TomPierron.Com

Okay, this is the day after the 25th anniversary.
Being in the car for a few hours I heard a lot of Beatle’s
music. But then there was programming that really
started getting to me.
I remember sitting in class in
7th grade crying at my desk because Paul McCartney
was dead. I was angry he didn’t let us know – didn’t he know
what we were going through? Years later we find out it was
a publicity stunt because they thought they would need something
like that.
I really didn’t know anyone that died for most of my life.
When my younger brother died in 1997 – for a year it was odd looking
down the stairs at the front door and thinking that at any minute
it’s going to open and he’s going to come walking through.

On a Tuesday morning in 1980, I was getting ready to take
my driver’s test. I was nervous. It had taken me all three tries
just to pass the test initially when I was 16. (my dad put the
importance of it all in me: “It’s 2,000 pounds of steel that can
kill somebody; it’s like giving you a gun!”).
This was a few years later, my points had run up and my license
had expired and, anyway, I had to retake the test – my dad was
taking me this morning. My ex-girlfriend called to tell that John
had been shot and killed the night before. I don’t remember much,
but I DO remember this: I went through the driving test with no
problem whatsoever because I was numb. Nothing mattered.
I passed the test.
I remember a brother from the church I used to be in – for some
reason we were talking, and he said, “The devil wants to kill all
forms of hope.” Something like that. Actually, that was pretty
remarkable – they were fundamentalists who, I wouldn’t have been
surprised if they took on an attitude like they say Chapman’s
attitude had been at one point when burning Beatle record’s down
south – like, “What would it be like for Lennon if he were dead?”
Something like that.

I have since been by the Dakota and walked by Strawberry Fields.
Listening to various people talk about Lennon in New York, it’s
tough. Then at home, there was Larry Kane talking at length.
The reluctant journalist who got the inside United States take no
one else got and now would die for. Last night they showed what’s
on the DVD that comes with Larry’s book – John came down to
Philly and did the weather on channel 6’s News one night.
John came down for three days for a benefit for a cause that he
knew Larry’s mother had died of that disease.
You get the idea. Why is it the good people have to die?
I think John was more popular than Jesus Christ.