Certain current events, or hearing a specific old song, sometimes trigger a special or tragic memory in my head. The popular song, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” by Procol Harum, released in 1967, always conjures up good times I had camping with friends in Alaska.
That tune seemed to always play as my brother drove the Seward Highway to Bird Creek, McHugh Creek, or Hope. Jim was the designated driver because I didn’t have a driver’s license or a car.
An event that just unfolded on July 13, 2024, rekindled two similar horrific occurrences, with me able to remember months, days, and years, although the exact minutes had to be looked up. If you asked me what I was doing at 12:30 p.m. on November 25, 1963, I can tell you without hesitation.
I’d just returned from the Reese Elementary cafeteria along with the rest of my classmates. Within a few minutes, my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hagen, wheeled a black & white television into our classroom, with her telling us that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. Within an hour—the whole school was dismissed because the president was dead.
On March 31, 1981, at 2:27 p.m., Washington D.C. time, I was playing golf with my wife and her brother in Manhattan, Kansas. Because of a time-zone change, it was one hour earlier in The Sunflower State, making it 1:27 p.m.
Lightning and thunder exploded all around us with heavy rain coming down in buckets. Being the only customers at Putt-Putt Miniature Golf that day, we had the course to ourselves. Soft rock music was playing on the outside speakers, with a newscaster suddenly interrupting things with a report about President Ronald Reagan being shot.
The owner of the golf course, sitting in a small building, yelled out the window asking if we’d heard the news and we told him, “Yes.”
With it continuing to crackle and pop overhead, the gentleman informed us he was shutting down for the day, handing out free game cards to compensate for not finishing. Unfortunately, those cards could never be used because the course was dismantled the following year. This valuable property was then turned into a retail shopping complex.
The event triggering those older memories is eerily similar to the last two incidents mentioned. At 6:11 p.m., Pennsylvania time, former President Donald Trump was shot by a sniper as he gave a speech at a political rally in Butler. He was struck in the ear, with three rally attendees also hit, one dying. I knew to the second where I was at this time, and what I was doing, yet didn’t know anything about the assassination attempt taking place.
Joleen and I were sitting in Westside Lilos in historic Seligman, Arizona, eating lunch. Westside Lilos is located on old Route 66 and the place was crowded with customers, many of them tourists from France, Germany, and Sweden.
After eating and then paying the bill, which my receipt shows to be 3:23 p.m., Arizona time, we left and headed for Havasu. Oddly enough, not once while we were eating did anyone mention the shooting, with many patrons looking at their electronic devices.
After driving for almost an hour, Joleen heard a multitude of loud dings and instantly glanced down at her cell phone. She saw text after text from our grown children and good friends, Jim and Pat Brownfield in Prescott. They were all asking if we had heard about Trump.
We’d just left Jim and Pat’s house that afternoon after spending the night, with Donald Trump’s name coming up quite often. Jim and I both thought that someone might try shooting the former president to keep him out of the race. I think a lot of people believed the same.
Listening to news reports the rest of the way and then seeing video clips after getting back home, I started thinking back to those other two shootings so many years ago. Technology has come a long way since then, yet somehow, as we drove on I-40 with cellphone towers visible every few miles, we were in the dark ages for nearly an hour.
I had Sirius satellite radio tuned to channel 16, The Blend, and as we listened to soft rock music, exactly as we’d done in Manhattan, Kansas, 43 years previous while playing golf, not once did an announcer break in with the disturbing news. What’s with that?
It makes me wonder that if a nuclear missile was streaking towards the US from China, intended to totally destroy our country, would Sirius continue to play, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” without interruption.
Not intending to end things on such a negative note, the main reason we stopped at Westside Lilos in Seligman that Saturday, was to sample a piece of their world-famous carrot cake. With Joleen and I both connoisseurs of carrot cake, Westside Lilos’ dessert is to die for. On second thought, perhaps a person shouldn’t go that far!
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