This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the John F. Kennedy assassination. I wasn’t even born yet by over a decade, but I still like to hear my mom speak of when she heard of JFK’s death.
I look to another presidential assassination…Lincoln and compare it to JFK’s assassination and how Americans look back at it. (That’s me in the photo checking my smart phone in 2010 while on a visit to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.). I am fascinated about the reaction of Americans now to Lincoln. Ford’s Theatre has almost a quaint feel to it. I can specifically remember wall clocks positions in the hallway leading to the theatre auditorium. Accompanying the wall clocks there is a timeline of when and what happened. The font of prose of the timeline is reminiscent of a turn of the century / keystone cop / handlebar mustache feel to it. It doesn’t even seem real, but more likely read in one of those newspaper clippings on a Wendy’s restaurant table from the 1980s.
By contrast JFK’s death is still fresh on people’s minds. Although it is gradually getting more difficult to find those who were alive at the time of the assassination, the tragedy still looms large and is not something to be joked about, especially on the 50th anniversary. An aquaintance found this out when he posted this photo with a caption, “Too Soon?” on Facebook. It was removed shortly thereafter.
When I was a middle school student, I can remember my older sister getting a large photo book titled “Five Days in November.” While flipping through the book I discovered the horror that was the Kennedy assassination. The Zapruder film? Someone actually had footage of the president being shot? The blood splatter of the president? This was pretty brutal for myself having only been a teenager when I first found out about it. Even back then I wondered to myself why did Kennedy travel in a convertible? It seems like such an obvious mistake to avoid, but security personnel in the 1960s do not think the way we think in the 2000s.
Then finding out that Oswald was shot? I couldn’t write this type of high paced drama. So for me, learning about the assassination in the late 1980s was pretty dramatic and shocking. So my memories of the Kennedy assassination is limited to books I’ve read and people I’ve spoken to.

I stumbled across this gem while converting videos from VHS to DVD for a friend. This the last part of a 1994 church mission trip to Russia. Seems those returning from Russia to the USA stopped off in Paris. They made it a point to make a pilgrimage to a salute to excess. This is apparently what was stylish at the times. Now it looks incredibly dated and as tired and worn out as the older lady narrator. You can feel bad nostalgia creep up in this tape when the narrator says “So you think we should buy a blue jean shirt?” Or when the visitors gleefully hold up their menu in a salute to commercialism.
Here are a group of Christians who just returned from a mission trip to Russia ministering to people who have nothing. Then just a few days later they’re contemplating which Hard Rock Cafe jacket or polo shirt they should buy. So ironic.
Those who owned the Hard Rock Cafe had us all fooled. We were fooled into thinking that we must have a Hard Rock shirt to be cool. All the while these shirts ended up at garage sales or Goodwill’s during the 2000’s. I was fooled. I remember paying money to a older church friend who was going to NYC to purchase a Hard Rock Cafe shirt. I ate at a Hard Rock in Shanghai. By all accounts was the best and most expensive burger in China. I last ate at a Hard Rock Cafe in Washington, D.C., not because it was a destination stop, but because it was convenient to where we were at the time (Ford’s Theater). Video below.

Just finished watching “A Christmas Story.” A modern classic which was almost forgotten at movie theaters, but became a big hit years after on basic cable. It’s along the same lines as “The Wonder Years” with a grown up protagonist narrates childhood memories.
Even though the story takes place in the 1930s or 40s (not ever sure of which decade), the story is timeless and provokes shared memories.
Some memories that I specifically remember. After Raphie gets into the fight, he fears his father’s reaction to this. I can remember as a young child getting in trouble with my mother with her remarking “Wait ’til your father gets home.” I remember being very afraid of the pushment or yelling that I would get at a latter time. Most people who had a father in any type of parenting mode remembers feeling the same day. It’s funny now I remember the waiting period, but not the punishment.
Then there’s the reaction Christmas morning after Santa had visited. This is the absolute best childhood feeling. The anticipation and excitement during those times were rarely matched. Although I have no children of my own, I have a niece and nephew wwho are now stars of the show when it comes to opening presents. Christmas in my house is now truly about children.

Sometime in the mid 1980s my parents got me a bunk bed. (Photo of said bed is to the right with me and my cousin with an inflatable General Lee). In retrospect the bed provided good memories during my elementary age years. I slept on the bottom bunk mostly. I can remember watching Late Night with David Letterman on a Sony Watchman during the summer. I guess it had not dawned on me that I could have requested a television for my room like most other kids my age had at the time.
Eventually the bed was disassembled and put into storage. After many years of nonuse, the bed has been reassembled for my nephew to use. He’s 3 years old and oh so proud of his big boy bed. I don’t think he understands that it used to be his uncle’s bed. When you ask him who’s bed it is he shouts out “John’s Bed!”
In any case I’m glad it is being used again, giving my nephew good memories as it did for me.

My parents moved into a new house recently. The house they moved away from was the house I grew up in. Before I moved out a couple of years ago, I had known no other home, except for some brief stays at the college dorm. And even then, can you really count a college dormatory as a home?
That house that I once knew as my childhood home is no more. I guess memories of the past and present sorta evaporated once they made my old bedroom into an office. The kitchen, living room, and other rooms were somewhat how they were. But yet, I’ve been gone for way too long to consider it a home.
I do have somewhat of an emotional attachment to the house. I’m sorry to see it empty. At one time it was full of life…when my sister and I were still kids and living at home. Now it is merely a shell of a house. Some furniture is still there…the stuff they want left behind…eventually sold or donated to Katrina victims.
I have mostly good memories of the house. The long driveway which I used to ride my bicycle down…the front yard where we would play summer games of bad minton….the garden where my mom spent so much of her time picking tomatoes and squash…the den where I spent time in front of an old Zenith TV playing with my Hot Wheels cars, Transformers, and G.I. Joes. The memories are still there…in one’s own mind and in the pictures from old family photo albums.
I’m feeling somewhat like my great-grandmother must have felt like when she was told that the house she had spent 60+ years in had been torn down. She must have felt somewhat betrayed and helpless (being in a nursing home in Sparta…).
Can one grieve the loss of a house like one grieves for the loss of an old friend? Maybe. Maybe the house is an old friend who has changed to the point of not being recognizable anymore.

May 1987 was when my 6th grade class went on our journey to the NASA Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. This was big time stuff to us 6th graders. We all wore our class t-shirts – red with airbrushed names on the back. I got my first Walkman tape player just for this trip.
And we were let loose for free time more or less without the annoyance of chaperones. No wonder this was big time. It meant a certain degree of independence for us. Our own bit of NASA more or less in our own backyard. That is, if our backyard extends to the greater metropolitan area of Huntsville.
So I did go to Huntsville this weekend. No Space and Rocket Center for us. Instead it was video games. And trips to Target. It wasn’t necessarily as big time as my 6th grade trip. Fun. But not earth shaking.
I think what I found is that video games are time wasters. And not much else. Probably helps you develop hand-eye coordination. But I don’t think it would get you a job.
Speaking of hand-eye coordination, I need to see the eye doctor about glasses. Hmmmm….

This site is about a motorcyclist riding through the deserted streets of Chernobyl, site of the worst nuclear disaster. Truly a overwhelming and creepy site. Its almost as if time stood still on April 26, 1986. May Day posters are still up. Plants and animals overtake the cities. Somewhat like the post apocalyptic world of 12 Monkeys.
If you want to know more about Chernobyl, watch this. (27 minute Real Video by the BBC). Gives some insight on the disaster. Estimates of 15,000 died as a result of the disaster. It also caused 135,000 people to be permanently evacuated. The area may not be liveable for 900 years.
There’s always more Chernobyl photos elsewhere.
“Have no fear for atomic energy
Cause none of them can stop the time.”
–Bob Marley, Redemption Song

I took my driving test on my sister’s car – a 1990 white Plymouth Sundance. It was a graduation gift. She got the full scholarship to FHU and a new car. I got a 1989 Chevy S-10 and a pat on the back. But more on that later.
The test was at the Murfreesboro Road DMV location. Easy. Passed on my first try. My sister had to take her driving test 3 times because she got nervous in the first two tests.
The Sundance was a good car. I drove it on occasion. Blue interior. Hatchback, although it was shaped like a car with a trunk. No tape player.
My truck. It was a white Chevy S-10. Blue stripe down the bottom. Bucket seats. It had a special security feature where you had to turn on the parking lights to start the thing. Go figure. I never had it stolen, but I had alot of people wanting to borrow it who couldn’t figure out how to start it. And my dad had to get a lame topper for it, so that when he took off the trash it wouldn’t fly away. How lame is it to drive a nice S-10 pickup truck to school with an ugly topper on it?
I managed to talk my parents into getting me a car for college. They were in constant need of the truck for hauling things. I drove it my Freshmen year at college, always having to drive it home for them to borrow. So my sophomore year I got a 1992 bright blue Mitsubishi Eclipse. Nice car. It had tinted windows and black out plates on the lights. I had a wreck in it. But nothing that did much damage to the car.
Those are the stories of my past cars….

If you go through old photo albums, not matter how good of condition the photo is, it still looks old and faded. Or at least mine do. Could it be the people in the photos are so much younger than present time, making it, by definition, old and faded? I would have thought digital photos would have taken care of this phenomenon of faded pictures. But now they’re telling me that if I write photos to a CDR, the CDR itself will become unuseable in 5 years. This of course depends on how cheap the CDR is.
Old photos are good. I’ll admit that I took too many photos in high school. Mostly of redundant activities. Rarely got a “good” photo. Now I concentrate on getting the perfect photo, rather than just snapping pictures for the sake of using up film. I hate seeing people take bad photos. I’ve wanted to step in and tell them how to take the photo. And I have before.
I’m thinking about starting a camera collection. I’ve got a digital, 35mm, and 110. I still need to get an underwater camera and one of those Advantex cameras. I still don’t like ’em. Because they are so expensive to develop. But I have heard that you can get a specific number of prints if you have a sophisticated enough camera.
And I need to get a polaroid instantmatic. But I’ve heard that those instant photos have glue in them that go bad. So I might stay away from that brand too.
Oh yeah. Matt H. where are you?

Somewhere on Highway 70 going east to Smithville, there’s a mule painted on the side of a bluff. It’s black and very noticeable if you’re looking for it. It’s been there forever seemingly. I remember seeing it in the 80s when my parents would drive us every month to my grandparents’ house in Sparta. Then later on during my adult years, long after my grandparents had passed, I still see the mule on my way to Short Mountain in Woodbury.
I always look for the mule on my way to Smithville. Smithville itself is just a mere pitstop. It was where my family would get ice cream at the Dairy Queen (when the DQ was the only restaurant there). I have no friends or family in Smithville. More or less just a pit stop. Turn left at the DQ to get to Short Mountain. Or drive straight on through to get to Sparta. That’s all.
Still, there is development on Highway 70. They’re building a 4 lane road seemingly from Watertown to Sparta and beyond. And I still think there’s more cars on Highway 70 between Mt. Juliet and Lebanon, yet we only have a 2 lane road with no serious consideration for development.
There was talk that the mule might get axed. But it looks like it won’t. Read this article for more info. I realize the article is over a year old. But I’ve got the original paper edition sitting on my desk right now. So I’m obligied to write about it.