Crosses

I went to see the good Doctor this morning to have my wrist brace and stiches removed.  On the way to Bend I noticed what must have been about 100 white crosses jumbled in a field beside the Highway.  I had not seen them before and was curious about them.  I made a mental note to inspect them further on the way back home. 

OK, I'll admit the truth. You guys know me well enough I can't fool you.  I wrote "Stop/crosses" on a sticky pad I have learned to take everywhere I travel and attached it to the center of my steering wheel.  Mental notes just don't cut it anymore.  I can still find my way home without help but stops along the way get confusing.

Later, on the way home, my note reminded me of the stop I wanted to make and I pulled over next to the crosses.  There were more than a hundred, possibly three hundred, but they were jumbled so as to make an accurate count impossible.  Some were tall, some short.  There would be a cluster and then some would have larger spaces between them.  The field was uneven, undulating and filled with natural grasses that grew as high as some of the shorter crosses.  There were large boulders scattered among them.  It made me wonder who planted the crosses and why.  It was in the middle of my wondering that I looked closer at what I first thought to be a pile of junk more or less in the center of the field. 

There were a couple of peices of plywood nailed together to make a platform about eight feet square.  Eight inch wide boards had been gilded and nailed all around the edges.  The paint had faded.  This platform rested on cylinders at each corner.  A cube, with sides about three feet  long was on top of the platform and there was a coffin shaped pine box that leaned against it.  An American flag had been painted on it and the word "Iraq" was stenciled beneath the flag.  Recognition dawned.

I have seen the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and experienced the power that simple, elegant structure has to evoke emotion.  This even simpler alter, constructed of left overs and placed in the middle of an untended field was almost as powerful.  This creation, unfunded and unsigned, said so much with so little. 

Just what were the cylinders upon which it rested?  The alter was placed on oil drums.