{"id":2044,"date":"2025-09-11T11:51:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/?p=2044"},"modified":"2025-09-11T11:51:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:51:38","slug":"the-day-the-music-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/11\/the-day-the-music-died\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day the Music Died"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHello, wee son. This is Mom.\u201d She sounded shaky, on the verge of crying. I bit my lip. \u201cI\u2019ve bad news, son. Roger\u2019s been in an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid the oil rig explode?\u201d My heart raced as the words came out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom said no but offered no details beyond that he was in hospital in New Orleans, and she was with him. Was she holding back? No, I decided. If it were that bad, Dad would have had me booked on a flight out first thing. I breathed a sigh of relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom reassured me again that Roger would be all right. Wait and see, she said without hinting she needed or wanted me with her. The call ended with pray for him and the usual stay strong, love you, and love you, too. When I hung up, I was numb, like everything in me had short-circuited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toad met me outside his office and asked if everything was okay. No, it wasn\u2019t, but I didn\u2019t feel like explaining. He looked dour as ever, so I didn\u2019t know what he knew. Maybe Mom had explained things, maybe not. He didn\u2019t press for more information or offer a comforting word or understanding pat on the shoulder, and I didn\u2019t expect it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~The Troubles<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up to then, November 10, 1979 had been a pretty good Saturday for fifteen-year-old me. I\u2019d bought a bottle of vodka in Enniskillen earlier and had drunk half of it in a park before returning to school in time for tea (evening meal). I was on top of the world despite being on table duty, charged with bringing food from the kitchen for the table. My nemesis kept digging me over a bet we\u2019d made about Belfast Airport being large enough to handle Lockheed Tristars. He wouldn\u2019t shut up, so when I came back with the bowl of pink strawberry mousse for the dessert, I plopped it upside down on his head, congratulated him, and tossed him a pound note. I was sure a prefect or master would yell at me or stop me leaving the dining hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After prep, my housemaster sent for me. I thought I was in for it, but Toad said I had a call from home. He was quiet, almost somber closing the door as he left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when I found out my brother had nearly died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After leaving school, Roger had been working the North Sea oil rigs until August, 1979 when he secured similar work in Louisiana. According to his boss, he worked hard and conscientiously and was doing very well. Until that fateful night when he made a mistake that would change all of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, November 3, 1979, my brother came off a 60-hour work week and made an improper left turn against a red light. He was pulled over by the police and subsequently booked into a local jail at approximately 11pm. At 3am, November 4, he was admitted to the intensive care unit of the local hospital in extremely critical condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My parents rushed from Saudi Arabia to Louisiana, arriving November 6, and found Roger dazed, confused, and unable to recall anything of the previous two weeks. He was transferred to a better equipped hospital in Houston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During subsequent phone calls between Saudi Arabia and the United States attorneys, it came out the chief of police told my dad he would pay the hospital charges and other expenses connected with The Incident and drop the charges (possession of a single Quaalude and suspicion of DUI) if my dad signed a document absolving the City of New Iberia of all liability growing out of The Incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No medical tests were run at the hospital in New Iberia, either before or after The Incident in question, and the police allegations were unsubstantiated by the attending physicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHello, wee son. This is Mom.\u201d She sounded shaky, on the verge of crying. I bit my lip. \u201cI\u2019ve bad news, son. Roger\u2019s been in an accident.\u201d \u201cDid the oil rig explode?\u201d My heart raced as the words came out. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,32,30,12,33,27,14,26],"class_list":["post-2044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-troubles","tag-boarding-school","tag-friends","tag-louisiana","tag-memoir-2","tag-mental-health","tag-northern-ireland","tag-platform","tag-the-troubles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2044"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2051,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions\/2051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}