Wisconsin has seen its share of airplane crashes taking the lives of up-and-even-further-coming music stars — Lake Geneva flying east is only one example — as we see more needs for people to get “on a jet-aeroplane” or “no time to take a fast train” with the situation in the Middle East. But wait, this isn’t a copycat of Leaving Afghanistan, since Israel long ago has essentially shut-down the one airport in the Gaza Strip. Rail lines, if even existing, likely have been bombed out in both feuding countries. So no escape. Like those poor souls in the very front of a death-metal mosh pit, pushed against other types of fences.
And, I reference a gang of four who in the heydays of rock hit the rough road from Hudson in the far northwest end of Wisconsin, and headed for a Milwaukee concert — going past Lake Geneva and the ghost of Stevie Ray Vaughn — following the route of so many actually in a rock band, with motley van dragged metal on the blacktop. Bumper decals stayed largely OK, though roughed edged and scratched. Most fans have better rides. Mufflers and even woofers and more breaking down, including engine parts unknown, along the way, in more than one location. I myself have had The Troubles in the car more than once in halfway Tomah — at the unholy Trinity where there’s a break in freeway, where it goes either west or more northernly, between I-90 and I-94. Going up north.
But its so much worse in Gaza, if you are asked to find some way to trek almost two-dozen miles to the south gap at Egypt — and it would be farther if this wasn’t one of the such-enforced most densely populated places on the planet, with like a gagilion in every square mile?
This, in The Middle East, is more important than going to see a Sabbath-type or Stillwater or Sweetwater show back in the ’70s. Have all of us who bitch about our commute thought about how you make your way to the land of Anubis. This is no concert backdrop. As all agree that the rank and file in Palestine are not the enemy. But they must now march. Into eternity?
It only starts with food and water, and how can you indeed march many miles while being famished? No canteens here like in the old Westerns. What about medications, that niceity of the 20th Century? Insulin sminsulin. And what if you are disabled, and just how do you walk while dragging oxygen or a dialysis machine. You simply die.
If you can find a car or motorcycle — can Harley Davidson donate some low-riders? — are you even able to get some gas, or pay for it as banks have been bombed, or is there even a station still in existance? Much less a convenience store with other things you might need to get to Egypt, like motor oil before your parts go dry. Might resonate if you are one of those hyper-fastidious types who change it every 3,000 miles. What if your car was at or about 2,999, and you use the cheap stuff, at the time of the initial missile strikes, and it was 9:58, too late to rush to the nearest Quickie Lube before it would close at the 10 O’Clock Hour? And you can’t call on your cell phone, to check if that cute clerk and you know the one, would hold the register open a few more minutes, since you were displaced so fast you don’t have it in your pocket? Nevermind the fact that its black plastic is so slippery it fell out in a trip to the West Bank … while it was still open to people like you. And your wallet was left under the couch, if you have one and people in this region have scant funishings, then screw you. Change in your pocket may not get you there. Not that’s stress.
What if walking with toddlers? And their diapers if they need? Somewhere we all go. And other clothing, it temps and rains change like they seem to wherever you live? And the two-lane road, if that, not four-lane, has no shoulder.
Maybe its good that Gaza is only 25 miles long. But if in the northern remote outpost, if there is such a thing here, that is Gaza City is perhaps 20 away from The Promised Land of Egypt. Am I the only one who sees irony here, that title included, from so far back in the past no one had heard about an Israeli State?