One beautiful Fall night in 1980, I took an old friend to a lovely Stone Mountain home to hear Larry McDonald deliver his close to 2 hour program on what many have come to believe is an ongoing “conspiracy” to alter life in America and the “Free World” to something other than that intended by many of our Founding Fathers.
There were about 50 of us in the spacious and comfortable basement recreation room. Larry began his customary comprehensive and concise recap of a very complicated and convoluted topic shortly before 7:30. He wrapped up for Q&A around 9:15. Although I had wanted to remain and chat with Larry and the others, Al, who sat virtually motionless next to me for the entire presentation, insisted we leave immediately. Since he was my guest and I drove, we left.
We’d been in the car for 3 or 4 minutes and Al had still not spoken but stared straight ahead. I glanced over each time we passed a street light and THOUGHT I saw him begin to physically shake and clutch the door handle. Sensing that there might be something wrong, I asked him “Al, are you alright?”
After a slight hesitation, a low, quivering voice I’d never before heard issued from this normally jolly friend of over a decade:
“Dick, don’t EVER invite me to anything like that again!” His response to my “Why?” was “I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT.”
Al and I remained friends. He resumed his uncomplicated life of running his printing business, spending week ends at his lake house on his pontoon boat and enjoying increased quantities of adult libations, for which increase I earnestly hoped Larry and I weren’t responsible.
I continued to slug it out with the beast.
You see, I had CHILDREN – and now grandchildren -- who will almost certainly NOT live in the America I knew growing up.