Mourning becomes eclectic

Quite a weekend for the old Grim Reaper, who came to take Malcolm Young from AC/DC, Country Music Hall-of-Famer Mel Tillis, and Bobby Baker, the Washington DC insider who became a millionaire on a salary of $20,000.  

Baker, who was a protégé of Senator Lyndon Johnson, came to be known as "Little Lyndon" after rising from the position of Senate page to being elected secretary of the Senate majority in the 1950s. Toward the end of that decade he came up with enough money to buy some land "way up the road" from what was then the built-up part of Ocean City, Maryland. He built the Carousel Hotel on that land, and people used to get in their cars just to drive out and see what he put up in what was then the middle of nowhere and is now such a congested area that the Carousel is dwarfed by taller condominium buildings and stores selling t-shirts, towels and suntan products.

Anyway, Baker died at 86, Malcolm Young was 64 and Mel Tillis, who learned to turn his speech impediment into a comic prop, was 85 when he passed. 

But what was weird about the weekend was that besides these actual passings, people were reporting that Charles Manson had died (he eventually did, to no one's sorrow) and that the same fate had befallen one-time teen idol David Cassidy, who is still with us as of this writing.

Not everyone realizes that there are people on reputable newspaper and broadcast journalism staffs, and also FOX news, whose work consists of preparing and keeping updated obituaries of the famous and infamous.  That's why, when someone famous is called home suddenly, there is a ready-to-go look back at their life on the news that night. 

So when the admirable Mr Cassidy and the damnable Mr Manson took sick late last week, the news got their stories ready, and I suppose someone hit the "send" button a bit early.

If you have nothing better to do when someone you've heard of makes the news for shuffling off this earthly coil, quickly look them up on Wikipedia. You can bet that someone beat feet to that online World Book and changed the opening line from "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt is an American (whatever)" to "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt WAS an American (whatever)" within three minutes of the news breaking.

I'm sure the first thing we learn when we Cross That Bridge is that there is no use hurrying, and there never was.  

Happy Tuesday! Stay well.