Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Freedom

A man sits in his house on the backside of 44 acres writing this blog. Suddenly, the silence is broken by a faint “Boom….. boom..boom….. boom……boom..boom”. The booming grows increasingly louder. “Boom….. boom.. boom….. boom……boom..boom”. The booming settles out at a constant volume and continues and the minutes pass as the increasingly annoyed man tries to write. He finally decides it has gone on long enough and places a call to the local Sheriff’s office. “There is no noise ordinance in the county” States the officer on the other end of the phone. “Well we need one,” says the unhappy man before he hangs up.



Nine hundred miles to the North East the sound of a military jet roars overhead to the cheers of a large crowd. Seconds later and some distance away a phone rings at a 911-call center. The 911-operator takes the call from a disgruntled nightshift worker who is unable to sleep because of the jets roaring above the city. The operator politely explains that it is an air show, which will be over in a few minutes. The operator thinks to himself “that’s the sound of freedom.” The nightshift worker thinks to himself “what a waste of taxpayer money”



Twenty one hundred miles to the South West, a woman is on her way home from work. She turns onto her road on the outskirts of town. “Pigs, they live like pigs” she thinks as she drives by a very cluttered and junky looking residence. There is a man stacking bricks in the yard adding to his wealth of stockpiles. The man dreams of a day when the bricks he is stacking will be fashioned into a barbecue pit, and that pile of stones will be a foundation, and ….. He stops for a moment to admire his bright purple fence. “We could have only dreamed of such things in the old country, “ He tells his son. “We could have never afforded such things there. Here they are happy when we come to haul these things away for free. We will have a much better life here.”



1200 miles back to the East; a smile comes to a man’s face as he admires a paper target displaying a very nice grouping in the center of the target. Down the hill, on the edge of a valley, a teenager smiles proudly as he stands outside of his car. He can actually see the roof of the car flex and vibrate with every “boom” of bass. He has worked hard and saved his money. Today he used his savings and has just finished installing the amplifier, which powers 4 massive 15” speakers. Now he has a chance of winning that stereo contest come Saturday. The booming bass reverberates across the valley and up the hill to where the previously annoyed man again sits down to finish writing this blog.



I have had some time to think as I made a few booms of my own. I no longer desire a noise ordinance for the county. My target is laying here in front of me and I can’t help but smile, thinking that freedom is a pretty valuable thing. I type this to the rhythm of the bass reverberating across the hills of the Ozarks. I have come to the conclusion that I need to remember that; The price of freedom is the responsibility to always be courteous and respectful of others, and the obligation to be tolerant of others when you feel they aren’t courteous and respectful to you.

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