Jerry A. Judge
	Over His Shoulder xxxxxfor Dick Gordon, Reporter & Poet, xxxxx1917 - 2002 For us, whose history only traveled back as far as The Beatles, Kennedys and early Stephen King, he brought Thelonius Monk in a smoky den; William Jennings Bryan in an open-sided Chatauqua auditorium; and Edgar Lee Masters far far from Spoon River in Manhattan’s old Chelsea Hotel. He drove us in his Bahama blue Volkswagen Bug or in his low-slung white growling TR-3 or even in his black Ford Model T. He said he loved those cars like brothers. From the aromas of his many pipes, he took us up Lake Superior in an ore freighter hearing the crackling of a radio in a high wheelbase. The Prohibition of 1924 came alive as a black car sped through a small town’s Main Street on its bootleg run to St. Louis. His pen kept all folks in their place, especially “big shots,” and himself, too. In writing about a rhododendron, he summed up his own life: xxxxxxxxxxxxxHere a few days; then gone, but xxxxxxxxxxxxxMission accomplished xxxxxxxxxxxxxExquisitely.