40 years ago today: where were you when Tricky Dick Nixon resigned?
You know those events where people always remember where they were? Like Kennedy’s assassination. The Challenger disaster. 9/11.
Well, 40 years ago today was another big one: on August 9, 1974 Richard Nixon became the first American president to resign from office, finally bowing to pressure in the wake of the Watergate scandal. And yes, I remember where I was: Cattail Creek, near Burnsville, NC. My grandparents and I were vacationing there with my aunt, uncle and cousins. I was unusually politically aware for a 13 year-old and was riveted to the old black and white TV in the cabin as the unprecedented drama unfolded. The cabin and the land the place stood on, then called Satellite Mountain, were owned by my grandparents’ friend, Percy Hedgecock. He was the co-founder of Satellite Beach, FL, where, coincidentally, my cousins lived.
Amazing the things we remember, huh?
Let’s see, what else? The mountains were beautiful. The water was freezing.
Where were you?
lullaby pit 
Herr Smith: Yes, I do remember. A treasure that will forever walk in the hallowed chambers of my mind just like our beloved president once strolled the empty hallways speaking to the portraits of our deceased presidential heroes. .Indeed, a memory that seven subsequent sessions of electric-shock therapy sessions cannot erase and is only eclipsed by the recollection of my first terrifying encounter with a circus clown and the most mentally cataclysmic of all, the pained, yet proud, look on Julia and David Eisenhower s (my, what a fine lad) when Herr Nixon’ defiantly waved goodbye from the steps of air force one.. We have come a long way in our nation’s rise to glorious exceptional ism and the development of new, more powerful anti-depressants but our reverence for this holy man and his legend grows with every passing day, never to be forgotten with the only regret that we will no longer have him to kick around. Wishing you the best in your practice of proper mental hygiene and a gluten-free America.
I was standing atop Mount Athabasca, the second-highest peak in Canada. Two Canadians who’d climbed it via a different route told me. I’d always thought I’d need to be high to cope with Nixon’s presidency. Apparently I succeeded.
Little did you know that he was going to be the last liberal president of our lifetimes.
Yes, little did we know.
I was riding a motorcycle in west africa. I pulled up to a police checkpoint in bunumbu and the police came pouring out of the station, yelling and waving guns. a second later everyone at the junction was dancing and laughing. i assumed it was a coup, but it was nixns resignation. he was not beloved.
but perhaps should have been. he ended wars. started epa. etc, etc.
I was probably sitting in a mud puddle at a playground.
>Little did you know that he was going to be the last liberal president of our lifetimes.
lol!