Worried residents steeled by pride

Blake Carlson would rather have stayed in his car listening to news than man the door at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds on Sunday morning.

Carlson, who helped organize a local scrapbook and rubber stamp fair, worried about the war.

A jovial and loquacious man, Carlson beamed when talking about the hobby fair.

But his bright eyes filled with tears at the thought of Sunday's U.S. and British attacks in Afghanistan.

"My son is over there," he said, choking up.

Carlson, a Spokane resident who runs his own stamp business, hadn't heard from his son, a member of the military who had been sent to Afghanistan.

More than 900 people attended the two-day hobby fair, but Carlson said numbers were down Sunday. He believed people were staying home to tune in to television or radio.

"I'm sure we're being affected right now," he said.

The streets of Coeur d'Alene were quiet Sunday.

American flags hanging from porches fluttered in the fall breeze. Minivans and sedans leaving churches and grocery stores were marked by miniature flags - like a motorcade of patriotism.

Local police said things were remarkably quiet.

"It's the same old stuff," said Idaho State Police Sgt. Tim Johnson. "We're being a little more cautious" in looking for tanker trucks hauling chemicals and watching for suspicious activity at dams.

"Everybody is pretty quiet. They're flying their flags and being pretty proud," he said.

Quiet described many areas around the Inland Northwest. Flights came and went at Spokane International Airport on schedule, and passengers passed through security checkpoints that have been supplemented by National Guard members.

Jason Stone, who works as a cargo handler for one of the airlines, said all baggage was being checked, but no one's complaining about delays or extra workload.

"Everybody's working together," he said.

Four of the five television monitors in the airport's main restaurant were tuned to sporting events. Near the one screen showing scenes from Washington, D.C., and Afghanistan, Vel and Wendell Stevens of Rockford sat at a table while they waited for an incoming plane.

Vel Stevens said she found out about the attacks while reading the newspaper on-line Sunday morning. She hadn't expected the attack to come quite so soon, while Wendell Stevens thought it was "long overdue."

They were waiting for Vel's 17-year-old son, Brandon, who was flying in from Seattle. It was Brandon's first plane ride and he was nervous about it even before the U.S. launched Sunday's strikes. But he might not have heard about the attacks before he left Sea-Tac, she said.

Her son has already registered for the Selective Service, and Vel Stevens said she's concerned about the possibility of a draft.

"This is scary," she said.

The Washington State Patrol said it was on a heightened state of alert "but not a heightened level of preparedness."

Fairchild Air Force Base, a few miles down Highway 2 from Spokane International, went up one level of security. But Lt. Dave Faggard, a base spokesman, said he doubted the average person would notice the difference. Armed security police have been requesting identification and searching cars entering the base since the Sept. 11 attacks by terrorists in New York and Washington, D.C.

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation also increased its security level one notch. Department of Energy spokeswoman Colleen Clark said she couldn't discuss the details of those security measures, but said the level was back to what it had been on Sept. 11 and the days immediately afterward.

At the Canadian border in Porthill, Idaho, customs agents were continuing the heightened security that began Sept. 11, said Inspector Ron Wisecup.

Agents are still requiring picture identification and birth certificates and doing full searches on all vehicles.

"Nothing's changed," he said.

And in some ways, things hadn't.

Young boys were still climbing out of their mothers' SUVs carrying skateboards.

And their friends were still flipping in the air at the local skate park - holding on, for a brief moment, to teenage innocence.

Copyright 2001 Cowles Publishing Company
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