Cowpens

January 25, 2021

A multi-colored digital billboard is flashing above the city: “Seeking Information, Violence at U.S. Capitol, Call FBI.” So the detective work of tracking down the bad guys isn’t just by shoeleather or following up telephoned tips. 

If the feds think billboards will help find Capitol rioters here in Greenville, S.C., they must be using them elsewhere. Where, I wondered—New York, Chicago, Philly, L.A., Miami? Or perhaps just smaller cities like this one. Probably not Cambridge, Georgetown, Tribeca, Bel Air.

We, all of us—maybe not all of us—are struggling to make sense of and recover from the mob assault on democracy two weeks ago. Biden took the oath and spoke eloquently, maybe that’s a start. Sandy and I bought a house, for us, that’s a start. If things work out, we’ll move in late next month.

We got through signing most of the papers, then dodged the headlines about Biden, QAnon, covid-19, the election hoax, etc.  We drove the 30 or so miles to a state park outside Spartanburg and tramped around for a while. We stared at the lake (Lake Craig) and wondered why the place seemed deserted. The inauguration, I guessed.

It was the same downtown. On Main Street the 30-foot-tall obelisk topped with a statue of General Daniel Morgan, the hero of nearby Cowpens, gleamed in the chilly January sun. Sure enough, someone had climbed the obelisk to fasten a mask over the statue’s face. I looked around, the Spartanburg streets were nearly empty. It was an unnerving, unsettled moment.

 I wondered about that (to me) obscure name and place, Cowpens. It seemed strange that the most decisive battle of the Revolution, just over an even 240 years ago (Jan. 17, 1781), took place in this rural corner of South Carolina. The War for Independence exploded in the North, in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Valley Forge, Saratoga, Ticonderoga, Trenton, and Brandywine are the places that register for me. Yet it was at Cowpens that Morgan defeated an outnumbered British force, severely weakening the Brits in advance of the siege and surrender at Yorktown ten months later. The inscription on the obelisk testifies that Morgan, at Cowpens, won the war: all the original colonies plus Tennessee contributed to its construction.

It was an odd lesson to gather in, in mostly a good week. Biden took over, Trump went into hiding. We got the house. Our oldest and youngest daughters flew into town Thursday on nearly empty flights, from Pittsburgh and Steamboat Springs. Then I got a passing grade on my PET (positron emission tomography) scan, or at least a C. Good enough.

The house is in a subdivision in a suburb. I wanted to live either in the city or the country. It has a yard to tend to, I didn’t want to do that. But looking at homes for sale is a grind. This one is close to our daughter’s, son-in-law’s, and grandkids’ place. That clinched it.

We picked the girls up at the airport Wednesday, Laura in the afternoon, Kathleen at 9 PM, all of us in masks. They sat in the van’s back seat a good six feet away. They’re quarantining for a few days at a rented place downtown. Then we’ll get caught up.

The PET report came back basically OK. The PET shows the body’s metabolic activity. The tech injects you with a tracer drug, you sit still for an hour, then get inside the donut-shaped tube for 20 minutes. The drug adheres to cancerous tissue and glows on the scan, showing whether, and where, cancer is hiding. It was sent to the radiation oncologist overnight. He found a trace of something where I had my problem two years ago. That needs monitoring, he said.

I lay down on the radiation slab, reached back and grasped the handbars, the tech slid me under the device, aimed the beam at my chest, and marked the target area. I’m down for 27 sessions. In a couple of weeks the medical oncologist will tell me what’s next. 

Like everyone else, we’re scrounging for good things, in our own lives, and in other’s lives.  Kathleen and our son Michael have had their covid vaccinations. Biden is trying to get the distribution right. But South Carolina still is near last place among the states in getting the shots to people. And we now know that scary critters are out there: not just the contagious microbes, but also the “Stop the Steal” groupies, the militias, the social media psychotics, the new Confederates, and the Republican liars, still waiting for the election to be reversed.

So we keep sorting things out, extracting hope and faith from chaos and tragedy. Maybe Biden needs a General Morgan for a Cowpens reprise. For two months the political liberties he and so many others fought for over those 240 years were in jeopardy. We’ve stepped back from the brink.

Meanwhile we’re depending on the good people, the doctors and nurses who will get us through covid and cancer, and those FBI agents with their billboards, winning the country back. They’re front and center, saving lives, standing up for us, creating hope.