Border Fence Ping!
Posted on 05/29/2006 8:58:07 PM PDT by SandRat
PALOMINAS — For many people, building a barbed-wire fence under the burning Arizona sun would probably be the last way they would want to spend their Memorial Day weekend.
Not Minuteman Project volunteer Christie Czajkowski, however. She signed up for the group’s weekend fence-building inauguration almost as soon as she heard about it — even though it meant driving 15 hours from her home in Chula Vista, Calif. “What else am I going to do, go to another beach party?” laughed the 33-year-old baker as she paused from a turn at stringing wire. “No, I need to do something to protect my country.”
Czajkowski is among the several dozen volunteers spending the long weekend at Jack and John Ladd’s ranch in Palominas. They are constructing the first stretch of a barrier that the Minutemen hope will cover all of the Ladds’ 10 miles of border frontage by summer’s end.
After that, the group says it will keep on building border fences until the federal government relieves them of the task.
For her part, Czajkowski is only planning to stick around in Palominas until tonight. After that, she needs to get back to her job and her two children, aged 7 and 9, who are spending the weekend with their grandmother.
But she expects to join up again with the project when the Minutemen break ground on a border fence in El Centro, Calif, later this year. And she plans on bringing her kids — both fledgling patriots — to the event.
“I send them to school every day in American flag T-shirts,” said Czajkowski, who was decked out Sunday in her own “American Mom” T-shirt topped with a USA-logo baseball cap.
Czajkowski was far from the only volunteer to travel great distances to Palominas this weekend. At Saturday’s groundbreaking ceremony, master of ceremonies Stacey O’Connell, director of Minuteman operations in Arizona, asked the crowd to identify where they had come from.
Hands shot into the air were followed by shout-out answers ranging from “Georgia” and “Ohio” to “New Hampshire” and “Boston.”
Robert Hassett, 63, drove two days from Franktown, Colo., in his Mitsubishi Montage to help build the fence, which had stretched to about 1.2 miles of 4-foot metal post and barbed wire by early Sunday afternoon. Another 150 feet of 15-foot, Israeli anti-terrorist-style barrier is also planned for the site.
Hassett, who recently retired after 33 years in the insurance business, said he had two reasons for coming to build border fencing in Arizona.
The first was a feeling that the government was not doing its part to stem the tide of illegal immigration. The second was that he was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and wanted to make the most of his remaining time.
Sweating under the midday sun and fighting to catch his breath after pounding a fencepost into the ground, Hassett acknowledged that the strain of the job was probably not the best medicine for his condition.
“If my doctor knew what I was doing, I think he’d have a heart attack,” he said.
“But this reminds me of when I was in the Marines and I felt like I was really doing something for my country.”
In addition to volunteering with the Minutemen, Loch David Crane of Ocean Beach, Calif., also likes to play Santa Claus for needy children at Christmas. During the rest of the year, he puts on a western comedy magic show under the stage name “Bafflin’ Bill Cody,” complete with Lakota Indian props.
Crane is also a big “Star Trek” enthusiast, and when he’s back at home in California, he drives around town in a vehicle he calls the “Star Trike,” a three-wheeled motorcycle designed to replicate the Enterprise space craft from the popular TV show. Not long after he returns home from his Memorial Day fence-building weekend, Crane will help host a convention of fellow “Trekkies” in Anaheim.
He saw little connection between his Trekkie and Minuteman activities, however.
“Trekkies live in a world of fantasy and the future,” he said. “But the Minutemen are very much of the moment. If there wasn’t a threat right now, we wouldn’t be here.”
Crane, 53, is already retired from the everyday working world. But when Czajkowski was asked what her restaurant co-workers thought of her decision to drive to Arizona and build a Minuteman fence, she said that some were so excited that they packed her van with 12 coolers of drinks and snacks to share among the volunteers.
Her undocumented co-workers — of which she has many, she said — would probably not be so approving if she had told them what she was doing. After all, she noted, she recently turned a few of them in to the INS.
herald/review reporter Jonathan Clark can be reached at 515-4693 or by e-mail at jonathan.clark@bisbeereview.net.
Border fence update
Border Fence Ping!
terminal cancer. wanting to spend his time building a border fence.
Did Voinovich cry again? Poor guy. Needs some time off.
Are any of you fellows in love?
Four feet high?! That will be so easy to breach. Why waste the time?
Thanks again for the meeting at Cafe Ole. It was great meeting you.
I met the minutemen on SUN. They were on 92. I passed them by when I was turned back by Forest Rangers due to the fire at the visitors center at Colorado National Monument. They were a great group of guys.
I don't know if this is public information yet or not, but MG Fast, Fort Huachuca's CG said that military personnel can not, RPT CAN NOT, participate in Minuteman activities.
Dunno if you can sue MG Fast, but I call B.S.....what soldiers do on their off time, as long as it conforms with ARs, FMs, and DoD regs, should be their business. BG Fast seems to assume that the Minutemen are a "racist" organization.
Anyways....good luck.
Out here!
I wonder why they are bothering with this also; it may have something to do with restrictions on State or Federal lease land that the rancher is using. I think on most government lease land it is specified exactly what type of fence can be built.
Still I wonder why MM would bother with the sections that are not going to really discourage illegal traffic. Seems they would not build in sections where some type of restriction will keep them from building an effective fence.
I hope someone who really knows the answers will post.
Once they have pics of the 15ft high fence we'll have to see that.
A litle info on 
Israel's anti-terrorist fence
Another instance of "everybody knows that (fill-in-the-blank)..."
Israel is building a 25' concrete wall the whole length of the border. (lions and tigers and bears. oh my!) 
Despite the many pictures being shown in the international media of a tall concrete wall, more than 97% of the planned 720 km. (480 mile) anti-terrorist fence will consist of a chain-link fence system.
Hog wash! @I'muninformed.com
It's public knowledge and she's 100% right for military poersonel.
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