“For those old enough to remember”.
Boy, thanks a lot for making me feel “old” the rest of the day! For some of us “old enough to remember”, 1994 seems like yesterday.
I was 6 months into my first job after graduating from PSU in December 93 and moving to NoVa. And despite all I’ve been through since, yes it seems like yesterday to me too.
So many of my memories of that first job are intertwined with those of the entire OJ Simpson saga:
- Watching the infamous Bronco chase from my first little studio apartment in Fairfax, VA, and later the unfolding of the three ring circus that was his criminal trial.
- Gathering with maybe 20 coworkers who packed into one colleague’s apartment over a lunch break to eat pizza and watch the verdict being announced in October of 1995. I vividly remember the contrast of the stunned silence that fell over our group as the acquittal was announced versus an instant scream of outrage and a pounding on the wall that came from a woman in the next apartment.
- Traveling to a work conference in L.A. in the fall of 1997, and on the Sunday we arrived, renting a car with my then-wife and a coworker to drive around and see some sites. Morbid curiosity led us to Brentwood to get a look at the Simpson home. We struggled to find it at first, until we realized the street number had been intentionally painted over on the curb and the entire property had been enclosed in maybe an 8-foot-high green privacy fence to deter gawkers just like us. We parked down the block and went to take a peek through a very narrow opening in the gate… there it was, the driveway where Simpson had had his standoff and eventual surrender to the police a few years before. We’d only been standing there maybe two minutes when a black SUV pulled up, the window rolled down, and an extremely familiar voice yelled “Hey!” Not a “Hey, what are you doing” angry voice, but a “Hey there people what’s up” kind of tone — yet it chilled us nonetheless because it was unequivocally OJ Simpson’s voice. The three of us hightailed it back down the street to our rental car. Somewhere I have brief video on mini VHS tape shot on camcorder from down the block of Simpson getting out of his vehicle, playing with a dog that came running out of the opening gate, and talking to some fellow gawkers who had NOT scattered the way we had. It was a truly surreal moment.
nypost.com
