Living in Chattanooga, TN, I have been watching the wave of media coverage crash around this Buckle of the Bible Belt. Unwittingly and yet in typical East Tennessee/North Georgia fashion, the boy from the 278th spoke up with a sense of independence and boldness characteristic of many Appalachian folk around here. Speaking up to whom? Bush? Rumsfeld? Doesn't matter who.
As the term HILLBILLY ARMOR made the circuit in the news, and the right-wing press tried to attack a pretty conservative paper in the South, the CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS, I thought up some bold ideas for helping the troops myself. Here's the story of one idea that had some unpredictable effects at the college where I teach.
Click on
Coffee Cans for Troops and you'll find a web page about recycling coffee cans. The site does not mention using coffee cans for our troops. But I thought it should.
So I put my own plan into action. During my morning classes Friday at Chattanooga State College, I carried in a discarded coffee can lid and showed it to my students. I asked them to contribute to a drive I was beginning, to collect coffee cans and lids for our troops going into Iraq so that they could have at least some semblance of HILLBILLY ARMOR.
I acted with deep seriousness. Although a few students had no idea what I was talking about, most of them knew about the news (I mean this is a story right in our own backyard in Chattanooga!). Of those who had heard the story already, a few took me seriously enough and promised to bring coffee cans or lids or some sort of metal next week. When other students laughed, I acted indignant. I reminded them that every piece of junk metal counts, that you "go with the army you have," as our Defense Secretary put it so boldly.
As I was finishing up with my last class, the next teacher came in and asked about the coffee lid. I explained my project to her, but she was not amused. Indeed she looked perplexed. Suddenly, she exploded with hot metallic words of wrath. I felt like one of those poor soldiers without armor. This was the first time I had seen or heard her talk politically, so I was in foreign territory. She attempted to chop me up (in front of my students) by using guilt trips that appeal to patriotism and respect for authority, ever emphasizing that Rumsfeld had been set up. When she was finished, I simply replied with a guilt trip of my own: Well, I don't know whether Rumsfeld got set-up, but I do know that our troops need protective armor. And that's all I'm interested in.
Okay, I was lying a little bit. I am interested in seeing Rumsfeld resign. But at that moment that is all I was interested in. She came back in typical non-thinking fashion, in a manner I've heard from that type all my life: I'm a conservative and I don't care what you say; you're not going to change my mind.
Well, who said anything about conservative or liberal? Anyway, her students - who had been entering the room during the exchange - looked at her as if she had lost her mind. As I walked out with my coffee lid, one of her students followed me, catching up with me in the hall. I stopped for him, expecting some kind of defense for his teacher. Instead, he vowed to bring a coffee can next week.