Ian Decker Walk
Proverbs 6This week there was another murder in Mason City. This will make the 4th murder since we moved here a year ago:4 murders in a year in a town with around 28,000 people. Though the police say the murders are not connected and that citizens need not fear for their safety, there is still something wrong in a community where stabbings, stranglings, and shootings happen out in the wide open public streets and sidewalks, and through the closed doors of our neighbors' homes. This is a nice town: people wave and say "hi" to one another when passing. Kids still carry your groceries to the car for you. Yet, I have heard, over and over again, that there are dangerous parts of town, places where I shouldn't presume safety in broad daylight while walking my dog. This concerns me deeply. In the past, I have avoided places where violence or death have occurred because I do not wish to be ghoulish and I have had no desire to be close to places where strangers have died. Unfortunately, I am beginning to see where selective blindness plays a role in this avoidance. If I don't look at it, it isn't real. If it isn't real, I don't have to be afraid. If it isn't real, I don't have to feel, act or respond. Something won't let me avoid these things anymore. I don't really want to do this. I would much prefer to walk pretty streets and nice park trails. Yet, I began this project intending to see the town, and so I am going to start looking at it-ugly blemishes and all.
In April, a young man by the name of Ian Decker was murdered here in Mason City. (The story can be viewed here) He was killed on the 600 block of E. State Street. I started off York Street, in a pretty neighborhood of houses with stone facades. I wended my way along sidewalks and down cul-de-sacs. A friend stepped out of her house and we talked in the sun. Then, I stopped near the place where Ian Decker died, and I prayed there, but I did not take a picture. Instead, I took pictures from the neighborhood where this happened. Church people live here. Old people live here. Public figures, children and middle-aged people live here. Presuming a bit on architecture, rich people and poor people live here. Regular people live here, yet somehow, on that night in April a regular person decided to kill another regular person in front of a few more regular people. The police say we don't need to be afraid, but I think it is OK to be afraid. What is not OK is pretending as though this kind of thing is either understandable or justifiable. What is not OK is believing this kind of thing only happens in the bad parts of town or to the bad people we think live there. What is not OK is convincing ourselves that this kind of thing is so crazy as to be unreal. If that were true, it would not have happened 4 times over the last year, in beautiful little neighborhoods like the one here:
View Decker Walk in a larger map
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