Remembering Al Gore

It is the year 2079

Do you remember where you were when you heard the news that Al Gore had died? I do.

It doesn't seem possible that it was 50 years ago-2029. I was driving down a lone desert highway in Nevada. It was mid-December and freezing ass cold in the high desert. My radio wasn't working because I was out of range of any frequencies. At  3:30, I stopped at an abandoned outhouse to take a dump, not an easy task in that cold and something you don't forget. Continuing on, and eventually entering Tonopah I saw the familiar old marker that had stood there on the main drag  for decades....

As I switched on my radio, I noticed that on every station, normal programming was suspended. The only thing playing on all the channels was funeral dirge music. I glanced to the side of the road and noticed an old hippie woman standing on the corner dabbing away tears with a handkerchief. In front of the post office, the flag was being lowered to half staff. Alarmed, I pulled over and asked a pedestrian who also seemed distraught, "What has happened?"

"Al Gore is dead."

I checked into a hotel and immediately turned on CNN. Announcer Wolf Blitzer seemed dazed and confused, but that was normal for Wolf.  The announcer said that Gore had died 4 hours previous. I looked at my watch and figured it must have been exactly when I was taking that dump on that lone desert highway. For the next three days, I never left the room preferring to watch the news on TV.

It seemed that Mr Gore was giving a speech on global warming in Washington when he suddenly bent over, grabbed his buttocks in pain, and collapsed. By the time anyone reached his side it was already too late.

Al Gore was no more.

The medical examiner said that it was a bizarre case of some sort of rectal inflammation that had traveled up to his head and caused a blood vessel in his temple to burst. I could only imagine the scene.



The next day, Gore's body was moved to the Lincoln Room of the White House, the house that might have been his in 2000 if there only had only been a few hundred more hanging chads, to lie in repose for 24 hours. He was then moved to the Capitol to lie in state as dozens of mourners filed by his coffin. The funeral was three days later to allow time for world leaders to travel to Washington and attend the services. Due to unseasonably cold weather and snowstorms, many were unable to make it, or so they said.

It was a beautiful service. President Hillary Clinton, just beginning her 4th term, spoke.  Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was there too.




Afterward, Mr Gore's body was taken by a horse-driven carriage around the cold, snow-covered streets of Washington where he had grown up and past the Ritz Carlton, where he had played in the hallways as a little boy. And then it was on to Union Station for the long, slow train ride home to Bullsnuts, Tennessee for the interment. As the train wound south, dozens of curious onlookers lined the tracks wondering why the train was moving so slow and why the crossing barriers had to stay down so long and delay traffic.

Finally arriving in Bullsnuts, another horse-drawn carriage carried Mr Gore past the mansion where he had lived with his ex-wife Tipper. All the lights were turned off in order to save energy as he had wished. Finally, the carriage arrived at the cemetery. After a three hour oration, Mr Gore's casket was placed into a simple resting place as the eternal flame was lit and  TV cameras recorded the historic event .

And then it was over as NBC Evening News anchor Edward R. Schultz intoned,

"Now he belongs to the ages."