Reply #65: King's assassination - if you mean only "breaking" news [View All]

[villager]

...it was a text crawl at the bottom of the screen, while my sisters watched afternoon cartoons ("The Flinstones," I think). I went in to ask my mother who King was -- the name was only vaguely familiar -- and then I told her he'd been shot. "What!?" She sat up, bolt upright, from the bed...

however, two years earlier, I stayed up to watch 1966 California election results with the bigs, and when it became apparent that Reagan was the winner, one of the jokes was "if he ever becomes President, I'm leaving the country!"

Everyone laughed, because the idea of the country at large making such a ridiculous mistake seemed impossible.

Needless to say, that memory haunted me throughout most of the 80's.

I was born in 1959.