the most insane event in history that no one bothered to tell us about
It’s a Tuesday night and I’m reading Jeffrey Toobin’s American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst. As I read it on my couch in my fluffy robe, with a mug of tea and my cat purring beside me, I realize that I probably look exactly like Patty Hearst did the night she was kidnapped. She was younger, sure, and her apartment probably costs more than mine does, but I could be sitting in the exact position she was when the doorbell rang and her life changed forever. How quickly things can change like that always frightens me. What should I be expecting right…now? Everything is too normal, when is something catastrophic going to happen? Something’s gonna happen…now! I am grateful for my therapist who helps me unravel these thoughts before I’m too scared to step on the train.
A night that began so normal for Patty Hearst quickly became one of the most bizarre, chaotic events of the 1970’s. And yet…why am I learning about it right now?
I know, I know - I’m waiting for someone from an earlier generation to say, “Oh, well you kids have no IDEA how huge this story was!” or “I rememebr where I was when I first saw that picture of her with the gun…” or “You kids and your iPhones don’t know HISTORY anymore.” Save it, Marjorie. Some things just get lost in along the way in the shoddy rickshaw we call the American education system.
But man, this was a big one to not teach us about. The whole event reads like 1970’s fan fiction. Throw in a little Ronald Regan as California governor, some Lynette “Squeak” Fromme, the woman who attempted assassinate Gerald Ford. Even Jim Jones shows up? Talk about the schizophrenic crossroads of this mess of a decade. More than just name dropping major and minor players, the book just reveals how the incident served as both a catalyst and an example of how crime was conducted in the 1970’s; gone were the days of free love and sticking daisies in mouths of guns, it was a time of pipe bombs and some wayward organizing. The kidnapping/bank robbery/house fire/trials really was a snapshot of the times.
I keep reading and saying to myself how in the hell did this actually happen? The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was, yes, a real “organization,” not something created in some kind of macabre game of make believe children are able to conjure up. No, these are real events. I guess I keep forgetting because Toobin is doing a fantastic job at keeping a fast pace and fully rendering his “characters.” They were real people after all, but the members of the SLA could have faded into obscurity without a historian storyteller’s touch.
Even though the story in its entirety is new to me, I do know how it (tragically and yet somewhat anti-climactically) ends. But I’m reading this like a thriller and I don’t want any spoilers. I guess this means Toobin is really good at what he does. I guess this means “going back to the 1970’s” is crossed off my time machine bucket list.
