Musings and History

Quote of the day:
“The silence was absolute alI I heard was the voice of the mountain...it was like hearing the voice of God.”
            Gerald Tompkins when speaking of reaching pinnacle of Mount Everest.

Down in the area of Gulf Shores, Alabama there was a murder trial under way. The prosecution had charged ex-county commissioner Shephen Nodine with the murder of his mistress 45 year old Angel Downs. Angel’s corpse was found in the driveway of her Gulf Shores condo with one bullet hole in her head. Her pistol was found nearby with no one’s fingerprints on the weapon but hers. About 6 years earlier Angel and Stephen met at the infamous Flora-Bama Lounge. Let me tell y’all, I have been all over the world and Angel was in the top five best looking women I have ever seen in person top to bottom, she had everything. Angel and Stephen would come over to Pensacola Beach (about 25 miles) on occasion and party. They would stop in my favorite watering hole from time to time and conversations stopped when she walked in the door. Their relationship was a rocky one, however. They squabbled frequently. Regardless of that Stephen spent many a night in her condo in spite of he being married and having a passel of kids. At one time he was considered a rising star in Alabama politics, not anymore. Angel had said more than once that she wished Stephen would divorce his wife and marry her so they could spend the rest of their days together but she eventually realized it was not going to happen. She broke up with Stephen and dated at least two other men. Just before she was found dead, Stephen had stormed into the Flora-Bama screaming “Where is the whore!” This blow up was witnessed by at least 100 people. Angel was not there but was found dead a little while later. What really got Stephen’s goat was a few nights before he walked in on Angel in bed with another man. The man was a friend that had known Angel for 30 years and she had asked him to stay with her that night because her front door lock was broken and she was afraid. That is what the man testified to. He said that Nodine walked into the bedroom unannounced and threw a garage door opener at her and left in a huff. The prosecution is claiming that Stephen killed Angel in a jealous rage. Stephen’s defense is that Angel committed suicide because her income had been cut in half in the last few years because of the economy and she could not pay her bills. The impression I got is that Stephen was a man of power in that area of the country and was not used to not getting his way and being rejected. He was acquitted.

                         This Date in History   December 17

1777 Earlier in October British General John Burgoyne had his butt handed to him by Patriot General Horatio Gates and the Continental army at the Battle of Saratoga, New York. The news of that victory reached France and our minister to France, Benjamin Franklin, on December 24. Franklin had been leaning on France to recognize the United Sates as an independent nation. The king of France, Louis XVI had been reluctant to openly recognize the United States until they had proven they were capable of holding their own against the mightiest army in the world, that being the British army and the victory at Saratoga demonstrated that. France had secretly been sending supplies to the United States for years. But on this date, Ben Franklin prevailed and France officially recognized the United States as a free and independent nation. This, of course meant war with England. France had been smarting about the loss of the North American continent to the British during the Seven Years War and the French and Indian War and they saw this as a way of sticking it to the British in revenge. Even though there was five more years of bloody conflict in our future, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

1905 On this momentous day two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio name Wilbur and Orville Wright got a contraption that they had created to fly on under its own power for the first time in the history on the dunes of Kitty Hawk, NC. This airplane flew for 12 seconds for a distance of 120 feet which is a little short of the wingspan of a Boeing 747. Just think on it folks, just 11 years later World War I fighter planes were flying 100 MPH for over an hour. There is no need for me to go into how far we have come in the aviation field since then. In the span of 100 years we have seen men on the moon and have erected a manned space station. It boggles mind.

1996 “Operation Iceman” comes to an end with the arrest of Richard Kuklinski in a truck stop on the New Jersey turnpike. A multiple killer, Kuklinski was brought down by an undercover agent named Dominick Pulitrone. It was believed that Kuklinski killed his business partner in 1980 with a shot to the head and stuffed him into a 55 gallon barrel and then froze it. He disposed of the body in 1983. He formed another partnership with two other men named George Mallibrand and Louis Matheny. They were in an illegal business and Kuklinski got nervous and decide to kill them both. He shot Matheny and poisoned Mallibrand with cyanide. The undercover agent had made friends with Kuklinski and asked Kuklinski the best way to kill someone and Kuklinski answered with cyanide. He is right. The physical evidence disappears almost immediately. It can kill with ingestion and even a spray in the face. From this the ATF was able to amass enough evidence to put Kuklinski away for life without parole.

Birth and deaths:

1796 Canadian writer Thomas Halliburton is born, he said “Nicknames stick to people, the more ridiculous, the more adhesive.” I have a friend and mentor nicknamed “Pathwalker” or “PW”. He got that name because he was in a local tavern within sight of his house and when he decided to leave he thought it would be prudent to walk home because he did not want a DUI. He was walking toward his house through a park with defined paths when he was stopped by the cops. They locked him up for public drunkenness...thus “Pathwalker”.

                          Thanks for listening    I can hardly wait until tomorrow