Alternate Destinies - 1961 (PJW)

A look at the alternate destinies of several people on January 21, 1961.

January 21, 1961
In Pennsylvania, Representative FRANK CARLUCCI writes a letter to a good friend. Carlucci is part of a wider generation of new politicians who ran for office because they believed only they could restore law and order to the United States. All of them are patriotic and a bit egotistical...but none more than JIM JONES, who has recently won an election for alderman for one of Philadelphia's wards.

Carlucci's letter is destined for DONALD RUMSFELD, who is currently working in a banking firm. It's not bad work, but the chaos in America and abroad is inspiring Rummy to work for something greater in his country, and Carlucci's letter might just inspire him to run for office in 1962...

Private JOHN LENNON sits grumpily in a bunker on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. The British occupation of Iraq had lasted longer than Her Majesty's government had intended; it was hoped that troops could be withdrawn by the end of 1958, but Lennon was still there, the growing threat of ABDUL SALAM ARIF's rebels too serious to ignore. The insurgency had only seemed to grown in size during Lennon's tour of duty.

A faint melody plays in his head; he misses music and wonders how his band back home is doing. To make up for this hole in his life, the private searched for hobbies; he found some when a sympathetic officer handed him a dusty old book. The Communist Manifesto had become increasingly popular with the officers of the occupying forces; the Americans the least and the British only slightly more, but the French officers in the Congo were avid readers, and Belgians practically worshiped the man. Made Lennon think about what would happen when those officers returned home...if they returned home.

While Lennon read a book on Marx, the quartet practiced in the park. GEORGE HARRISON and PAUL MCCARTNEY miss their friend in Iraq, and write to him often. But they've had to make due, and picked up DAVE SANFORD from the Dave Clark Quintet and DICK DALE, a freelancing immigrant from the United States. Dale lived in Quincy, Massachusetts, before immigrating in 1959 due to the increasingly oppressive measures of the Wayne administration.