July 4, 2022, when a punk with an automatic weapon blasted away brains, babies, hopes and my memories of peace on the beach

 

I first filed the first part of what follows, with the photo above, on July 4, 2022, on Facebook, as soon as the horrid slaughter of innocents and innocence in Highland Park, Illinois, was reported. I am reposting on my "They Call Me Flapjacks" blogger space, because I want it included with the other essays and nightmares and celebrations on that site. However, this is expanded. After the first section, join a sort of mournful Class of '69 reunion of souls. My classmates at Deerfield High School all grew up thinking Highland Park (and Deerfield) were sisters of peace and love. Or maybe that peace and love stuff was just me....

American nightmare. Here's a CNN photo of downtown Highland Park, Illinois, the lovely little city turned national tragedy and crime scene on Independence Day. Automatic, high-powered weapon and some punk mutilated people as they gathered to celebrate our nation's greatest holiday. I grew up in Deerfield, just to the west, a fistful of miles from this scene. Highland Park was virtually our "twin" and students from there were part of the same school district and went to high school with me. I was lucky enough to even date a girl from there on a couple of memorable nights. This blood-spattered downtown often was my after-school destination when I -- generally an introspective loner or at least a lonesome fellow -- drove my 1965 Ford Falcon to the end of downtown, to the Lake Michigan overlook, sometimes going down the trail to the beach, where I would think -- and smoke -- while the waves crashed. Sometimes I just drove down to the beach parking area if I didn't feel up to the climb or if I was in a hurry to get to the water and wander in peace, wondering where I was and why. The city and the lake were good for me, the lake one of my most-reliable friends. It was peaceful and safe. A half-century-plus later, "peaceful" and "safe" downtown Highland Park probably was what people expected on July 4. Instead, another powerful weapon in the arms of some crazed fucker turned the day to terror, a terror that never will be forgotten on future Independence Days. That pastoral site of my smoke-filled after-school sojourns was changed forever. And there are people who believe that these types of weapons are protected by the Second Amendment. .... If you are among those, well, fuck you. Even my lonesome memories have been scarred. I haven't been there in more than 50 years, but it felt like I was there on this July 4, when I saw that bloody downtown. I believe it was Rosewood Beach back then, I can't remember. But to get there, I had to drive right through the scene of what has become yet one more example of our American nightmare. God damn it. When will this country's leaders wake up? What matters in America? Well, when I was reading things about this bloodbath in a great little city, I was greeted by pop-up ads advertising that July 4 after-sales are underway. It's the American Dream.

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New thoughts, July 6, 2022, from a violence-addled man.

I have been in contact with some of my friends from my years at Deerfield High School, and they are also shaken.

Josh Hecht, who has turned into a real friend, even as we were pass-in-the-hall or smoking area classmates.

He, too, remembers seeking solace at the beach in Highland Park. He, too, has been asking why.

We have no answers, either of us. Any of us.

And Dee Gerson, as she was known when I took her to a high school dance and probably made her sore during the slow dances, is now an acclaimed artist by the name of Dee Tivenan who lives in the San Francisco area.

I actually reconnected with both her and Josh when it was time for the 50th class reunion of the Class of 1969.

None of us were going. But all of us used the occasion to reconnect with each other and with our classmates who actually did get together.

Dee, who was a lovely young woman (and I believe remains lovely) actually grew up in Highland Park, rather than Deerfield. We all were in Lake County Schools District 113 back then. I'm sure that has changed. Some Highland Park students attended our school.

Actually, Dee's family only lived a mile or two from where my family lived in Deerfield. She was a cheerleader with a great smile, shape and was among the smartest in the class.

In response to my Facebook post above, she wrote "Thanks for writing this, Tim. I'm so sad about it all."

I responded: "I know, Dee. I thought of you today, it's mind-numbing.

Dee: "Thanks. It is, and it's not going to stop."

My natural optimism began to show in my next response: "No. It will get worse. It is sad. I always try to remember most of us are good. But we aren't winning."

She responded: "I agree."

Josh wrote an email: "Hey, Tim: Hang in there. Just wanted to say I am thinking of you and hope to see you this year.

"Your writing yesterday was moving. And helped during a difficult day.

"BTW, I, as a loner, also used to drive to the beach and sometimes sit in the parking lot and sometimes go down to the beach or pier and smoke. Although I was in a 1963 Ford Fairlane or my 1958 Chevrolet Apache panel truck."

Then, in a follow-up note, he wrote: "Sad day and a sad reality came to a place that was part of our youth.

Both Josh and Dee, coincidentally, live in the same part of the country, though didn't know it until we all began to correspond back in 2019, when we explained our reasons for not attending the reunion.

After the shootings, seven dead now, I wanted to embrace them.

Also, thought about my other classmates, many of whom still live on the North Shore, all affected by this horror.

In a way, thoughts of them, of the horror, of the blood-spattered street where I once drove to get to the beach, was a mental reunion. We all shared that feeling. After all, other than the occasional football injury -- I twice was taken by ambulance to Highland Park Hospital, which received most of the July 4 casualties -- there wasn't a lot of blood shed at "dear old DHS," or whatever it was called by the suckers.

I felt closer to them than I had in the 50 years since I rolled out of town on the tollway, threw 35 cents into the first bin and fired one up and popped open a Bud. I was leaving home. Bye-bye. As a later poet would put it, I was runnin' down a dream. Still runnin' it down, but this isn't about me.

So, I posted the Facebook reverie of slaughter on the Deerfield High Class of '69 page, the one that was established to organize the reunion that a couple of loners and a fine artist from the Coast did not attend. There also are a number from that class who died of various causes during the decades. But that's not this story.

I did get some reactions to the tale of blood on the streets in the town of Chicago.... ahh, got carried away thanks to Jim Morrison in my brain. The slaughter was in Highland Park, in the generally pastoral North Shore, where privilege meets the lower-middle-class in the school system.

Here are some of the reactions to that:

Kathy Omillion Prazenka: "Innocence lost. ... I may have just moved to Colorado, but my heart is in Highland Park, and it's broken."

Madonna Maze: "No words."

Kirk Gustie: "What happened to good parenting? Social media is also to blame."

Tony Gutman: "I grew up in Highland Park (Ravinia school) and spent so much of my time in downtown H.P., and was there just last week. Terrible what is happening."

Jo Anne Caruso Roler: "Thank you for expressing the sadness of broken memories and the grief for the lives destroyed yesterday. This shit has to stop!!!"  (If I remember right, Jo Anne was also a real stunner in the halls of dear old DHS, but this isn't about that.) 

Steve Price: "Really sad. Even though I live in the St. Louis area now, Highland Park will always be home." 

I may add more to this. Or I may not. All I know is it makes me sick. And, strangely, for the first time in a half-century, kinda homesick for a town that is long-ago in my rearview. Nashville is my real hometown and I don't plan any returns to Deerfield, so perhaps it is heartsick rather than homesick. 

I am not, at least at this time, running the picture of the punk, a "nut job," as my good, Brit pal Ivor Smith says, from a land where they don't see this sort of thing on a nightly news basis.  A guy from the relatively peaceful land of Jack the Ripper, Ivor doesn't think all Americans are like this.  (We have become connected only online, but I regard Ivor as one of my closest friends.)

He's a good guy. And that's not the exception. Like I told former cheerleader Dee Gerson Tivenan, most of us are good.  

I am running the pictures -- pulled from CNN -- of the victims. Just those who are dead so far.

Man, as Jo Anne said, "this shit has to stop."

Meanwhile, if you want to, you can do what this nut job did and go to the big box gun shop and get yourself a high-powered semi-automatic weapon and just sit at your front window, waiting for the bad guys to come get you. 

Or maybe some genius in Washington will push through legislation to stop the sales of weapons meant only to kill and mutilate.

As a couple of other poets once said: "Paint it black," because the carnage is just getting cranked up.