell
Check out this editorial and previous threads:
(Yesterday's initial thread)
Dannye Romine Powell
It's called risk management, you moron. For example, if I don't want to end up dead on the side of a highway, I could, say...........NOT STEAL A CAR AND TRY TO OUTRUN THE COPS?????
Only if you step on the gas.
That doesn't sound very liberal to me. Sounds like a very just question. I don't get exactly how this editorial is "very liberal". Because it expresses a heartfelt sorrow for the children and the parents rather than excoriating the kids as criminals? That's what makes it an editorial.
I find nothing wrong with this statement. In fact, I can agree with the editorial. I've got a teenaged son. He has not been perfect, but he is a "good" kid. Has done some not so good things. But basicaly a good kid, under the light I see him. Heck, I was not perfect as a kid either, but I was basically "good" I think.
I think we tend to jerk our knees at liberals, there is no need for that.
he he.
That was pretty obviously the poster's comment, not one from the frizzy-haired fuzzy-thinking criminal coddler that crayoned this article.
I mean these kids were cut down just a couple years short of going on welfare, committing adult-type crimes, and being dependable voting Democrats. How terrible... NOT!.
d.o.l.
Crimina, Number 18F
No mention the car was stolen. No mention the driver was involved in a "home invasion". No mention the car was going 100 mph and weaving all over the road. No mention the cop only chased for 15 seconds at 100 mph and then backed off 3/4 of a mile for safety. No mention the stolen car was riding on a "spare donut" wheel...
...but four paragraphs on the greying dusk, quivering creeks, peeled trees, mudtracks and white headbands at the crash scene.
Why did this "reporter" even bother going up there? She could have written the article from her comfortable desk in Charlotte sipping a hot latte!
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