🚀 go-pugleaf

In our last episode, <4afeba61.4877156@news.usenetmonster.com>, the lovely
and talented Way Back Jack broadcast on alt.obituaries:

> 9/11:  There's a path on my property that I used for jogging, naked in
> warm weather, except for running shoes, baseball cap, and radio ear
> phones.  Anyway, the news interrupted the soft-rock show and I ran
> back to the house and told the old lady to turn on the tube.

My companion was preparing to go to work with the TV on in the other room
and woke me when only the first plane had hit the first tower.  Because
there had been a paraglider stunt that had gone wrong at the Statue of
Liberty a few days before, I thought at first that there was some chance it
was an aviation stunt gone wrong. The scale of the damage to the building
was not clear in the TV shots we were getting.  I realized the excellence of
the weather made an accident very improbably.  As I saw the second plane
approach in the televised picture, before the newscaster commented on it, I
knew what was happening.

> JFK: I was cruising in a '58 Impala on Pulaski Hwy. when the news of
> the shooting interrupted Johnny Tillotson's "Talk Back Trembling
> Lips."  Death had not yet been confirmed.  Man, I had to tell someone
> so I stopped in this redneck dive in White Marsh.  There were no
> patrons just an old hag behind the bar.  She just stared without
> responding.  "Aw ya old fart, if you don't believe me, turn on ya
> radio, if ya have one."  Whereupon I left.

I was in junior high school.  The school was put on lockdown after lunch. 
We had had at least one school bombing in my memory in Houston, which was
the only previous lockdown I could remember.  Some kids did have 9-volt
transistor radios, but since it was after the free time in lunch period, it
was one class change before those with radios could consult them and start
spreading the news by rumor.  Before school was out there was a PA
announcement.  Some kids did cheer.

> Buddy Holly: I was in 9th grade and moms told me when I returned home
> from school.

I was 11 and not interested in popular music, so I took no notice at the
time.  Some months later a friend had "tribute" 45 titled (I think) "Three
Stars," and he explained it to me.  I was in college before I had any real
appreciation of who Buddy Holly was.  For some time I had him confused with
Roy Orbinson.

-- 
  Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/>                 September 5919, 1993
            297 days since Rick Warren prayed over Bush's third term.
  Obama: No hope, no change, more of the same. Yes, he can, but no, he won't.