a long strange trip

twenty-five years ago tomorrow, i was fourteen (i think) and delighted that mississippi high schools were observing one of a series of several snow days. where i grew up, a quarter inch of snow = no school for a week. my friends, squeak and ed, spent a lot of time @ our house the next few days, sledding down the big hill toward town and getting my father to pull us back up w/ his 1960 corvair fitted w/ snow tires. oddly enough, what i remember most about the storm is how ed got so upset over how an airplane crashed into the 14th street bridge over the potomac river. ed was always a current events kind of guy, and he was irate that such a debacle could happen. the post article reflects about how the accident changed aviation and, in retrospect, makes ed sound like he was a 16-year-old prophet.

now, a quarter of a century later, i live two blocks off 14th, and that bridge was my main way to work until we moved into the city. long and strange, indeed.