Day Twenty-Four - Albuquerque

For those of you paying close attention, yes, we are now a day ahead of schedule. We hadn't heard anything especially good about Amarillo (sorry for any Amarilloans out there), so we passed right on through and continued on to New Mexico for the night. We'll make up the day with an extra one in Phoenix, where I hear rumors that temperatures are in the eighties and Jessica's cousin has a pool.

We were out of the campsite and headed to Cracker Barrel (no dinner equals big breakfast) by 9:30 this morning. As usual, Cracker Barrel was welcoming and friendly, with good food. And I finally beat the peg game that they have at every table, at every Cracker Barrel.

We then backtracked into downtown Oklahoma City to see the Oklahoma City National Memorial; the site of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. I studied the bombing back in middle or high school, and have wanted to see the memorial ever since. For those of you who aren't nerdy (and morbid) like me, I'll give a little back story. On April 19, 1995 Timothy McVeigh left a moving truck packed with explosives at the base of the building and took off. At 9:02, the bomb exploded, destroying the building and leaving 168 people dead, 19 of them children under the age of 6 who were in a daycare center inside of the building. It was the most destructive terrorist attack on American soil (up until September 11, 2001), and remains (to the best of my knowledge) the deadliest homegrown terrorist attack. McVeigh planned the attack because of what he believe was a mishandling of the incidents at Waco (Texas) and Ruby Ridge (Idaho). I'll leave research and subsequent opinions of those incidents to you, because I don't think that they will muddle the point. Regardless of how the government handled the previous incidents (right or wrong), it was not the direct fault of anyone inside that building. Timothy McVeigh was disturbed and just plain crazy. I don't know how you can intentionally kill that many people, with so many children, without being crazy. If I remember correctly,  his primary target was the ATF (the agency most involved in the prior two incidents), one of the agencies with a branch in the building.

Timothy McVeigh was caught and executed by lethal injection in 2001.

The memorial is especially poignant when you consider its location. It is located on the grounds of the former building, but more noticeably, it sits right at the edge of a busy downtown. You can walk on to the upper level of the memorial, which includes the seals or logos of the agencies and companies that were housed in the Alfred P. Murrah building (I want to say there were 14 of them; including the Marine Corps, Army, US Postal Service, AFT and the DEA, among others). The upper level also looks down over the rest of the memorial.

The memorial is bordered by two double gates. The gates are doubled to give you a moment to mentally prepare yourself to enter the memorial, or to enter back into the rest of the city. The eastern set of gates has 9:01 written above the doorway, the minute before the bombing occurred. The western set of gates has 9:03 written above the doorway, the minute that healing began. The space directly in between the gates holds a reflecting pool. Walking around the pool, you pass some of the walls of the foundation of the original building. Names of survivors are etched into stone, categorized by the agency or company they worked for or were visiting.

On the south side of the reflecting pool lies the Field of Empty Chairs. Each chair symbolized one life lost in the bombing; large chairs for the adults, small ones for the children. The chairs are bronze, and sit on a light rather than legs, so at night it appears that they are floating above the field. 171 names are etched into 168 chairs. Three of the people killed in the bombing were pregnant women, the names of their unborn children are inscribed beneath the names of the mothers. The chairs are organized into 9 rows, to represent the 9 floors of the building. Each person's chair is arranged by the floor they were on, the agency they worked for or were visiting, and then alphabetically by last name. There are five chairs separated from the rest on the west end. These represent the five people outside of the building that were killed by the blast. According the a park ranger, the chairs symbolize the empty chairs at the dinner tables of families who lost a member in the bombing.

On the north side of the reflecting pool lies the Survivor Tree and the Rescuers' Orchard. The Survivor Tree was originally in the middle of an 80 some car parking lot. The cars were damaged, thrown about, and many caught on fire during the blast. No-one expected it to, but the 75 year old oak tree somehow survived and continued to grow. It was renamed the Survivor Tree because of the hope and perseverance that it came to represent for the survivors. You can still see the char marks on the tree from where it caught on fire. Surrounding the Survivor Tree is a collection of young trees planted for the memorial. Oklahoma redbuds (the Oklahoma state tree) are the closest to the Survivor Tree, and represent the Oklahomans that were first on the scene. Various other flowering or fruit-bearing trees are spaced farther out to represent all of the other rescuers. The trees appear to be charging to the assistance of the Survivor Tree.

The north edge of the memorial (immediately behind the Survivor Tree) is flanked by the former Journal Record Building, which sustained damage during the bombing. The building was repaired, but in a way to still show where it was damaged. The roof lifted off and collapsed, you can still see the jagged edge of the brick wall. One fire escape was completely torn off the wall, with the exception of one support. Another fire escape had different levels blown off. The windows are filled in with black bricks to represent the blown in glass. The Journal Record Building now houses a museum dedicated to the tragedy.

Exiting the memorial from the west gate, you see part of the original chain link fence that was erected immediately after the bombing. Mementos are periodically removed and sent to the archives, as more are constantly being added. Cards addressed to multiple family members lost in the bombing bear childrens' handwriting, "Happy Heavenly Birthday." Poems laminated to protect against the sun and rain bear witness to visitors from all of the country and world, "we all died a little that day." Biographies and photographs of the children killed included one who had just reached his third birthday, his grandparents wrote that he was just starting to grow into his personality. If you have learned anything about me from reading this past month, it should come as no surprise that I was crying at this point.

The memorial was unsurprisingly sad, but also gave a good deal of hope. The memorial was completed in about 5 years, which seems like an incredibly short amount of time to get agreement and approval on anything. Submissions for the design came from all 50 states as well as countries around the world. As the park ranger explained, terrorism isn't just about taking lives, it is a method of communication. The memorial was a way for the world to reject this mode of communication, and that they would not be pinned down by terror.

However, the attack still forced changes. The current federal building is sprawled out and lays low, maybe only two or three floors tall. It is set back away from the roadways. Purchases of explosive-making materials are monitored (McVeigh used ammonia nitrate, found in fertilizer, to make the bomb).

Well, that was our cue to head back to the car and get out of dodge. Downtown Oklahoma City was heavily under construction, but even with that, I was a big fan of the city. The roads were wide downtown and signs clearly directed you to where each of the tourist stops, art centers, concert halls and other public attractions were located. Plus, I fell in love with the billboards in Oklahoma...

Amarillo wasn't much to write home about. The "Yellow Rose of Texas" seemed like so many other cities stretched out along freeways, only Amarillo also had cow farms (probably butcher farms, :( but I try not to think about that) nestled alongside I-40. By the time we hit the middle of BFN in New Mexico on I-40, it was almost 4:00 (oh, and we hit Mountain Time, so the phones said 4, but our internal clocks said 5), I was starving and all of the roadside towns had died. We tried to stop for fast food in one, the KFC was closed and GPS directed us to a Pizza Hut that had disappeared off the face of the earth. We finally stopped at a gas station, hoping for milk (to drink my carnations instant breakfast, or lunch in this case), or if I was really lucky, a package of raw top ramen. All we got was a tank of gas at $2.89 a gallon (compared to $2.47 in the last major city...yes, we were robbed), and dirty bathrooms. The gas station store and "grill" contained nothing but candy, chips, soda and cookies. Usually I would deal, but I've already bought a dress for the USMC birthday ball in January (yes, delayed), and I'd like to fit into it which means no gas station candy bars. So I grabbed a Monster (so much better, I know) out of the trunk and we headed out. I'm sure you can imagine my fantastic opinion of New Mexico at this point of the trip.  We finally made it to Albuquerque at 8:00 local time, I was shaking (yay for caffeine on an empty stomach), but we picked up some Domino's and headed to the campground. (And yes, I am well aware of my twisted food logic.)

The KOA was well-equipped with a playground, which we were conveniently located right next to. Unfortunately playtime had to eventually end, and we set up the tent and crawled inside. Oh I almost forgot to mention New Mexico's one (major) redeeming quality. The sunset here was absolutely breathtaking, even when viewed behind the lines of city lights and mobile homes. I am running low on battery now, but I promise I will stock up on pictures tomorrow. We are (hopefully) going to splurge and stay in a (hopefully) decent hotel in Flagstaff tomorrow, after another day chock-full of driving.