Thread: New York Times, Friend to One-Eyed Minutemen

New York Times, Friend to One-Eyed Minutemen

We linked to this earlier today, but it’s worth another look. The Times launched a new biweekly column by Charlie LeDuff today. It’s incredible.

The first installment of the Times’s American Album brings LeDuff’s elegant, understated prose to the Mexican border. He meets with a one-eyed Minuteman, Britt Craig, and Craig’s one-eyed cat (nameless, as far as we can tell):

“He did poorly in school and thought he would prove himself as a warrior. He enlisted as a paratrooper and lost his left eye in Vietnam. By his account, he came home to mockery and derision and this knocked him sideways. So he drifted. Sailed. Fished. Pounded nails. Made music in Puerto Rico. Knew a few women and forgot a few women. Finally, in his later years, he grew roots on this hill. He makes his morning toilet with a bucket and a shovel.

“’I never got that 1945 reception,’ he says from beneath the shadow of his canvas brim. ‘Maybe now I’m doing something the American people appreciate.’ … “There is another man who lives on a hill on the horizon to the west. He, too, is an Army veteran, a retired fisherman and a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week ‘scout.’ He flies a large American flag from a makeshift 30-foot pole, carries a .45 pistol in his waistband and lives in relative luxury in an R.V. with a port-a-potty. That man, Robert Cook, also 57, goes by the nom de guerre Little Dog.

“Mr. Cook is annoyed that Mr. Craig will not respect his position as director of Campo border operations for the Minuteman Project. And so he has referred to Mr. Craig as a phony war hero, compared him to male genitalia and rifled off an e-mail message to CNN calling Mr. Craig a swine who lives in a cat box.

“This led to fisticuffs on the main street of town when the men happened to come off their hilltops at the same time for water and supplies. Mr. Craig, vigorous and perhaps a foot taller, gave Mr. Cook four chances to take the insults back, which Mr. Cook refused to do, ending in the breakage of Mr. Cook’s eyeglasses.”

Fantastic stuff. Head here for the full story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/us/14 ... ref=slogin

I enjoyed this story. To me Mr Craig is a real hero, it is a pity to me his kind of hero, the Nam Vets, were spit on by liberals like Fonda who were not fit to shine his shoes with their tongues! I am sure that part of what made this lonely man was of his own doing, the rest was done to him by his country. He though, is still standing tall, a real hero, still trying to protect his country even though his country failed him so terribly. I wonder what Ms. fonda is doing nowadays? You can be sure whatever it is, it is not the giving of herself for her country.