“There are 800 people in this town,” said Mary Ishmael, born and raised not 2 miles away from the farm where she lives. “Nobody knows we exist or where we are, so why would anybody come and get us?”
But this is not an assurance residents necessarily share any longer, not since the most deadly terrorist attack in world history.
True, many people say they still feel protected here in the soy and cornfields of central Illinois, a two-hour drive from St. Louis and far from any spot they think terrorists would target.
Others, though, say they are giving up that notion right along with their urban brethren, with every new reminder of their shared vulnerability. Federal authorities grounded local crop-dusters for a couple of days last week and again Sunday for reasons some think have to do with their usefulness in germ warfare.
Neighbors are getting word to be alert for orders to report for military or guard duty. Others are thinking about canceling airline trips.
Security shaken
And so the loss of personal security is dawning on Greenview–a small town, no more or less noteworthy than any other on the rural landscape–as it dawns on the rest of America: person by person, news report by news report.
“We’re not remote from it, I can tell you that,” said Rev. Bob Hanson, minister at the Greenview United Church. “I don’t think we feel exempt from anything anymore. That’s the point. There are terrorists out there, and they could be anywhere.”
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The thought dawned on Hanson at a Sunday church service when a member of the congregation told him that her young son had been asking about the burning buildings he had seen on television.
The mother explained the buildings were far away and that he did not have to worry about danger in Greenview, a farming community with a typical town square and a noontime whistle that still blows to call field workers in for lunch.
Hanson found himself wishing her words of comfort were true.
“We’re a part of it now,” he said. “I think we’re all connected together now in a way we weren’t before. The cities don’t seem as far away now.”
The reality came home in a very real way to local farmers when some couldn’t get their crops dusted on schedule after federal authorities grounded the planes.
Federal officials have not said why they ordered the planes out of the air, but local speculation ran immediately to news reports about biological and chemical warfare.
“They didn’t say why, but I guess somebody could fill up with fuel and fly into a school,” said Al Baker, who flies for a Menard County crop-dusting service, which still has some cornfields to dust even though most have been or are being harvested. “I guess you have to think about that kind of thing now.”
Feeling connected
To some degree, urban notions of small-town residents as isolated and insulated has long been outmoded. Greenview is an example of how wrong those ideas can be, said Rev. Mike Farar, minister at the Greenview Christian Church.
“The isolation, the disenfranchisement–all of that is overcome by television, newspapers and the Internet,” said Farar. “The media has closed that gap.”
Although many residents have lived in Greenview their entire lives, others commute 45 minutes to Springfield for jobs that connect them to the wider world, Farar pointed out.
A member of his congregation had a cousin who died in the Pentagon. One family has a son-in-law who is a contractor there. And on the day of the attacks, another member was on her way to a medical conference in Massachusetts.
“We don’t feel disconnected,” said Farar. “We feel out-of-the-way.”
Local views
John Wood, a farmer and lifelong Greenview resident, does not even feel that anymore.
“Yep, I’m worried,” said Wood. “They snuck into this country. They could pull anything, anywhere.”
Wood represented one-fourth of the public opinion recently at Cuzin’s, the local bar and grill, where the three other people drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes laughed at the idea of danger in Greenview.
“We don’t have any terrorists living here,” said Cuzin’s owner, Tom Burton. “The only thing you could train for around here is to be a bartender or a farmer.”
“Why would they blow up Cuzin’s?” asked Shannon Damm, one of Burton’s employees. “Now if I lived in Chicago, I’d be scared. I’d move.”
But Damm would not live in Chicago, and safety is a major reason. That is also why she has never flown in an airplane. Neither has Linda Dullenty, who bakes cobblers and loaves of bread for Cuzin’s.
“I’m relieved I’m not in a big city right now,” said Dullenty, a 25-year resident of Greenview. “I feel so sorry for those people. If they want to hurt a lot of people, that’s where they’re going to go. Not here.”