PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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Trevor shivered in the cold wind as he made his way up W 45th street toward Times Square.

It had worked. Bobby Kennedy had originally supported his brother’s plan to bomb the Cuban missile sites. Fortunately, Trevor Ross was a historian and a time traveler. He blackmailed Bobby the same way Hoover had. Then something went wrong.

Yes, Kennedy had his secret meetings with the Soviet ambassador. However, what happened between them not only averted 1962’s Cuban missile crisis, but had changed everything when Trevor returned to 1980. How had New York City become the capitol of a Communist America?

It’s Wednesday and once again time to participate in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ 29 December 2023 (the last one of the year) edition of Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image at the top as the inspiration for crafting a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.

The photo reminded me of retrofuturism from the 1960s; the imagery of how people in the 1960s saw the future. The example that most readily comes to mind is the 1966 film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The visuals are as compelling as they are cold.

With New Year’s Eve rapidly approaching and the title of Rochelle’s photo being “the ball,” I thought of the most famous “ball drop” of New Year’s held in New York’s Times Square every December 31st.

In October 1962, I was an eight-year-old boy in the hospital having my tonsils taken out. My Mom was with me but Dad wasn’t. I found out decades later that as an Air Force sergeant, he was manning a missile silo waiting for President Kennedy to give the order to launch our nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

If you are unfamiliar with the Cuban Missile Crisis the link I just provided should help.

Yes, President John F. Kennedy did have a plan to bomb the Cuban missile sites (see item 2), but that didn’t happen either.

The President’s younger brother Robert F. Kennedy was just 36 years old when, as Attorney General, he secretly met with Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin to avert nuclear war.

It’s also true that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover blackmailed the Kennedys with details of “the family’s involvement in kinky sex romps, murder, bribery, and treason.” In fact, immediately after Hoover’s death on May 2, 1972, those files mysteriously vanished and were believed to have been used against Senator Ted Kennedy until he died in 2009.

Wow.

Oh, the story’s title is taken from Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “The Times They Are A-Changin’”

Anyway, that’s the direction Rochelle’s photo took me in. To read other stories based on the prompt, visit inlinkz.

My next blog post will be my “year in review” outlining my publications in 2023. Better than last year but not as good as the year before that. Stay tuned.