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Community Corner

The Trouble With Normal: Memories of the Moment Reagan Was Shot

A step back in time to that day from a Middletown child's perspective

Normal: the series of ball-bearings on which we cushion our lives. When things go wrong, we have a way of justifying them by gauging their relative normality — radiators blow, roofs leak, lungs become congested. They are all unwelcome harbingers. But, in a certain respect, are all normal.

It takes a lot to shake out the bearings to lurch one from certain stability to a thoroughly unstable one ...

It was an ordinary early '80s, late March day — March 30, 1981, to be exact. My mother had picked me up from school at River Plaza Elementary and made her way to my grandmother’s on Thompson Avenue in what is now North Middletown.

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Back then, the area was considered a part of Port Monmouth and, by some, Keansburg, or East Keansburg. This identity crisis extended down the road as well.

My dad’s television repair business was located in Belford or Campbell’s Junction, also depending on who you ask, and mom handled the phones there. Having my grandmother watch me after school between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. seemed like the best decision.

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This particular day was extremely dreary as I recall, with March intent on being quite un-lamb-like. It felt worse later in the afternoon than it actually was. The route from River Plaza often took us down Route 35 to Tindall Road, Cherry Tree Farm Road to Wilson, to Route 36, then to Thompson Avenue.

It was a mundane and uneventful daily trip for the most part, except during summertime when the marshes would catch fire and people would be set on high alert in case the wind shifted and sent the blaze in their direction.

At my grandmother’s, I would mimic her routine and have an afternoon cup of tea and a slice of pound cake. While she set to putting dinner together for my grandfather and uncle, I would park myself in front of the TV.

On this particular day, Picture Picture just took Mr. Rogers for a tour through the Crayola Crayon factory, and in ten minutes’ time E.Z. Reader (as portrayed by Oscar winner Morgan Freeman) would extol the virtues of punctuation on The Electric Company. The rain outside had turned into a persistent, dank drizzle.

Then, around 2:30 p.m., the television screen flashed to a static graphic, then to a man sitting at a desk, and finally to a video of official-looking people ushering someone to a limousine. There was a "pop-pop-pop" followed by a rash moment of mayhem. The suited men were suddenly shoving President Ronald Reagan into that car.

The bearings of normalcy had just cracked and spilled out all over the floor.

My grandmother entered the room, saw what was on, put her hand on the dial and started frantically flipping through channels, all seven of them. On each channel it was the same “show,” with instant replay gunfire going off and Reagan being quickly crammed into the car.

I was old enough to know with vague, parroted recognition what was happening. Even at that young age, we were being taught about the Lincoln assassination; and, more troubling to the adults, as I would come to realize, the Kennedy assassination.

I’d hear them talk about it later as both my grandparents, both my parents and my uncle all had their respective stories about where they were the day JFK was killed. It was the abnormality that crystallized for each, in drastically different ways, how dangerous and disruptive the world could truly be. This shocked them more than it did me, I have to admit.

I had to try to figure out un-figurable things like what a Watergate was, why my grandmother’s “stories” were always preempted by coverage about it, and why this would provoke a President to quit office.

I had to learn that my father, waking up at the crack of dawn on odd-numbered days to drive to lines at gas stations, wasn’t dealing with ordinary circumstances. I learned about a small section of the world where people were being held hostage for a long, long time, and about a man named Khomeini.

I had to wonder why, purportedly, people on the other side of the world were “red” and wanted to blow me up. Even at this time, my normal was hardly so.

I had to reconcile the chill that came over these adults when they heard that U.S. Press Secretary James Baker had been killed — a piece of incorrect information that surely filled them with dread and visions of grassy knolls, motorcades, chaos and anarchy.

They buzzed about what it meant when Vice President George H. W. Bush, as well as the Speaker of the House and the President pro tem of the Senate were cast aside by Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who famously announced, “I’m in control here.”  Was it justified? Was it overstepping? Was it a coup d’état?

That night my parents took me, my sister and younger brother to dinner at Romeo’s Pizza in the A&P Shopping Center, which is now the Foodtown Shopping Center. Romeo’s is now farther up the road on Route 36, past what used to be the Foodtown Shopping Center (and is now occupied by Drug Fair).

We almost never ate out because, even then, it was too expensive for our meager budget. But the adults needed to escape the media bombardment; and there was no way to accomplish that at home.

I often wonder how they would have coped with such things in light of the information-saturation of today. We still have TV, and in a thousand varieties, and the radio, but we also have the news in our pockets thanks to smart-phone technology.

We know almost as much as the current protesters on the ground in Egypt know, and they were under a media blackout for a week. We get endless punditry and debate on every little gesture and vocal inflection of our elected officials. And in so many ways this all seems balanced, par-for-the-course — even normal.

On Feb. 6, the occasion of Reagan’s birthday centennial was commemorated.  The celebration will no doubt thrive for the remainder of the year. Memories of Reagan span from him being a father-figure for the country that needed such a thing at that time, to the figure most responsible for the Republican-right conservatism resurgence, to a man who may not have been fit to hold the office at that stage in his life.

Depending on whom you ask, where I grew up in Middletown might be Port Monmouth or Keansburg. This shopping center is either owned by A&P or Foodtown, or neither. Depending on whom you ask, too, Ronald Reagan was the best or worst president they can remember. Depending on whom you ask, one man’s normal is another man’s aberration.

If you ask me, I’ll tell you of a rainy day, a preempted episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and the failure of ball-bearings.

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