belated 9/11 tribute to a 9/11 tribute

I first discovered the Twin Towers of Rosedale entirely by accident. It was a hot July day in 2004, when I was working for the City of Westwood (which for those who don't know is really just a small neighborhood outside of Kansas City proper).

I had been driving around in a city truck killing time until lunch, and when I got a bit carried away singing along to Janis Joplin on the radio, I swerved a bit and an empty wheelbarrow flew out from the truck bed onto 47th street right by the Apple Market. Fortunately, I loaded the thing back in the truck before traffic was impeded, but I was a bit embarassed and decided to make myself scarce for a while.

Once that adrenaline wore off and I drifted back into my usual sleep-deprived psychosis, I drove north into the more unkempt neighborhood of Rosedale, a place no Westwood employee is supposed to visit while on the clock, if ever. I drove a few blocks into the god-fearing, barbecue-loving neighborhood where I lived until I was four, but which I still don't have mapped out too well. I turned a few times and then a few more and all of a sudden there it was: a 10-foot-tall replica of the World Trade Center, planted in a flower bed in someone's front lawn.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I marveled at it for a minute, noticing the somewhat crudely-made plaque at the bottom that listed the events of 9/11 in brief along with the total number of people killed. "Never Forget," it read at the top.

I returned to the maintenence shack a bit bewildered, and when I told my co-workers about the discovery they seemed amused but skeptical. I wondered if they believed me, as I was honestly not sure I'd really seen those towers myself.

When I did try to drive back and find the towers later that week, I didn't see them anywhere. Maybe they really had been an illusion, a hallucinatory result of not sleeping more than a few hours each night. I had almost given up my search when, at the corner of 44th and Fisher, I saw them. The Twin Towers of Rosedale were real after all.

I drove back by a bunch of times that year, always to point out the monument to friends. We all thought the towers were pretty funny, but I think we all silently wondered about the artist's motivation. Even if he were just a kook who got a bit carried away with patriotism and yard art, 9/11 must have affected him rather deeply to inspire such a large, unconvential tribute. I may have laughed at the man's monument, but I did respect where it was coming from.

I was also kind of afraid of the whole thing, which is why the photo Jennifer took of David and I is so blurry. We didn't want to hang around and scare the owner into thinking Bin Laden and his V.I.L.E. henchmen were trespassing on his property, so we didn't have time to take a proper flash photo. Sure enough, the last thing I heard about that block of Fisher Street was that a dead body had been found in someone's back yard. Probably unrelated, but you never know.

Today, the KC twin towers are a thing of memory, just like the real-life buildings that they were modeled after. Gone, but not forgotten. Rosedale -- like much of working-class America -- will not forget.