The Middle Land of Texas

Adrienne made this video of our pilgrimage.

Sending Our Love Down the Well

Thanks to Eric for finding this Simpson's Parody for me!

Jessica?

I looked in trash cans, cemetaries, Wal-Marts, Goodwill, Walgreen's, a hot tub, at stoplights, on sidewalks, in parking lots and even at her own house, but I didn't find her.

I left her a note with my phone number and email. Maybe one day she'll call me.

36 hours for Jessica

Jessica was in the well for 58 hours, we were on our pilgrimage for 36.

We're back in Austin now, but stay tuned, because I've got a lot more blog where that came from.

I'm going to leave you now with a very special song and photo montage:

Jessica's House, Round 2

We tried again at Jessica's house, but she was not home. I left her a note and some Kona Coffee. As I walked away I noticed this:

That's a well in her front yard.

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

Jessica's Well, Round 2

Remember that ferocious St. Bernard who made my first attempt at peeking over the fence around the well so lively? Well, someone must have given him a Xanax, because this is what he looked like today:

I swear he was much more fierce the day before.

Here is a better picture of the well and also of the backyard. Imagine it filled with drilling equipment, rescue workers, paramedics, firemen and cops. The rescue literally took over the neighborhood.

Do you see how small the well is? It's hard to believe that someone actually fit inside of it. The rescue shaft was dug parallel to well. After the rescue, the shaft was filled with dirt and a redbud seedling and chrysanthemums were planted above it, but those have since died and you can't really tell which dirt patch was the rescue shaft.

Here is a tv screenshot illustrating what was dug to rescue Jessica.


The entire rescue took 58 hours, largely because the soil was hard calachi, which is basically prehistoric cement, and very hard to drill through.

Midland Fire Station

We happened to drive by the Midland Central Fire Station, which I believe was central to Jessica McClure's rescue. Also, I am obsessed with firemen and I really wouldn't put it past myself to make up the whole Baby Jessica play just as an excuse to get to chat up some firemen. We didn't see any firemen, but the fire museum was open. Strangely enough, there were plenty of pictures of Midland's biggest fires over the past century, but there was no mention anywhere of the Baby Jessica rescue. There was however, this awesome fire truck and a real fire pole, which I took full advantage of.

Robert O'Donnell

Robert O'Donnell was a paramedic with the Midland Fire Dept. and one of the men who rescued Baby Jessica. He was chosen to wriggle into the rescue shaft because of his wiry frame. It took him two attempts to finally rescue her - the first one was aborted because the hole connecting the rescue shaft to the well was too narrow for him to reach Jessica. O'Donnell was able to touch her leg, but couldn't get a hold of her. He had to come back above ground, empty-handed. After he told the drillers what work had to be done, it was reported that he sat on a curb and wept. On his second attempt, he was able to lube the well with KY Jelly, reach Jessica, and bring her out. He passed her to another paramedic, Steve Forbes, who brought her above ground.

After the rescue, Robert O'Donnell was considered a hero. He was asked for a lot of interviews and made a lot of appearances. There are a lot of things that contributed to the stress of his sudden fame, which are well-covered in Lisa Belkin's article "Death on the CNN Curve" and even better covered in D. Lance Lunsford's book, The Rainbow's Shadow. In the end, it appears he suffered from Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, which led him to commit suicide on April 24, 1995, just a few days after the Oklahoma City bombing and less than eight years after he rescued Jessica McClure from the well.

I went to Resthaven Memorial Park today to pay my respects at his grave, which was located next to a mausoleum that was twice the size of my New York apartment. Normally, I would consider it tacky to post a picture of a tombstone on a blog, but there's something on it I think you should pay attention to.


See, if you're following the Baby Jessica story, and if you follow the story of his life, it would seem that O'Donnell's rescue of Jessica McClure was the defining moment of his life. It certainly shaped everything that came after it and ultimately led to him ending his own life. So you would expect to visit his grave and find an Eternal Flame or some sort of hero's tribute. Instead, on his tombstone are cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, a fireman's helmet and the Star of Life, the symbol for emergency medical services. The only other text besides his name and dates of birth and death are the words: "Loving Father."

I like that. It seems like we spend a lot of time in our lives trying prove something to the world, trying to be a hero for someone. In life, everyone's got a Jessica to rescue, and everyone has a well they're trying to get out of, but are those the things that really make up who we are and what our impact is on the world?

Robert O'Donnell was a good paramedic. One time he got a baby out of a well. But I think that, somehow, his life as a father will resonate further into the world than his life as a hero. I just wish that, for his sons' sake, he had stuck around long enough to see just what that impact could be.

Rude Awakening

Just as Adrienne and I were getting up this morning, we were disturbed by a knock on the door. It was the Secret Service needing to sweep our room with their dog. There were cops all over our floor. Adrienne and I figured it was either Dubya coming to visit his hometown, or some oil sheik. Regardless, we didn't think it was a good idea to stick around all that mess, so we bounced. Turns out, it wasn't Dubya, it was the President - I mean, vice President - in town for a fundraiser. Yup, we were thisclose to being suitemates with Cheney. Good thing I left our complimentary bottle of vinegar-masquerading-as-prosecco behind for him.

Before Adrienne and I left Austin, we were a little nervous about traveling through so many "podunk" towns, because, well, Adrienne and I are, to put it nicely, a little hard to miss. However, here is a little tip from me to you:

If you are nervous about being in a podunk town because you are most certainly not from around there, wear hot pink. People in podunk towns have too many manners to kill anyone wearing pink.

Dinner with a Local

I had dinner tonight with D. Lance Lunsford, a reporter from Midland who wrote a book, The Rainbow's Shadow, which is about the Jessica McClure rescue and does a wonderful job following up with the people who were involved. His grandparents lived just a few doors down from Jessica's Well, and he remembers his mother picking him up from school and talking her way past the police so they could get a good view of the action. He remembers watching Jessica come out of the well on TV, and then running outside to follow the ambulance down the street. After Jessica was rescued, his boy scout troupe marched in the parade.

There are a few grassfires around Midland, which are not being helped by the wind, so we decided to just eat at the hotel rather than brave the tempest and the smoke. I was too busy laughing at Lance's wild tales about Midland's long history of, how to put this delicately, "colorful characters" to remember to take a picture with him, but I did send him off with Kona coffee. He couldn't have been nicer to me or more helpful. He drove two hours just to chat with me, and then he bought me dinner.

Anyway, I learned all sorts of juicy gossip which was, of course, off the record, so now when you see the play you'll just have to guess what I made up, and what is real.

Jessica's House?

The address I had for Baby Jessica was definitely is not a car wash. No one was home and the paper was still on the front lawn, so we are going to try again tomorrow. In other news, Adrienne's windshield is filthy.

Jessica's Well, or, Where It All Went Down

The well is located in the backyard of a house where Jessica's aunt lived. It was a sort-of-daycare situation. Several people have lived there since. When we pulled up to the house, the owners' cars were in the driveway. We drove around the block, and discovered the back alley. This is the back fence.


Who knew Baby Jessica's Well had a guard dog? I didn't. He was pretty ferocious for St. Bernard. Adrienne and I pretended to read road maps until he lost interest in us.
This is a video I made while trying to look through the fence without alerting St. Vicious.

Finally, I got a glimpse of the well through a crack in the fence.

Here is a closer look.

After the rescue, the rescuers put a cap on the well that says:

For Jessica 10-16-87 with love from all of us

And here is the well with the swingset in the background. I wonder if this was Jessica's swingset.

Just after this photo, St. Vicious caught on to me, so Adrienne and I hightailed it out of there. We're going to go back tomorrow to see if we can get better documentation.

TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Inside the Midland Center is A Triumph of the Human Spirit, the painting of the Jessica McClure Rescue by Jan Johnson Sheets. The plaque next to it reads:

A Triumph of the Human Spirit This painting is a tribute to an event that lifted
the entire world to a higher plane of human consciousness
and helped us to better understand the human spirit with its
boundless capacity for compassion and love.

Thanks to the men and women who came together in
Midland, Texas, the world shared in a God-graced victory that came from faith and self-sacrifice.

-Jan Johnson Sheets, Artist

Underneath that it says:
A special thanks to Jim & Landa Williamson and Doyle Ballenger

And underneath that is one of my favorite parts about the painting:

Framing courtesy of
BILL LOVE FRAME A RAMA
Odessa, Texas

Here is the artist's interpretation of Jessica being rescued.

And here is the well into which she fell. It's small, just like she was.

Here is how I found the painting. I don't think Baby Jessica would be very happy to know that a ficus is blocking her painting. I thought the vending machine was a nice patriotic touch.

Jessica McClure Memorial - Live!

Back in New York, I was researching the locations of the Jessica McClure memorials, and I thought, How am I going to find these when I get there? So imagine how excited I was when we pulled into the Hilton in Midland, and the memorial and Midland Center were directly across the street.

Now I have my very own picture of it!
See the man giving the thumbs up in the left corner? I'm not sure which rescuer he's supposed to be, but that's the sign they gave as they were pulling Baby Jessica to the top so all the other rescuers, reporters and bystanders knew they had her.

On the Road Again

First, a big shout out to Adrienne Dawes for being brave enough to accompany me on this pilgrimage. We left Adrienne's house in Austin at 6:19 a.m. Here we are on the road, outside of Austin, approx. 7:30 a.m.

The view from the car, on 87 from Fredericksburg to San Angelo.

Adrienne has much better footage of the road trip on her camera, but it's almost midnight in Midland now, and she's asleep, so I can't show it to you.

Does Baby Jessica live here?

Thanks to some super sleuth work by my very intelligent roommate, I found a property record for Jessica McClure. However, upon cross checking it with WhitePages.com, it's either her house or her husband's car wash. So either I am going to meet Baby Jessica, or Adrienne's car will be very clean.

Baby Jessica song

Baby Jessica songs are always amazing.

The latest one I have come across is "Baby Jessica" by Grandpa Griffith. I couldn't get a direct link to it, but you can find it on iTunes.

conspiracy theory

Adrienne found this for me on Flickr.

A really bad joke

Me: I can't find Jessica McClure.
Friend: Did you look underground?

Jessica McClure memorial

Photo by dustdevildiver.

The inscription reads:
Nothing the heart gives away is gone
It is kept in the hearts of others

I'm going to Midland from February 25-26. This is the kind of stuff I want to see.

Baby Jessica's Well

Thanks, Google Maps!

3309 Tanner Drive

It only took me 2 hours of Googling, but I finally figured out the current occupant of the home at 3309 Tanner Drive where Baby Jessica fell down the well. I just composed a letter to the residents. I hope hope hope they let me visit.