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THE EVER-READY THIRD AVENUE HAN SOLO SECURITY FORCE
A note from my way-back-when Red Clay Diary. Seems like yesterday:
Harrison Ford stands outside the Museum of Fond Memories at Reed Books and gazes intently at the passing Third Avenue North traffic.
A cardboard life-sized stand-up, Ford is disguised as weapon-drawn Han Solo, ever alert and ready for action. He is just in front of the perpetual two-dollar-each rack of old LP recordings we sell each workday to any eager collector or passing afficionado.
No-one ever shop-lifts our recordings because they are guarded by, you know, Han Solo.
Way across four lanes of Third Avenue, inside Goodyear Shoe Hospital, Rhonda, the owner, keeps looking up from her tasks, wondering who that guy is, the one who for hours is staring at her store from the vantage point of the bookshop.
Is he waiting for a ride? Is he a vagrant? Is he spying?
This becomes annoying. Doesn’t this stranger have anything better to do?
Finally, she deploys an employee to come into my store and find out what the heck is going on with this unofficial surveillance behavior.
“Why, it is Han Solo, protecting the neighborhood,” I tell her later.
Rhonda laughs and relaxes when she finds out that our guardian guard is just a facsimile, not FBI or IRS or Neighborhood Watch or CIA or anybody else who might be onto us merchants plying our variegated trades.
That was then. This is now:
Nowadays, Third Avenue is missing Han and his gaze—somebody made me an offer I dared not refuse, then took him home to guard his family.
What we are left with is the security we have grown to accept and appreciate—security guards posted 24/7 at the the tall buildings…CAP officers who keep an eye on all suspicious goings-on on the streets…law enforcement officers who are back and forth at random intervals, parking meter and maintenance personnel, firefighters who whiz past, sanitation workers who always receive a smile and a thanks from us, and our fellow merchants and professionals and live-in neighbors. We all comprise the unofficial Han Solo Force.
We take care of each other.
Within this humongous city, inner neighborhoods such as ours still thrive and glisten. Each block is a small town within itself, each resident or proprietor a potentially vigilant and helpful denizen.
When things are smooth, we take each other for granted, when there are crises, we come together to share and assist, when there is the need, we coalesce.
It’s remarkable, come to think of it. And it is something that lends comfort and stability in times of larger, more threatening issues.
We can huddle together on our tiny block, and pretend that all is well that starts well each morning, all is well that ends well each evening.
Thank goodness there is no place like…Here
© 2018 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
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