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Kansas City, MO 64131
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Friday
June 6, 2008
(40th anniversary of
Bobby Kennedy’s death
01:44 a.m. PST)
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Bodysurfing through History’s Riptide
For this is action, this not being sure, this careless
Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,
Making ready to forget, and always coming back
To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.
-- John Ashbery, from “Soonest Mended” in The Double Dream of Spring
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On the night that Robert Kennedy was shot, I was asleep on a sofa in the darkened, deserted waiting area of the passenger terminal at Love Field in Dallas, Texas -- the same airport where Kennedy’s older brother John had landed the morning that he was assassinated in 1963, five years earlier.
On the same night that Bobby Kennedy was fatally shot behind his right ear, in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, it seemed as though the only people in that entire darkened, deserted passenger terminal at Love Field in Dallas, half a continent away, were the writer of this narrative (the “I” who is speaking to you here today) and a middle-aged night watchman, walking his rounds through that sleeping airport, carrying his long black flashlight and his walkie-talkie. I was 19 years old back in 1968 and on my way to Mexico, hitchhiking, mostly down Interstate 35, with my guitar and my knapsack, both of which sat on the sofa next to the one where I lay sleeping, that terribly night.
Neither I nor the airport’s night watchman, of course, had any way of knowing that it was a terrible night. Neither the night watchman nor I had any way of knowing that Robert F. Kennedy had just been declared the winner of the California Democratic Primary; nor had either of us any way of knowing that, after making a brief acceptance speech at the podium in the crowded Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Kennedy would make is way through an admiring throng top the Ambassador Hotel’s kitchen area, where he would be fatally shot – though he wouldn’t die until 26 hours later. It was the night of June 4th & 5th, 1968, exactly 40 years ago, at the time I’m writing his to you here today.
That darkened, deserted passenger terminal lobby there in Dallas, where……..
………to be cont’d……..4/30/08…….
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Until Next Time, Stay Well,
Galen
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The World Is Ugly (And the People Are Sad)
Oh, the world is ugly and the people are sad,
And you know that ain’t no fun.
But, Baby, don’t you start feelin’ bad.
Don’t you run out and buy you a gun.
Don’t you start shootin’ smack or poppin’ speed
Or smokin’ too much weed.
Refrain:
One thing you never learned from your mom and dad --
Now, don’t take it too hard or it’ll drive you mad --
But the world is ugly and the people are sad --
Yes, the world is ugly and the people are sad.
The news is spreadin’ like a weed
That the world is ugly and the people are sad.
I wonder where it all will lead,
Before our story is done.
I think of my unborn daughter and son
And all that I never had.
(...repeat refrain...)
If all the rocks began to bleed,
Would it make the people glad?
Or if we all outlived the sun,
Would we ever know what we need?
No. No. No. The world is ugly and the people are sad
And the fun has just begun.
(...repeat refrain...)
What if our lives had never begun?
Then, who would plant the seed
Of a world so ugly and a people so sad,
From the Bronx to Leningrad?
Who would there be to start to breed
These sufferers under the sun?
(...repeat refrain...)
So here we stand beneath the sun,
Trying to buy some fun --
As the dirty hooves of Life’s stampede
Pound in us to succeed.
And we each live our Odyssey and our Iliad,
In a world that’s ugly with people that are sad.
(...repeat refrain...)
Words and Music by Galen Green c 1978
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