We have all heard of flashbacks. I think most of them have to do with people who have experienced horrible times in war. But I think outside of combat we can experience such.

For instance, I would bet that every time someone offers Bill Clinton a cigar, he has flashbacks. I would bet that any time someone offers Monica Lewinsky a cigar, she flashes also.

And now, every time George W. Bush sees that United Parcel Service commercial on television where it says, “let Brown handle it,” I’m sure he’s going to have a flashback.

Just this morning I was on my way to work, and I had stopped at a four-way stop. A flatbed truck traveling close behind me braked and backfired. No one yelled “incoming!” No one yelled “fire in the hole!” I was just tooling along listening to Faith Hill explain her stardom and the fact that she was the same old girl who used to live in Star, Miss., — only much richer now — and suddenly, “kaboom!”

Instinctively I ducked. I couldn’t immediately recall anything that bad I had written about anybody lately. And my windshield was intact.

As I regained my composure and drove off, I was taken back to a Saturday night in the 1960s. My friend and I had strung trot lines in a creek outside of Cairo, hoping to catch some catfish. On our way home, I took a short cut, and along that narrow rutted road my car ran hot.

We dipped water from a small branch to fill the radiator. Just as we finished, there was a loud blast. Then another. On that second blast we sensed stuff falling out of the trees — leaves, small limbs and probably some squirrel nests.

We looked up the road, and in the moonlight we could make out a man walking down the middle of the road, carrying what had to be a shotgun. We did not have time for our lives to flash before our eyes. We jumped into the car and took off — toward him.

“No! No! The other way!” my friend was screaming.

Good idea. Never drive toward a man firing a shotgun. It’s unnatural.

I slammed it in reverse, and how we managed to shoot the gap backwards on that tiny wooden one-way bridge is a matter of mathematics beyond me. It would involve algebra, trigonometry and a large chalkboard. I just chalked it up to an act of God and “intelligent design.”

When we got to a place with lights, we got out to check for bullet holes and to do other things closely associated with such an event.

Of course we wanted to know what this was all about. We later discovered that someone on that road suspected that his wife might have a boyfriend and perhaps they would rendezvous down the dirt road. And apparently, that other person’s car was similar to mine in that it had four wheels, a spare tire and would stop in the dark if it ran hot.

We had to go back the next morning to fish our trot lines. And we saw, about sixty yards from where we had stopped the car, two16-guage empty shell casings in the road. We shivered.

There was some debate about whether we should have reported this to the sheriff. We figured if this fellow had really wanted to hit us, he couldn’t have missed at that range. Although I witnessed a fellow on a dove shoot once where that might not have been a good argument. Anyway, he would have posed that he thought we were burglars or that he was squirrel hunting at night, which was only a misdemeanor. We didn’t even tell the guys that we hung out with about this until several days later when someone suggested we run some trot lines in the creek. And we suggested another creek.

Not all loud noises take me back to that night. Just the ones that sneak up on me from behind. And maybe if Dick Cheney doesn’t explain the “let Brown handle it,” thing to the president, it could be that he will never be haunted by that commercial.

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. E-mail: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)