Soap Box

My family and I are currently on vacation and came to New York for a few days and, of course the Big Apple is still the hustling bee hive it's always been, busting with energy and overflowing at the edges with people, all going somewhere in a hurry, uptown, downtown, crosstown, five deep on the wide sidewalks, stepping around obstacles and violating walk lights.

It's a vital hunk of Americana, an icon known the world over for its boundless vitality and its "never say die" attitude, its willingness and ability to overcome and the fierce pride of those who call themselves New Yorkers.

There's a spirit to this city, not fostered by just being the biggest city in the country, but something else, intangible, something unique to it alone, a diversity of people and customs, attitudes and languages, you can hear six or seven different ones spoken on the streets of Manhattan within a single block.

New York has been described as the city that never sleeps and I can attest to that by the amount of sirens I can hear all through the night from my 46th floor room, as the myriad of emergency vehicles hurry around the city on their various errands of mercy.

Walking by Trump Tower yesterday was an experience. It looks like every television outlet in town has set up across the street and of course the protestors with their signs, some so vulgar they definitely shouldn't be on display on a public street where impressionable children walk by.

Political discourse has deteriorated to the point that the fringe contingency on both sides of the spectrum resort to lies, innuendo, insults and downright filth, trying to make some point known only to them.

To imagine the mechanical miracle this city represents, the convoluted electrical grid, the thousands of miles of plumbing and water lines that service over eight million people on a daily basis, the proposition that Manhattan is an Island that can't be reached without going through a tunnel or across a bridge, that the ground beneath the city is catacombed with train, tunnels and
utility excavations, with skyscrapers setting on top, it seems the whole thing would just cave in.

New York's water supply comes from a combination of aqueducts, reservoirs and tunnels and originates from a watershed system that involves something like 130,000 protected acres.

There are almost 35,000 uniformed police officers in NYC, over ten thousand uniformed firemen who handle almost a half million total calls a year and over 3500 uniformed EMT employees who handle almost a quarter million medical emergency calls a year.

New York is a port city, a vital port of call for both passengers and cargo and three of the world�s busiest airports service the area, two with extensive international service to anywhere in the world.

I think the spirit of New York City is avidly exhibited in the new Freedom Tower, which stands on the site of the World Trade Center twin towers that were destroyed on 9/11.

Not too long after the tragedy, at the site where two of the most magnificent buildings on the planet had towered above the skyline in lower Manhattan and had been reduced to ash and rubble, through the courtesy of the Port Authority Police of New York City, I was able to visit the huge hole in the ground which was all that was left of one of America's proudest architectural accomplishments.

The other day, we were whisked swiftly by an elevator 100 floors above the city streets in recently opened Freedom Tower, a monument to the spirit and pride of the Big Apple, where the 360-degree view of the greatest city on earth spreads out to the four points of the compass, presenting a breathtaking view and a surge of American pride and "never say die� American determination and guts.

A standing monument to the prospect that, the only thing that will remove America from this earth will be God Almighty.

No enemy, no matter how strong.

We can be bent, but we can't be broken.

We will always get up one more time than we get knocked down.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America.

� Charlie Daniels

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