Images of the Surreal Past

Over a lifetime, we witness a few events that leave us slackjawed, captivated, astonished. During such times, these occurences take up much of our thoughts, a lot of our time, and most of our focus. Some are immediate, some last hours, some last days, weeks, months or longer. While we all have our personal ordeals, here, for the purposes of this post, I'm talking more regarding historical surreal events that have happened in our lifetimes. As individuals born in different times, different places, we'll have our own angles on what constitutes an "unreal" reality. I suppose it's my nature, but most of my remembrances of such events are the nightmarish ones. It's why news is news, I suppose. The 9-11 image that I placed atop the post is one of the latest ones for me. The tsunami about three or four years back was another event this new millenium. Actually, one of these episodes of which I'm speaking broke the new century. Remember the hanging chads in Florida in the 2000 election? Hard to forget, huh? I remember day after day watching the television for the political spin, and the counts and recounts, wondering what the heck had happened to our system of government.

One has to be a certain age and experience enough of this thing called life, I think, to let these experiences become so meaningful. Maybe I'm wrong. The first one I can remember for myself was the death of Elvis Presley - and this wasn't so much for me as it was for my parents. Older people may well remember the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, and then his brother, probably the Munich Olymics - I'm sure those would be on my list if I was living and old enough back then. However, I certainly remember night after night watching 20/20 and the news cover Elvis and then hearing "Dr. Nick", who had some e'splainin' to do. My parents LOVED E.P., and we had several of his vinyl albums and cassette tapes at that point. For me, with all the Vicki Carr, Paul Anka, and Tom Jones my parents were listening to, Elvis was always a welcome respite. And then he was gone.

The single event that has affected me most - as in, I had nightmares over it when I was a young teen - was the Jim Jones' People Temple massacre in Guyana. After seeing it unfold on the news, hearing people at my church talking about it, and then seeing the horrid pictures in the Time Magazine that I fetched out of the mail, that one kept me on edge for weeks. Despite my fear of everything that had happened, for whatever reason I thirsted for more and more knowledge. I think it was the cult aspect, and it was the first time I had heard of such. It wasn't the last time, obviously, but this was the most indelible image for me.

The next event I remember pretty well was the Son of Sam killings by David Berkowitz. That was followed by the Iran hostage situation, which lasted quite a long time. Maybe I was a little slow on the up and up, maybe I was a bit sheltered, but this was the first time I remember learning about the Middle East and all the dissension there. As a kid, I always thought of America as the greatest country, and then, being naive, figured everyone else in the world did, too. Quite an initiation to the contrary. Ayatollah Khomeini, the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, and the hostages taken mixed in with an America where long lines at the pump, a Cold War, dwindling hope in the country, and with a President that didn't know how to handle any of this chaos. Enter Ronald Reagan.

Supreme Court nominations, especially conservative nominations, have seemed to divide the country. Speaking of Reagan, his nomination of Robert Bork set off a huge political clash and one that went public. Pressure groups, both conservative and liberals, had pumped plenty of funds into the "fight game" rhetoric prior to the confirmation hearings of Judge Bork. Democratic senators took the offense and a few prominent ones had spilled the beans beforehand that they would vote against Bork's nomination for Supreme Court justice. That backlash resonated with many Americans, and while Bork went down swinging, he went down alone, with the White House that had pledged to support him beforehand, now nowhere to be found.

A long time ago, I remember my dad reading Black Sunday, a novel by Thomas Harris (who also wrote the Silence of the Lambs and the Hannibal Lecter series). In that, sort of like the 24 hours at the Munich Olympiad, a blimp runs into the stadium hosting the Super Bowl due to terrorist activity. While no terrorists were involved, a similar event took place in 1989. During the third game of the Major League Baseball World Series -- coined the Battle of the Bay as it featured Oakland and San Francisco teams -- the Loma Prieta earthquake hit, registering 6.9 (7.1 surface-wave magnitude) on the Richter, during warm-ups for the clash. I still remember hearing Al Michaels stuttering about the earthquake. For ten days, the World Series was postponed. In the Iraq crises, NFL football games were postponed, but aside from Munich, I can't remember a more riveting sports stoppage.

Robert Bork's wasn't the only Supreme Court nomination to have its share of calamity. In 1991, George H.W. Bush's nomination of conservative Clarence Thomas, after celebrated liberal Thurgood Marshall retired from the bench, brought another round of pressure groups trying to upend the nomination. And with that, the bizarre circumstance of Anita Hill testifying before the Judicial Committee regarding her personal, as alleged, sexual harrasment by Judge Thomas, and then Thomas' firy counter. The proceedings were a spectacle that brought about one of the funniest SNL skits that was ever acted, but for Thomas and Hill, there was nothing humorous, whatsoever.

The last image I'll post is that of the Iraq conflict, the Shock and Awe offensive. I'm not a veteran, so these were the closest images of war I'd ever seen. I spoke with a parent on one of the baseball teams that I coached, and he had lived and worked over in Saudi Arabia when Saddam Hussein was firing Scud missiles that direction. He talked about the evacuations and how no one could work -- most folks just drank -- and some of the fear involved. I can't even begin to imagine. Personally, I'd prefer to never see anything like that again, but reality being what it is, I most likely will.

Catastrophic events, nightmarish occurences, calamities, bizarre politics... probably not the trip down memory lane you'd want to read about, and certainly not one you'll often find here in The Realm of Possibility. Apologies, I suppose, but lately I've just been thinking of all these types of events, and how they seem to be cyclical every few years. Not that I'm waiting for the boot to drop -- sorry to be so cynical.

What indelible images of the past do you have? I know I've missed a few what with space shuttles exploding and genocides on different continents and volcanoes erupting. Points given for any happy ones. Many, many points. I think I could use a coke and a smile now.