Prompted: Witness to a Shooting
Image provided by @midkiffaries.
In a bygone era, teenagers in Frederick, Oklahoma would spend Friday and Saturday evenings “dragging main.” Behind the wheel of some second-hand truck or car, you would find yourself making endless journeys down Main Street. At the stop sign near Pizza Hut, you would make a loop and head back down Main Street, turn right on Grand, down to the park, left on 17th Street, left on Gladstone, and back to Main where the journey would begin again.
Gatherings often interrupted these endless loops in parking lots where dozens of teens would gather to scheme all kinds of plans for the evening – plans we attempted to hide from our parents. In truthful whispers from other parents who knew our parents as teenagers, we would learn these were the same plans they had made in their glory days.
Being asked to join an older sister, brother, or friend to drag Main was a rite of passage in my small town. With a nonchalant request to join someone blessed with a vehicle for a Coke at Sonic or D.A.D.S., you crossed a threshold. You were no longer a child. You were standing somewhere between two distinct worlds. You were slipping the safe bonds of your parents’ care and venturing into the unknown. Of course, most of us were within shouting distance of home, but that didn’t matter.
Soon, it would be our turn. We would have cars and trucks of our own. With music blaring and nothing but time to kill, we too would find ourselves in the grips of a ritual none of us invented and few of us thought would ever end. Independence born in countless miles driven, and countless lives lived. Stories Bruce Springsteen turned into songs were written by us on the city streets, country back roads, and the parking lots of a small town in the Southwestern corner of Oklahoma.
From those streets, we would often scatter like a flock of birds to a friend’s house for an impromptu movie night or round of video games. For the more daring and adventurous, you might find yourself in a pasture on the outskirts of town, drinking your first beer with thoughts of how you were going to get home safely, and how you were going to explain the smell on your breath and another violation of your curfew.
In those early hours, legendary stories would be born and told on Monday morning back at school. You would often hear stories of classmates pulled over by the cops. Some unlucky few were served DUI's, which gave them a new status in the hallway. Others would have grand tales to share. The rumors and their exploits would sweep across the schoolyard. These brushes with the law, or tall tales, were often our only exposure to a world more complicated than our small town. For a teenager, the complications of the outside world rarely visited Frederick in any real way that would force us to pay attention.
Back in the early 1990s, there was an explosion of gang violence in America’s biggest cities. What began on our east and west coasts slowly creeped across the county into communities both big and small, like some fashion trend no one really understood. Dividing lines were drawn in Los Angeles and New York. Before long, those lines were drawn on the south side of Oklahoma City, through Lawton and in the hallways of Frederick.
On a sweltering summer night, my sister offered me my first rite of passage. With her and a friend, I sat between them on the bench seat of some borrowed pickup truck. With country music playing soundtrack to our journey, I attempted to be the funniest and most charming version of myself. I didn’t want my sister to regret asking me to come along. If I was fortunate, she might ask me to come along again.
Turning left on 17th, we passed Frederick Memorial Park to see a crowd gathered in the parking lot near the basketball courts. It was summer. We were all out of school. This wasn’t an alarming sight. For my sister and her friend, there were no recognizable faces in the growing crowd. At the time, whatever was stealing everyone’s attention wasn't worth pulling over and exploring, especially with me in tow. We stayed the course and continued our mindless loops around town.
But each time we passed the park, the crowd grew larger and more curious. Fifteen minutes later, we would return to find the crowd had grown. As the evening gave way to the first hints of night, we passed the park one final time. This time, someone was on the ground, and the panicked crowd was gathered around an unmoving body. Cops, sheriffs, and ambulances filled every corner of the park. Police tape was haphazardly drawn around light poles as concerned neighbors looked on in horror and shock.
I broke silence by asking, “Has someone been shot? Is he dead?” No answer was given to the questions I so untactfully lobbed like a grenade. Instead of joining the assembling masses, we decided it was best to head home. Frederick is incredibly small. Word of what happened might have beaten us home, and we didn’t want my mom and dad to worry.
The next day, we would learn someone had indeed been shot. Gang violence had visited the streets of our rural town and left one victim in its wake.
Of course, witnessing the aftermath of such an event and learning of its fallout filled my young mind with endless questions. Why? Who? How could this happen? How could this happen in Frederick?
Searching my memory, I cannot remember all the details of that evening. I have done my best to piece together the details of that event. With nearly four decades between me and that night, I may not be the most trustworthy narrator for this story. I honestly cannot remember if the person lived or died. I never found out what started an explosion of violence. No one has ever painted the full picture for me, perhaps in some effort to save the remaining shreds of my innocence.
But this was a monumental moment in my life. On an innocent evening when I was so excited to join my sister in a defining moment for any kid in my town, I learned of death, not for the first time, but of its violence. A problem birthed onto our television screens from much bigger communities had made its way to the heartland of America. With a dose of reality, I was robbed and my passage was temporarily scarred.
As an adult, I look back on this moment with the full scope of time and experience guiding me. I now live in a city much bigger than the small town that shaped my childhood. I am also not oblivious to the online chatter of how West Coast cities are perceived. Painted as violent hellscapes where anarchy rules, I live in a misunderstood place badly drawn by people fearful of cities.
But I know the truth. For all the work of popular media, the world is not a violent place. At least, it is not as violent as they would have us believe. I also know that guns possess real power. I was never big on joining my dad and brothers for hunting trips. Bambi and the violence experienced in my hometown were more than enough to drastically cement my opinion on guns. I have grown to fear their power and don’t want anything to do with them. In fact, I have grown to hate them.
We would end the 90s with a disturbing new trend – mass shootings in schools and universities. Our ease of access to guns and the ease with which so many of us reach for them in the name of protection and revenge is maddening to me. Some may see this as an irrational fear, but fear has shaped my worldview.
For nearly an hour, I watched a crowd assemble in a park in my hometown. With one more loop on Main Street, someone’s life was drastically altered. To me, that feels like too much power and consequence to be trusted in the hands of the masses.
If I had never witnessed such an event, perhaps my feelings toward guns might be different. If my television wasn’t filled with images of evacuated children fleeing for the safety of waiting parents and guardians, perhaps my feelings might be different. If I hadn’t experienced the fallout surrounding a self-imposed gunshot on someone I love, perhaps my feelings might be different. But I have lived a life, and that life has experienced the violence of guns. There is nothing more that I can say.
Be good to each other,
Nathan
As a member of the factory, you are taking a stand for human powered creation.
