Hlas: Glen Campbell, North Korea, past, present

Tuesday was sure newsy. President Trump tossed verbal 'fire and fury' North Korea's way. Glen Campbell died.

And it took me back …

I was a preschooler during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, so I won't pretend to have any knowledge of what kind of worry and fear gripped the country at that time. I remember the day President Kennedy was killed in 1963 and we were sent home from kindergarten.

I also recall the first appearance of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan's television show three months later, a show we always had on in our house on Sunday nights. I didn't like them. Too loud, too strange. A hard day's night. What does that mean?

The Sixties were interesting, to say the least, and television made the time all the more interesting when you lived in Iowa.

I also remember the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS, which ran from January 1967 to April 1969. It was more than a little anarchy and a considerable amount of social protest wrapped in laughs, with a lot of great music of the era.

Here are some of the groups that appeared on the show: The Who, the Doors, Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, the Temptations, the Bee Gees, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield.

And Glen Campbell was on six times.

He was big then, really big. He broke through with 'Gentle On My Mind' and 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix' in 1967. 'Wichita Lineman' came in 1968, 'Galveston' the year after that.

I started getting into music in 1968 or so. I was too young for Beatlemania, so I started with 'Abbey Road' and worked my way backward over the years. 'A Hard Day's Night' is one of my favorites.

So like millions of other kids, the first music I liked was rock. With exceptions. I was a grade-schooler who didn't have any idea what 'Wichita Lineman' was about, but I liked Campbell's voice and guitar-playing. For all I know, he may have been the only musician my dad and I both liked.

This story about 'Wichita Lineman' is a good one.

When 'Rhinestone Cowboy' became a huge hit for Campbell in 1975, it kind of bugged me because people started calling him the Rhinestone Cowboy. It wasn't a bad song, but I wanted him to be known for his earlier stuff, great records.

The consensus seems to be that Campbell was a legend, icon, and major talent. I just know his singing and playing pleased a lot of people, and that's a pretty good obituary in itself.

Meanwhile, the saber-rattling

between heads of state of the U.S. and North Korea Tuesday took me back to another place. Namely, South Korea.

In 1986, the Iowa men's basketball team had a two-week, eight-game tour of Asia, the same kind of junket the current Hawkeyes are currently on in Europe. Tom Davis' first Iowa team spent a week in Seoul, and a week in China.

The Gazette, thanks to the pushing of then-sports editor Mark Dukes, sent me with the traveling party of 40 or so, and it was quite the professional and personal experience.

It was half a lifetime ago, but I remember Seoul vividly. I didn't know what to expect before getting there, but I liked it immediately. It was modern and clean. The people were welcoming, and interesting.

But we weren't in America. You don't have civil defense drills to clear the streets in America.

There was a park across the street from our hotel. Lots and lots of adults and kids played badminton there. I walked over to watch one afternoon. Suddenly, a siren wailed. And I witnessed one of the spookiest, most-incredible things I've ever seen.

A busy street clogged with tuna can-sized cars emptied. All the people knew exactly where they were supposed to go, and they disappeared. I scurried back to my hotel, not knowing what was up. There was no sense of panic from anyone, so I wasn't frightened. But it sure felt weird.

Fifteen minutes later the drill was done, and the badminton games resumed shortly thereafter. This story illustrates what I'm talking about.

On a day the Hawkeyes didn't have a game, a tour was arranged for them to visit the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the buffer zone on the North Korea/South Korea border that's just 35 miles from Seoul.

Our bus was about to leave, and few Iowa players were on it. Most chose to stay back at our hotel for the day.

'Those fools!' then-Hawkeye senior Brad Lohaus said in disgust as we headed north. He was right.

It didn't take long to know you were going to a very different place. Tanks rumbled past us on the other side of the road.

We were taken to the meeting-point for the two nations within the DMZ, the Joint Security Area. There was a table in a conference room. Half the table was in South Korea, half in North Korea.

This video sets that scene.

That trip was 31 years ago. If anything has changed, it's that things are tenser between the two nations than ever, and things certainly are tenser between the U.S. and North Korea than ever. Fire and fury. Let's hope saber-rattling is all it turns out to be.

On Tuesday, the sound I wanted to hear was Glen Campbell's guitar solo in the last part of 'Wichita Lineman.' If only everything were that beautiful.