James Taranto takes a trip down memory lane at Best of the Web:
In the 1980s, when we were young, we'd occasionally go to visit our friend David Burkhart, then an undergraduate at the University of California, San Diego. Just for laughs, we'd usually pay a visit to a campus establishment called Groundworks Books, a student-run "collective" that sold communist literature.Sheesh, Enver Hoxha. Even for the Kool Aid drinkers, that must have been a sure cure for insomnia.
...
A few years later, in 1989, we were in California visiting our parents for Christmas, and we drove down to see Dave on Dec. 26. We paid our usual visit to Groundworks, and this time the cashier was a middle-aged man with a ponytail. As we browsed the shelves, looking at monographs with translated speeches of the Albanian Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha (no joke), it suddenly dawned on us that the hippie cashier had the store stereo on and was listening to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Playing loud enough that everyone in the store could hear it was a report on the previous day's big news--the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu, communist dictator of Romania.
It was a magical moment, and thinking of it never fails to warm our heart and restore our faith in human progress. Thanks for the memories, you communist scum.
