The Capitol was closed.
After spending last week in Washington, D.C., and New York City, one scene that sticks in my mind is of a concrete barrier blocking the front entrance to the United States Capitol and a sign hanging from a rope in the middle that said CLOSED.
The Capitol, it is now widely believed, was targeted but not hit in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Unlike the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, the Capitol was spared when the airline with its name on it crashed in Pennsylvania.
So no one was taking any chances last week on the anniversary of the jihad gone mad. Which is understandable, although the front steps to the Capitol will remain closed this week and the week after that and the week after that — just as they were closed for the past year.
It is a different country in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, especially in the seats of power. It isn't your grandfather's America any more, or your father's. It isn't even your country, at least not the one you knew about 370 days ago.
Bollards. They call them bollards — an old shipping term for a strong post on deck, and it's too bad you don't own stock in the company that makes them. Bollards are everywhere in Washington and New York these days. They are big concrete barriers, usually cone- or rectangular-shaped, that are strategically placed on sidewalks and in front of places people aren't supposed to get near. Salt Lake City had a lot of bollards during the Olympics. Olympic Square was lined with them.
Sometimes bollards are cleverly disguised as flower pots, such as in front of the FBI building in Washington, where huge concrete flower pots make the sidewalk a slalom course no Hummer, or tank, could begin to negotiate. Next to one of these flower pot bunkers I saw a sign that read: "Please Report All Suspicious Packages at the Visitors Center Entrance." (Wait a minute, isn't that what we created the FBI for in the first place?)
Whole streets that used to be streets are now nothing but islands surrounded by bollards. That includes that part of Pennsylvania Avenue that runs in front of the White House, where the only traffic is now either by foot or something driven by the Bush family. The White House has essentially become a bollard fortress.
In New York, they have turned their city dump trucks into movable bollards. When the General Assembly of the United Nations was in session last week, the streets around the U.N. building were blocked off by dump trucks loaded with dirt.
The dump trucks aren't as attractive as flower pots, but this, after all, is New York, and these bollards, besides being heavier than Marlon Brando, are conveniently movable, available to pick up garbage later in the week.
Bollards, too, block off what were once exits and entrances to the Empire State Building — now the city's tallest skyscraper and a place receiving extra doses of security. Today, King Kong wouldn't stand a chance.
It's a nice thought to think of an America without bollards, just as it's nice to think of an America without metal detectors and air marshals and planes that make you sit in your seat 30 minutes before landing.
But it's not going to happen anytime soon. America has become the land of the free and the brave and the bollard. Get used to it. You can love 'em or leave 'em, but one thing you can't do. You can't move 'em.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.