Maintaining in the Midwest

The heartland responds to anthrax and terrorist threats with a mixture of patriotism and fatalism.

By King Kaufman

Nov. 13, 2001 | DES MOINES, Iowa -- Before anthrax spores were discovered in a stamp fulfillment center in Kansas City, Mo., the anthrax scare, the Sept. 11 attacks, the war on terrorism -- all of the things that make up our milieu of the moment -- had seemed like a primarily coastal phenomenon to me. I live in St. Louis, and news of the attacks, the subsequent bombings and the anthrax cases occupied the front pages but not my daily interactions or those of the people around me. It was rarely topic A.

But anthrax being discovered just across the state brought the whole thing closer to home for me. I found myself a little more interested in the mail safety advice that I'd been ignoring to that point. I awaited more reports of spores being found, maybe even in my own city.

Over the Veteran's Day weekend I took a whirlwind tour of the Midlands, driving 1,000 miles and talking to a couple of dozen people in three states. I wanted to ask my neighbors if they had similar reactions -- if the threats of anthrax or other forms of terrorism had changed the way they live their lives.

For the most part, they had not. As a new Midwesterner, four months removed from a lifetime in California, I'm learning that a shrugged shoulder and a low-key attitude are common. I found people who were, in varying combinations, resolute in their faith and patriotism and unworried, fatalistic or in denial about anthrax. At holiday parades and observances, or just out and about on a pleasant fall weekend, some people admitted to a heightened anxiety about domestic terrorism, but more said they're finding themselves appreciating their freedom more, living more in the moment.

John Hastie, 53 and retired from John Deere and Company, sat in a folding chair on the grass outside the golden-domed Iowa Capitol in Des Moines Sunday. Waiting for a Veteran's Day memorial ceremony to begin, he smoked a cigarette and stared at the Iowa Vietnam Memorial, a black granite curved wall, reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington but much smaller, with the names of Iowa's fallen engraved and the words "Reflections of Hope" across the top.

With long, light brown but graying hair and a full beard that's long enough to rest on his belly, he talked quietly, sadly, when I asked him about his reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent events.

"I think it's a disgrace that that happened, but myself, I've had this ongoing feeling almost since 1968 when I was in Vietnam," the Army veteran said. I asked what he meant by "this ongoing feeling." "It's a terrible thing. The loss of life, the loss of fallen comrades," he said, then, suddenly changing the subject: "I'm just hoping all these flags, the people flying all the flags, I hope it's genuine."

Veteran's Day, which dates to Armistice Day celebrations at the end of World War I, is not one of your glamour holidays. What events are staged are often attended by small -- and ever shrinking -- bands of aging vets. This year, though, with the United States, having been attacked, engaged in a popular war in Afghanistan, patriotism is running high, and usually small-time events grew in stature.

"Incredible," is how organizer Thomas Rayfield described interest in Saturday's parade in the small town of Belton, Mo., just south of Kansas City. "Last year I think we had about 40 entries," he said two days before the event. "We're almost at 60 now." Across the state in St. Louis, parade chairman Ralph Wiechert, the superintendent of the Soldier's Memorial, reported a similar spike in participants, from about 90 units in a normal year to, well, "We stopped counting at 120." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch elevated the parade to a "best bet" in its weekend entertainment section, right alongside a Neil Diamond concert at the Savvis Center arena.

The parade in Belton went down the town's quaint, but not precious, remodeled Main Street Saturday morning. Though Kansas City's metropolitan area has stretched south to meet Belton, it seems less like a suburb than a Western small town. Larry King, 38, drove north the 10 miles from Peculiar to watch the parade with his wife and two of his children. A third was marching. I asked him if the discovery of anthrax so close to home affected him.

"I don't think it brought anything really closer, personally for me," he said. "I think if it would have hit a local post office that delivers mail to residents, I think that might have been a little more of an awakening, but I think the media did a good job of letting us know that the location that had the anthrax wasn't something that posed a danger to us."

I couldn't help thinking King was in denial, but on the other hand, he was also right. There hasn't been a new Midwestern outbreak.

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