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Thu 14 Feb, 2008 06:55 pm
I was on A2K, reading what some of yall had written today. It was just after dark.
I heard a thud and looked out my window to see a silhouette of a woman running right to left across my window overlooking the five lanes of West Rio Road. She was screaming.
Many, perhaps a dozen cars stopped and the folks in those cars, with varing degrees of wariness, approached the person lying on the pavement in the middle lane. One man took off his jacket to spread over the person lying there. I saw another person pull a blanket out of a car.
The fire department is just down the road. Three trucks responded. Those folks are trained in EMS. Soon there were four and then six and then eight police cars. And a Rescue Squard ambulance.
Eventually the victim was loaded into the ambulance and it drove off slowly, its emergency lights flashing but with no siren going.
Police officers walked up and down the road for another couple of hours, stopping occasionally to shine there flash lights on something, perhaps pick something up, and to take measurements.
And finally. just a few minutes ago, a crew spread some sand in the middle lane and did some sweeping. A tow truck towed away a car. Everyone left and the westbound lanes of Rio Road reopened. Cars are going past, oblivious to the drama that took place here.
(This is original writing but news, not fiction. Put it wherever).
Real life is much more sad than fiction.
Thoughts with you, RJB.
Real life, agree. What is fiction but an attempt..
(though oft usefal in that attempt.)
Oh no -- I'm sorry, John. I understand the shock and feeling of helplessness. Am available to talk if you want to unload. Check your PMs for new phone #.
Jaye
Thanks, JPB, for your concern. I suspect that I will be fine, but, as is my want, I will tell yall a long story that may or not get any place. I have told some of this before, but maybe not all of it.
My friend Art B. is a military historian. He was hired to do research for a movie on the troop ships that carried soldiers to VN in the early to mid 1960's. He discovered, in the mothballed fleet of ships something truly amazing. Soldiers, armed with Sharpies, had written messages, letters, poems and pictures on the undersides of the bunks above them.
Art, and Navy historians, were able to salvage those canvasses before the ships were scuttled.
It came to pass that that my picture framer, S., framed one of those and it is now touring around the country to historical societies and local galleries. And they, the organizers, are trying to track down the folks that created that art.
Recently, some guy called Art from TX and said that he was a crewman on one of those ships. He had, on his own time, recorded LP records on to 8-track tapes (the technology of the day) the music of the time. And he played those tapes throughout the ship on the way to VN. And he donated those tapes. Ain't that cool?
The thing that we framed and the rest of the exhibit is now touring, but is back in Cville for a tune-up of graphics and such before going out longer.
Art has organized a little symposium for Saturday and has put me on the program as a VN vet with some stories to tell. I tried to be polite, but said I probably wouldn't be there.
All of the above kind of ties into the event this evening. I was watching from my window. Nothing would have been gained or lost by my going out there.
And going to the thing on Saturday? No. I was able to put that whole 15 months, ten days and six hours into a metal box and put in on a shelf, on the back of a high shelf. Never to be dragged out again.
I wish the young men and women today could do the same, but, perhaps, something is different.
Thank you for reading this if you have. It was cathartic to write.
John
(I'm a present mess. Fell, not serious, but not nothing either, as I landed on tile. Y'all be good, and I'll be back.)
Sending healing thoughts to osso.
Rough night around here...
You sure you are okay, osso?
Do you need Dys or BBB to come place a soft pillow under you, Osso?
She's obviously waiting for y'all to be good before she comes back.
So get to it!
Posted over here:
http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3096287#3096287
ossobuco wrote:I don't mean to make a deal out of this as much will be passed in the morning, but I fell, a bit ago, and landed with my bum on the tile.
I've been wailing. Will shut up on that tomorrow.
Interestingly, I wasn't inebrieated in the lurching. Maybe I should have been.
ossobuco wrote:and I beg all your pardons, I posted on the wrong thread.
I'll put in a call to BBB or Dys if we don't hear from her soon.
It's still way early for her, isn't it?
I'm primed to worry but not quite there yet.
RJB, good writing about an awful thing.
Osso
I just talked to Osso and she's fine except for a sore butt. I hope she secures her rugs so she doesn't trip on them so often.
BBB
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