Also this issue:

Sex and the Cell Phone
Why bitching about calls is like bitching about condoms.
-Tracy Quan

Letters to the Editor

February 6-12, 2003

loose canon

Local Heroes

by Bruce Schimmel

GAINESVILLE, TEXAS -- Last Saturday morning, I was about to take my little four-seater plane into the sky, just as pieces from the space shuttle started to fall to the earth. For people living in this part of Texas, what fell from the sky was certainly a tragedy, but in retrospect, perhaps, a kind of blessing.

Gainesville, Texas, about 200 miles from Nacogdoches, is just north of the spacecraft's path of final descent. In the big sky country of flat, rural Texas, a trip of a couple hundred miles is barely a jaunt, even in a bouncing pickup. For a spacecraft streaking at 12,000 miles an hour, a couple hundred miles is a matter of milliseconds.

It was my luck that landed me here the night before, as I was making my way from California to New Orleans. Running low on fuel, with clouds building ahead, I picked a spot on a map. It was little more than a gas stop for airplanes; the people at the airstrip looked puzzled when I asked where I could spend the night.

They don't get a lot of visitors to this stretch of flat land. It is a uniform kind of place. Think Marlboro Man. Everyone living here seems to wear the same outfit, blue jeans and 10-gallon hats, more armor than clothing.

To an outsider, the residents all looked the same. Without exception, all I met were white, and most seemed of German extraction. Friendly enough, they watched me at a local eatery from the corners of their eyes. Most ate smoked brisket, cole slaw and pickles, washed down with "Red Draft" -- a local brew laced with tomato juice.

Into this tough, monotonous place fell a spaceship carrying a crew as varied as any rainbow coalition.

But even in this land of same, the people in east Texas embraced all of the crew members as heroes; the loss of each, it seemed, was equally mourned.

Coming from all over the planet to this flat stretch of land, these travelers were embraced. In a flash, this motley crew from outer space became instant local heroes to the people of east Texas.

And while it is surely tragic that they've been lost, it is worth remembering how a stroke of luck brought these strangers to this stark land, and with them the ideals of adventure and self-sacrifice that heroes -- from any place -- can bring.