All the discussion of late around the Confederate flag brought the band Lynyrd Skynyrd to mind, since that flag is part of the band’s logo.
(I didn’t use that version here on The Sticky Egg because, um…no.)
That led us to talking about where we were when we learned about the plane crash that killed half of the band members.
[If you’re too young to a) know who Lynyrd Skynyrd is, or b) remember the plane crash, move along.]
I was in bed asleep. The phone rang — a corded phone, no less — and I walked down to my mother’s bedroom to answer it. A good friend of my oldest brother was on the line, and he was crying. I may have been young, but I knew a call that late at night could only mean one thing…
Someone had died.
We woke up my brother, who came to the phone in a fog of sleep. We heard him say, “Oh no. Oh God. Oh no.” Then he hung up the phone and turned to go back to bed. We stopped him, saying, “Wait — what happened?”
He said simply, “Lynyrd Skynyrd died.”
I’m not sure either my mother or I knew exactly what that meant, so we went on to bed. When we questioned my brother the next morning, he barely remembered the phone call.
But it stuck in my memory, all these years — the day Lynyrd Skynyrd died.
