Today In History and One of My Forrest Gumps Moments

On this date 47 years ago, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. 

We were not married even a year yet .  We had reservations to hear Odetta sing at the Bottom of the Barrel pub near Georgia Tech.   About fifteen minutes before the performance was to start a man came out and Odetta would not be playing tonight because Doctor Martin Luther King has just been shot.

Oh shit!  What now?

We drove back to Marietta sort of stunned. 

I decided to cruise through downtown Marietta where on the corner of Lawrence Street and the norh east corner of the Square a lot of blacks normally hung out then.  We went through Marietta and at the corner mentioned was a crowd of people standing around talking.  I was eyeing them and not the traffic light.  I ran the traffic light and a car nearly hit me.  I slammed on the breaks and the other car honked. 

The crowd turned their attention towards me.

We got the heck out of there.

I worked at in the office of Sinclair Refining Company.  The day before  Doctor King's funeral we were told we were going to have to stand guard at the huge gasoline tanks up on the hill behind our offices on Parrott Avenue.  I wasn't too happy about that.  They said that because some militants said Atlanta was going to burn again.  Somehow our guarding the tanks never happened.  I think maybe you had to have licensed guards to guard, or at least somebody with a gun permit.

A day or two later it came across the news to be on the lookout for a white Mustang.  It was linked to Martin Luther King's assassination.   It also told of the license number  and the state.

Our office had about five or six salaried Sinclair Service Stations that our office was over.  The manager of the station at Peachtree and 14th Streets called me and told me he had the white Mustang on the news at the gas pump, what should he do?  I told him to call the FBI.  Our whole office scrambled around looking for a number to call.  We found a couple of numbers and gave them to Barry to call.   Years later I think we should have called the numbers ourselves.

That was the last time Barry was seen.  I was the last person to talk to him.  He disappeared off the face of the earth. 

After a year he was declared legally dead and his wife sold his belongings, like a PV544 Volvo, dark blue, which I bought  fairly cheaply.

One more page:  In the early 2000s we went to Memphis.  We were/are interested in the Blues music.  We went to what was known as the center of the Blues, the business end anyway, Beale Street in Memphis.  While driving around looking for a free parking place we came across the motel that MLK was slain on the balcony.  It was only a block or two from Beale Street.