Letter to Garrison Keillor on Behalf of the Patriot Guard

Dear Mr. Keillor:

Your article was forwarded to me by a very large number of very angry individuals, and, just as I suspect that they will have something to say to you about this, it has also prompted me to respond. I'm angry too, but I will try very hard to choke that down so that I can provide what I hope will be seen as an thoughtful response to an extremely insensitive and not terribly well-thought out opinion piece.
Hollow patriotism you say? The connection you quite obviously miss between "these fat men with ponytails on Harleys" and "pilots revving up B-24s and infantrymen crouched behind piles of rubble steeling themselves for the next push" is that many of these Harley riders have been the pilots and the infantrymen of which you speak. If you had taken time to look around at places like Khe Sanh, or LZ XRAY in the Ia Drang Valley, or perhaps some hot, stinking nondescript rice paddy seven clicks from "who knows where in the hell we are" in the 1960's, you would have seen a lot of us. Maybe you were there and didn't look. Maybe you weren't, but like to talk about the issue as though you actually know something about it. Either way, you should know that we weren't fat in those days. We didn't have ponytails either. We were young, filthy dirty, underweight, sick and scared to a point of numbness that you can't know unless you've lived it, every damned day, with no escape. We lost friends, we lived through and saw things that can, without warning, wake some of us even today, screaming from our sleep. Like every solider who has ever fought, since the dawn of history, we did not fight for honor, for duty or for country. We fought for the guys beside us who refused to run out on us. The ones that talked us down from madness. The ones that held us when we were sick, or shared a last cigarette hiding under a poncho and a blanket of mosquitoes. And the ones that we watched bleeding to death, and crying for their mothers while we held them in our arms, trying to comfort them while we watched their eyes go dull. For us, it is not the vivid blues and greens of the art that lifts you from the mishmash of life that are important on Memorial Day. Instead, on this day, we have these images that we will never forget, as long as our hearts still beat.
You seem most upset because you were inconvenienced trying to cross a street that you admit had been blocked off for the passage of these riders, many from the Patriot Guard, or other organizations dedicated to honoring both the living and the dead who go in harms way in our Country's name. Upset because these classless oafs delayed your trip to the National Gallery where you celebrated Memorial Day by taking in a Renoir. Meanwhile many of the fat, pony-tailed oafs, tried, after several aborted attempts, and with tears streaming down their faces, to make it to the Wall without collapsing in tears in front of names engraved in stone, but with the memory of souls engraved more deeply in our hearts and minds. And we leave mementos, a flag, a patch, a ring, a medal, a can saved from a 1 in 12 . Something, anything to let a comrade know, "Brother I have not forgotten you, and I know I'll see you soon." I have names on that wall. I have started and stopped on that path a dozen times. Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don't. I believe in my heart that the brothers I go to see there know that at least I tried.
Perhaps we ride and rev our engines to celebrate the life a buddy cannot. Maybe some of us do it because it keeps them from sticking a gun in their mouth to end a pain and guilt they cannot escape. Guilt and pain caused by the knowledge that we lived while a buddy died. Maybe we do it because by banding together we can absorb the strength to go on from one another. People who have shared the horror, people who would rather work up the guts to look at their tear streaked reflections on the Wall than to study Monet or Cassat at your side. As much as many of us appreciate the art, on this day, we have other images to deal with that are much more compelling to us.
We do care very deeply about the war dead, Mr. Keillor. We need not read Halberstam or Ambrose to get a vision of what that was like. We have visions we cannot escape. Of death and destruction. Of the shredded meat left by a Claymore on a jungle trail, or the empty hole where a 19 year old buddy from clear back at Basic was trying to get small just before a mortar hit it. We ride to honor our dead, we ride to show solidarity with those in harm's way now. What have you to teach us of war and death Mr. Keillor? What have you to teach us about remembering?
You may be the boatman. For all I care, you can have the boat. But I, fat and pony tailed as I am, along with my fat and pony tailed brothers - We are our brothers' keepers. And every Memorial Day, from now till the day I go to join my friends, lost so long ago, I will have my fat ass planted out there on the Harley, flag flying, wind in my hair. Because if a certain Lance Corporal had not died while pushing my face down into one of those stinking, filthy rice paddies, this is exactly where he would be and exactly what he would be doing.
So, you celebrate this solemn holiday your way, Mr. Keillor. I and my brothers and sisters will choose to honor our dead in our way too. You can question our fat, old bodies all you wish. But don't you ever question our patriotism again.
And since I have failed miserably to keep my anger in check, despite my promise to do so, you can go to Hell, Mr. Keillor, and you can take the Renoir with you.