death & television
April 4, 1968, I remember the day. And the next, Friday, and the weekend. With our travel trailer and white 1966 Dodge Coronet 318 V8 station wagon to pull it, Linda, Malinda, Joe and I were at a Virginia campground outside of Washington, DC. Maybe we were at our favorite up on Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but my recollection is that it was a campground somewhere down off highway I95 south of. Trailer secured and stabilized, finished supper, sitting outside in the evening cool, we were listening to the radio as a news station described Washington burning. And I remember saying, "I don't see how anyone could hate that man."
Nearly two years earlier, the Navy had transferred me, age 30 and newly promoted to lieutenant commander, from Yokosuka, Japan to Washington. Stationed in the Navy Annex, Arlington, Virginia, within sight of and a five minute bus ride from the Pentagon, from an office window we could also see the Washington skyline across the Potomac River, and I recall watching after dark as flames leapt high, the people enraged and taking vengeance at the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Cars were overturned and set fire. Walter Cronkite reported store windows smashed, shops looted, and people racing off clutching their new television set.
Not to, well yes okay, stray off path and conversation, the next television story I remember happened in 2000 or 2001. I was interim rector at Grace Church, Panama City Beach. A divorced woman and her two or three children always came to our Thursday evening Supper at Grace for their one hot meal of the week, and may have come to our Sunday morning worship from time to time, I'm not sure. But I got to know the family a little bit, and the kids were happy about their new wide screen TV that their mom had saved up for and bought. On a day, it may have been a Sunday afternoon, the mother was struck and killed by a car as she tried to cross Front Beach Road, somewhere in that busy stretch between Hathaway Bridge and where Middle Beach Road branches off heading west. Details are sketchy, but I went out to their permanent motel room or other accommodation to see her children. Their father, the mother's ex-husband also was living in the area. His first words when informed of her death had been, "I want that television."
Washington, DC gradually restored itself to order, but I remember that period of Time when life was young and much more was yet to happen. Later that year, 1968, after just two years in Washington and to the chagrin of my Navy boss, the Navy transferred us again, to Newport, Rhode Island for a year at the Naval War College and then back to sea. Our campground in RI was among the trees on a lake. What I remember best about it was arriving late evening, park and set up the travel trailer, and head for the shower where an enormous spider was waiting on the framing of the door into my shower stall.
Late spring 1969 we found out we would be PCS-ing to San Diego. As pulling the trailer, the Dodge V8 got four miles per gallon, and gasoline was headed for forty cents per gallon, we advertised the Dodge and travel trailer as a package sale, and it went within hours of the classified ad in the morning newspaper. The people who bought it had never owned a trailer, much less backed one, and so I backed it for them, quite impressively, a long narrow drive close between two houses. We promised ourselves we'd eventually have another travel trailer, but that never happened as life took us far and wide before depositing us right here back home on the Florida Gulf Coast.
TW
Nearly two years earlier, the Navy had transferred me, age 30 and newly promoted to lieutenant commander, from Yokosuka, Japan to Washington. Stationed in the Navy Annex, Arlington, Virginia, within sight of and a five minute bus ride from the Pentagon, from an office window we could also see the Washington skyline across the Potomac River, and I recall watching after dark as flames leapt high, the people enraged and taking vengeance at the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Cars were overturned and set fire. Walter Cronkite reported store windows smashed, shops looted, and people racing off clutching their new television set.
Not to, well yes okay, stray off path and conversation, the next television story I remember happened in 2000 or 2001. I was interim rector at Grace Church, Panama City Beach. A divorced woman and her two or three children always came to our Thursday evening Supper at Grace for their one hot meal of the week, and may have come to our Sunday morning worship from time to time, I'm not sure. But I got to know the family a little bit, and the kids were happy about their new wide screen TV that their mom had saved up for and bought. On a day, it may have been a Sunday afternoon, the mother was struck and killed by a car as she tried to cross Front Beach Road, somewhere in that busy stretch between Hathaway Bridge and where Middle Beach Road branches off heading west. Details are sketchy, but I went out to their permanent motel room or other accommodation to see her children. Their father, the mother's ex-husband also was living in the area. His first words when informed of her death had been, "I want that television."
Washington, DC gradually restored itself to order, but I remember that period of Time when life was young and much more was yet to happen. Later that year, 1968, after just two years in Washington and to the chagrin of my Navy boss, the Navy transferred us again, to Newport, Rhode Island for a year at the Naval War College and then back to sea. Our campground in RI was among the trees on a lake. What I remember best about it was arriving late evening, park and set up the travel trailer, and head for the shower where an enormous spider was waiting on the framing of the door into my shower stall.
Late spring 1969 we found out we would be PCS-ing to San Diego. As pulling the trailer, the Dodge V8 got four miles per gallon, and gasoline was headed for forty cents per gallon, we advertised the Dodge and travel trailer as a package sale, and it went within hours of the classified ad in the morning newspaper. The people who bought it had never owned a trailer, much less backed one, and so I backed it for them, quite impressively, a long narrow drive close between two houses. We promised ourselves we'd eventually have another travel trailer, but that never happened as life took us far and wide before depositing us right here back home on the Florida Gulf Coast.
TW