So, I thought that this documetnary seemed pretty interesting and I decided to check it out. Tread is a true story that was made into a 2019 documentary where a disgruntled muffler shop repair shop owner and master welder by the name of Marvin Heemeyer, fortifies a bulldozer and completely destroys a lot of businesses and homes in the small mountain town of Granby, Colo., in 2004. Like I said in the title of this blog, I vaguely remember something about this briefly in the national news at the time. At the end of the documentary, it said that this event made world-wide news for one day and then former president Ronald Reagan died the next day and the news story disappeared off the radar screen immediately.
This guy, Marvin, who lived in Granby, it was said that most people in town liked him at first. He was not a native to the area and he had only been in town for about 13 years when this crazy thing happened that he did. Apparently, he had never been married or had any children. Plus, they said he had worked hard his whole life and probably had saved every penny he had ever made. But apparently the citizens liked him because he did good work at his muffler shop and was an excellent welding and his prices were fair. But in 2001, he had a zoning dispute with the city and his grudge continued to grow. He even hired a lawyer and who took it to court for him but lost. He shelled out a lot of money in city fines and had paid his lawyer a lot of money to do the court proceedings also.
Eventually, Marvin auctioned off everything he owned and then rented some garage space where he began to covert this extra large bulldozer into this tank looking thing with cameras on the outside and television screens on the inside so he could see to drive it. He also had some portal holes in the plates of reinforced steel that he welded together to form the cab over the bulldozer in order to shoot a rifle out the back. Fornately, no one killed except Marvin himself. He ended up shooting himself in the head inside the cab after the bulldozer got stuck in the basement of a building during his destructive rampage. It took law officials several hours with a cutting blow torch to cut through the thick metal plates in order to get to his body.
I thought this was an interestingly strange documentary. The documentary also shows some actual video footage from the rampage and also you hear Marvin's voice a lot throughout the documentary when they play the cassette tape recordings of him that they had found after he was dead. This just goes to show if you're not originally from a certain town and you are not from one of the big money families of the community or one of the movers or shakers/local politicians of the small town, you're best just to do your thing and get a long with people. However, I do believe as a taxpayer, a local citizen and as an American, that you always have a right to voice your opinions and cast your vote. But I think the majority of people in America won't turn a bulldozer into a tank and try to bulldoze a town down even if they are disgruntled. At least I hope not. I think there was definitely some major mental illness going on with Marvin at the time but the citizens of Granby didn't recognize it or they didn't want to do anything about it because they knew he was really angry and resentful. Also, maybe in the back of their minds, they knew he eventually would probably loose it one way or another.
But in my mind, on the other hand, rioting, looting and burning down buildings on the streets of America like we're seeing these days, this is not okay with me either. Because this destructive type of behavior seems very crazy to me also like what Marvin did in 2004. Either way, I think it's all insane. Violence and destruction is not the answer for injustice. Peaceful protest, yes. But as far as the other is concern, no.
