Carrying a red flag on an Orange day

I tried spending a relaxed week off during the holiday season under the chilling mantle of Code Orange, a color on the national scale of awareness that declares in glaring chromatics that there is a high risk of trouble brewing. Relaxing wasn’t easy.

While warning us that terrorists might at any moment attack LAX, the Rose Parade, the Rose Bowl game or any mall, church, mosque, temple, restaurant, family picnic or Beverly Hills boutique, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also suggested cheerfully that we go about our business as usual and have a good time.

That’s like being asked to have fun at your mother’s funeral. It’s possible but not practical.

We were well protected during the holidays, no doubt about it, with representatives of the ATF, FBI, CHP, LAPD, DEA and possibly the FEC and the BSA present whenever a crowd gathered, but there’s nothing relaxing about seeing a parade when you know that a rooftop sniper with an itchy trigger finger is pointing his rifle in your general direction.

It was an uneasy week off for me, as you can imagine. We were asked to be suspicious of any deviant behavior and to report it to the proper authorities. In L.A., especially Hollywood, there is a lot of deviant behavior, so it’s difficult to determine who is behaving deviantly and who is just being what he considers to be normal. I gave up trying to figure it out and was almost in a state of easy acceptance of Code Orange until I stopped by a bookstore to buy an almanac.

I was unaware at the time that the FBI was urging Americans to be alert to anyone buying such a book, because it contains diagrams and information that could be used in planning a terrorist attack. The bulletin softened the warning with the observation that almanacs can also be used during “legitimate recreational or commercial activities,” but, nevertheless, be aware of anyone who, in addition to an almanac, may have an Uzi over his shoulder or explosives strapped around his waist.

When I bought my copy of the almanac for, I guess, recreational purposes (although I use it for research and for bathroom browsing too), the clerk eyed me with suspicion. For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, he studied me and my credit card with the intensity of a brain surgeon and then asked for my driver’s license. That shot his suspicions up to Code Coral. My license, you see, contains a photo of me when, during a brief period, I had grown a beard and looked faintly like a combination of Santa Claus and Osama bin Laden. I told him I shaved the beard shortly after the picture was taken, which caused the clerk to be even more wary.

However, he finally approved the sale and I left, still wondering what his problem was. I stopped for lunch on the way home and spent it looking through the almanac. I am fascinated by charts and maps but not, I quickly add, for the purpose of blowing anything up. Just the thought of putting together any kind of plan to wage war is too daunting a task for a guy who has trouble remembering his way home.

But I still had the uneasy feeling that I had been followed from the bookstore to the nearby deli. In the restaurant, I became aware of hostile gazes in my direction as I studied a section of the almanac that informed me that, among Iowa’s notable citizens, were both Herbert Hoover and John Wayne, and that its state bird is the Eastern goldfinch. The waitress slapped my lunch down before me like she would rather have shoved it into my face, or worse, and never once asked if I wanted a refill of coffee. I left her a nice tip anyhow, even though she handled it as if it were dusted with anthrax spores. Her attitude didn’t bother me. I figured she was just a typical deli waitress doing her job.

It wasn’t until I got home and was listening to the news that I heard of the FBI warning about people carrying almanacs. After that, I spent hours looking through my book, but I’ll be damned if I could find any kind of map or diagram that might help someone planning mischief against the United States. I don’t imagine there’s a lot of strategic value, for instance, in knowing that Iowa’s state stone is the geode. But if you can’t trust your FBI to know things that others don’t even suspect, whom can you trust? These are smart and serious people we have there today, not little fat guys who prance around in pearls and simple black dresses.

I burned my almanac to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, and while I was at it I also burned the Bible, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a set of encyclopedias, a book of quotations, my road atlas and the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Companion, on the off chance that any or all of them might in some way contribute to the destruction of our country. I also thought of burning my copy of the U.S. Constitution, but I’m going to wait a little while on that one. We may need it again someday.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.