CSI unit, please investigate the Kent State University Shootings/ draft 1 /part 2

CSI unit, please investigate the Kent State University Shootings/ draft 1 /part 2

fiction
edward w pritchard

April 30th 1970 Thursday 8PM[?]. President Nixon announces that the US government will not contract the Vietnam War as promised but in fact it is being expanded into Cambodia.

May 1st, 1970 Friday night 10PM. This writer and his friend drive the old blue convertible to Richfield, Ohio to pick up friend's father a truck driver driving into the company terminal during the teamsters strike. We were stopped not too politely at the gates of the trucking company by the Ohio National guard who were on duty controlling civil order at the teamsters strike. Both teenage boys respectfully and diffidently speak with the Guards lieutenant. It was our first confrontation with military authority and we were able to successfully complete our mission of picking up his Father without further incident.

May4 this writer hears of the shootings at Kent State and wonders what roll that Lieutenant played in the violence. He didn't seem like he could shoot unarmed young people.

Later that week in May 1970 This writer, then High School newspaper editor writes an editorial in school paper siding with students.

May 2013 this writer revisits the Kent State shootings intellectually as he often does in May of each year from time to time and finds some of his opinions may have changed but still is horror struck by unarmed students being shot in America.
end part 2

See story to be written soon: Allsion Krause, a Case of Arrested Development [ Allison, a KSU student, was a 19 year old shooting victim]

posted previously

when soldiers come

fiction
edward w pritchard

sky so low
spirits so high
then soldiers come
men bleed, women cry
children hide
soldiers stay
men cry, women bleed
children stare
soldiers here
sky high, wind fierce, spirits low