ustxtxb_obs_2005_01_21_50_00022-00000_000.pdf

and for their families, too.” Randy pauses. “I had to make more crosses for two men from Michigan on Christmas Day,” he says while staring at the rows. “Now my son is at Fort Bragg. He’s waiting to see if he’s off to Afghanistan, which is what we’re all expecting.” Serving in the United States military is a Riordan family tradition. Randy himself spent Desert Storm as a Marine corporal, a mortar man in the Persian Gulf War, but “that was all over so fast that it was finished by the time we stormed the beach;’ he notes wryly. These days, he’s a carpenter at LockheedMartin, a defense contractor in Grand Prairie. “It can be confusing for the guys over there,” he says. “Things happen that you don’t read about in the papers. For instance, just before Christmas 2003, my son’s barracks in Kuwait City burned to the ground. The guys lost everything they’d brought with them from the States. All he had left after the fire was a set of melted dog tags. It’s confusing.” “We’re thinking about leaving this display up, but mowing, or even weedeating around the crosses is going to be hard in the spring. And soon the entire yard could be filled up. It’s a lot of work, but I don’t mind. When a storm comes through, the wind knocks over the crosses, really breaks them apart, but I can always get out my drill and fix them. Right now, I feel like I’ll just keep making the crosses as long as I need to.” Photographer Steve Satterwhite lives in Duncanville. BOOKS & THE CULTURE Christmas Day, Cedar Hill BY STEVE SATTERWHITE Randy Riordan lives in Cedar Hill, Texas, in the old brick house that he grew up in. His home sits between an absolutely creepy antennae farm and the old, but freshly repainted, downtown where most of the frame storefronts have shaded front porches that sag only just a little. Historically, Cedar Hill has been barely more than a wide spot on a side road, but now many of the old cow pastures around \(and in some cases and big box retailers. Randy’s house is about a half mile and a few hundred thousand dollars away from the new and treeless model homes of the shiny middle-class projects that are quickly changing the rural feel of the neighborhood and bringing in a whole new cast of characters to run City Hall. For Christmas 2004, instead just decorating the yard, Randy and his wife Alisha wanted to do something different. “We wanted to do a labor of love, to show our gratitude and respect for all of our soldiers who have been recently killed overseas,” he says, and they did it. Out of thin pine, Randy made a cross for each American soldier who has died while assigned to operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. With an indelible felt tip pen, he wrote the soldier’s name and rank on each cross before planting them in his front yard, which now feels like a scale model of a national cemetery. At night, the display is lit low and from the front by flimsy clamp-on lights with aluminum shades; the 60-watt bulbs create harsh shadows and a disturbing mood. “My son Nathan spent Christmas 2003 as a Spec 4 with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq, but he made it back home this year,” Randy says. “These crosses are for the ones like him who didn’t make it, “We’re thinking about leaving this display up, but mowing, or even weed eating around the crosses is going to be hard in the spring. And soon the entire yard could be filled up. It’s a lot of work, but I don’t mind. When a storm comes through, the wind knocks over the crosses, really breaks them apart, but I can always get out my drill and fix them. Right now, I feel like I’ll just keep making the crosses as long as I need to:’ 22 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 1/21/05