Daily writing prompt

What major historical events do you remember?

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The earliest one was when the televisions were mostly black and white. My 6 year old self watched as a train decked out in flowers left a station. I had no idea how he had died. If anyone had asked me if I knew who he was, I would have had to say no. But I could see crowds of people standing alongside the tracks. They waved and they watched saying their goodbyes to someone they only knew from a distance. If they had really known the deceased I would think they would have been on that train too.That bit of film stayed in my mind’s eye for years before I learned about who had died and why. Now that man’s namesake and son still seems to be trying to work out what happened in his own life as he plays the devil’s advocate with the health of a nation. Rest in peace, Robert F. Kennedy.

We watched the Vietnam war while eating TV dinners in the living room. The war was the background noise to meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Rockets went up to the moon and capsules landed in the ocean. Not everybody made it though.We could feel the engine tests at the Jet Propulsion Labs and see the rocket trails from the missile launches at Vandenberg. There was an earthquake that had my father racing a crack in the wall as headed down the stairs at his work. Overpasses fell down. A hospital collapsed. How Vasquez Rocks, of Star Trek fame, could sit at such an angle suddenly made sense.

Charlie Manson had a ranch nearby in the hills around the San Fernando Valley. The Beatles wrote a song about his strange family and what they did. Teachers at school told us to be careful but our families sent us outside to play anyway. He was the beginning of too many, but we didn’t really know how many until the milk cartons with the missing children’s faces graced our breakfast tables.There were too many to count and we were left counting the perpetrators instead.

There was a president who had had a peanut farm and whose brother liked beer. I think his name was Billy. The brother was Billy, the President was Jimmy. Somewhere in that time, gasoline became hard to find and expensive. Suddenly Americans liked little cars, unless they were boys in high school. There was a revolution in Iran and they were angry at America, so they kept a bunch of Americans hostage. I never understood that choice, but it made people blame Jimmy even though he tried to rescue them and failed. Someone else became President then and he wasn’t really important, except he had been an actor in Hollywood and had costarred with a chimpanzee once. But then he did some illegal stuff and other people went to jail for it.

This could take a long time to write. It seems that historical events are happening all the time. If we sit with this and remember, I think we will realize the breadth of what we have seen. We are a witness to history every day of our lives. At times we take an active part in making history. We don’t always realize it though when we are the ones making history because we get busy and miss the big picture in the moment. Go do. Go and be part of tomorrow’s history.