On the Way to Fort Hood

After dozens of phone calls and days and days of being jerked around by Cruise America, we finally were headed towards getting a new RV. Having dealt with a smashed out window, no air conditioning, no power, and a million other problems for almost two weeks, the extra few hours tacked on to our drive was worth it. Going out of our way to Jacksonville, Florida, and still on a high from the success of the Fort Stewart stop, the crew was elated to get into a functional vehicle.

Now starts the two day journey to Austin, Texas.

After over eleven hours of driving, we headed into Baton Rouge. Ward Reilly, a member of VVAW who most of us met at Winter Soldier in March of this year, was waiting for us at his home so we could spend the night. Sometime after two in the morning we pulled up to a house, deep in Cajun country, with a large Christmas-light peace sign over the garage door.

Ward welcomed us into a place that seemed to me like a museum of American history. Surrounded by hundreds of artifacts ranging from the local civil war battles to today's anti-war efforts, we had a hell of an interesting experience staying at Ward's. With logs burning outside in the backyard, we enjoyed our time in classic Louisiana fashion by throwing fireworks into the fire pit. (It wasn't as dangerous as it sounds.)

My first time in Louisiana since my month of training at Fort Polk for JRTC, I was again surprised to be enjoying myself in the South. I had always thought of the entire South, to include LA, as entirely made up of red-states. Instead, Ward told us that the people in his area are mostly liberal, especially due to Bush's insufficient aid to the devastated, post-Katrina Gulf Coast. Covering nearly every wall of his home were pictures of huge anti-Iraq occupation rallies in nearby New Orleans that I had never been aware of. To think that thousands of people whose homes were destroyed in a hurricane could still find the time in their lives to come out and protest a conflict that sometimes seems forgotten in other parts of the country...it makes me curious about the convictions of most other Americans.

For years the troops in Iraq seemed to be in the background of the collective American mind until now - when skyrocketing gas prices are affecting every American family and business because of the Bush Administration. This occupation has brought us to a point where seven or eight in every ten Americans are saying that they're against the war, but how much more will it take before they're ready to take action and do something about it?

After our late night (or well, early morning) discussions, we headed inside.

Some of our more musically inclined crew members spent the night jamming with Ward in his studio filled with all the legendary guitars imaginable. I attempted to sleep to the music on the couch just outside the studio, but one of our tone-deaf crew members who shall remain nameless, (*cough* the Hippie *cough*) kept bashing on a drum with the rhythm of a sugar-high toddler.

In the morning we said our goodbyes to Ward Reilly and his wife, Melissa, and continued on our ride west.

-Kris "K-Goldy" Goldsmith
Writing on behalf of the State of the Union Base Tour Crew