Friday Randomness ~ Historic Edition

Work is crazy busy this week, so I’m just going to jump on in, OK? Here are a few random thoughts buzzing around in my brain.

I have been hearing some of the coverage of the 20th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Interesting tidbits…there was a story on NPR yesterday, where they were discussing how much the rest of the country HATED Dallas afterwords. People having polite conversation with a nearby table in a restaurant, and when they said they were from Dallas, people would get up and leave. That kind of thing. I can’t imagine. I think nowadays we’d be more sympathetic to the residents of a city where something horrid like that happened. Who knows, though, because Dallas apparently DID have a bit of a reputation at the time. You can hear the segment here, if you’re so inclined.
My mother was in the hospital with false labor on November 22, 1963, with my older brother, Richard. He wasn’t born for 2 more weeks. She had no idea what was going on, just that people were crying, and then a nurse asked her if she was OK, and finally told her what was going on.
My father was in jail in Georgia on November 22, 1963. He had been arrested as part of the ‘Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walkers’. The story is that a lynch mob was coming to get his group and take care of them, but the sheriff didn’t want that kind of trouble in his town, so he released them and told them to make haste.
I wasn’t born for a couple more years, so I don’t have a memory of that day. I do remember when Reagan was shot. I was in 8th grade, and the principal told us over the loudspeaker. A boy in class made a jeering laugh…I don’t know if he was one of those people who laughs inappropriately, or if he was really delighted, but Oh My God, my English teacher sure chewed him out. I mean, to hear such news over the loudspeaker, and then have to deal with your own feelings, and right then to have to deal with a classroom of 8th graders? She lost it. I kind of respected her for it, though.