Dream Journal 2016-01-10: When Historical Assassinations Meet Hard Rock
Now I know what happens when you listen to murder mystery podcasts and songs by Clutch before bed: you end up with a weird amalgamation of the two that is surprisingly coherent and historically accurate. This entry is also relatively unique in that real-life historical details will probably be more prevalent than the dreamy bits.
As for the stuff I was listening to before bedtime, I recently subscribed to the Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories podcast to shake up my listening a bit during a long-haul road trip. They feature different unsolved murders every week or two, and although the dramatic reenactments are really cheesy, the show has grown on me a bit. Last night I was listening to the story of William Goebel, who was the only US governor to ever be assassinated while in office. True to the name of the podcast, the exact identity of the murderer remains unknown.
Goebel had a very abrasive personality and made many political enemies, especially in the railroad industry. One of his enemies was a guy named John Sanford, and Sanford ran a bank in Covington, Kentucky. Goebel had recently written an insulting piece about Sanford in a local paper that repeatedly called him “Gonorrhea John.”
The article caused several of the big accounts at Sanford’s bank to relocate their massive sacks of money somewhere else. Sanford didn’t take kindly to having considerably less money in his institution, so he decided to wait around outside until Goebel showed up and accost him like a common heathen. But this is during a time in which everyone is packing pistols in case you need to fight a duel on your way to the market. No big deal, right?
This is the part of the podcast/historical events that showed up in my dream. Goebel had a check he intended to cash at another (non-Sanford) bank. Sanford intercepts him, because he’s got nothing better to do than loiter around and incite violence. Words are exchanged, specifically ones very similar to “Gonorrhea John.”
Pistols are gripped in the pockets of both men. They’re trying to play it cool, but one of them gets an itchy trigger finger and a gunshot goes off. Nobody knows who shot first, but it ended with Sanford keeling over dead on Goebel’s shoe.
The only non-historically accurate detail in the dream is that the Clutch song “A Quick Death In Texas” (featured at the top of this post as the header image) was playing as the duel went down. My subconscious kept trying to yell “Kentucky!” every time the song said “Texas,” since this whole exchange happened in the state of Kentucky.
But honestly, having a Clutch song play during a duel to the death makes the whole thing seem way more badass. Even if it wasn’t historically accurate.
I’d like to leave you now with a cool historical tidbit: dueling was so common in Kentucky that there was (and still is) a provision in the oath of office that says you can’t participate in duels. Win or lose, you can’t hold office if you dueled with someone. Sorry, Yu-Gi-Oh fans.
