It’s in times like this, when our elected representatives are not representative, I am reminded of Marvin Heemeyer.
There are some stories that shouldn’t be discarded. Marvin Heemeyer’s is one of them.
"Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things." - Marvin Heemeyer.
One of the reasons I’m not a big sports fan is the liberal use of the word ‘hero.’ Describing an athlete as a hero is like calling George Bush the American Idol. American heros can be found working for the Coast Guard and found in volunteer fire departments. Real American heros are working the night shift for minimum wage as a nurse in a rural hospital.
Some criminals are remembered as heros. Billy the Kid comes to mind. Even though he was labeled the villain, if you take a look at character of men running New Mexico at the time, Billy wasn’t any less guilty than the government. The Lincoln County War forced everyone’s hand to murder, including the Governor who lied about amnesty for Billy. America loves an outlaw hero because it’s the story of the little guy fighting against the big guy.
Marvin Heemeyer was one of those criminal heros. Heemeyer was the small guy that stood up against city hall the only way he could. His story reads like a bad 70's drama. (see details below.) If you have the time, check out the Wiki story or just do a google search for Heemeyer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
To make a long story short - Marvin didn’t like the way his city counsel of Granby Colorado was treating him. They zoned a concrete factory all around his muffler shop cutting off access to the road. He wouldn’t sell his property and in the end his muffler shop was forced to close. So, on June 4th of 2004, Marvin took his homemade tank and drove over a good portion of Granby Colorado. The only person hurt was Heemeyer who killed himself in the end. Granby was left in rubble. Observers noted that Heemeyer appeared to go out of his way to avoid injury to bystanders.
Except for the suicide, I love this story. Heemeyer was ruined by the Granby city counsel. He probably didn’t have enough money to fight these crooks in court. (But why should he have to?) Our system of government left him without recompense. I took the time to read some interviews of the city counsel. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that they denounced Heemeyer in the worst of terms. Mostly they called him a criminal but I couldn’t help notice they didn’t paint him as the ‘crazy old man.’ They said he was crazy for doing what he did, but they didn’t elect to portray him as continually insane. This tells me that they fully understood his grievance.
There’s something wrong with my sense of humor. Even with his suicide I find this story hysterical simply because of the surprise endured by the Granby city counsel and townfolk. How could this happen?!? Why would someone do something like that?!?
It’s the same kind of humor I get from Gen. George Custer: “I just don’t understand it. As white people we tried to be efficient and orderly about killing the native Americans. I just can’t figure out why we were attacked.”
I really wish Heemeyer hadn’t have killed himself. I would of made the trip to Colorado to meet the guy and brought some smokes he could use to trade for prison favors. Hell, I would of created an internet fund to help keep Heemeyer in luxury while he was behind bars.
Kill Dozer! the television series. (In color)
K.D. would be formatted like any other revenge story. Instead of Heemeyer dying in
the end, he would move from town to town as a drifter. A man who plays by his own set of rules. A lone wolf. A cross between the Incredible Hulk and Rambo, whenever some small town sheriff, super rich guy or city counsel would wrong him, he would do an A-Team, build another kill-dozer and level the town. I have one demand. At the end of every episode everyone freezes like at the end of Police Squad while their town continues to crumble around them. Ripped from the headlines! Kill Dozer! In color!
No comments:
Post a Comment