With the news of the passing of former president Gerald Ford — in office for 896 days from 8.9.74 to 1.20.77 — my mind rewound the following clips/impressions: (a) Chevy Chase‘s falling-down routines on Saturday Night Live, (b) the dutiful apparatchik who pardoned Richard Nixon, (c) the way he looked totally wrecked and red-eyed the morning he conceded the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter; (d) Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme‘s apparent intent to shoot Ford in front of San Francisco’s Fairmount Hotel in ’75, (e) that N.Y. Daily News headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead“, (f) Saying “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” during a ’76 election debate with Carter; (g) his fascinating defense of the Warren Commission’s “magic bullet” theory and particularly his explanation that JFK fell back and to the left after being shot the second time because of “a neuromuscular reaction“; and (h) saying “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.” Correction: It was Sara Jane Moore who tried shoot Ford (on 9.22.75) outside the St. Francis (not the Fairmount) hotel in San Francisco; “Squeaky” tried to shoot Ford in Sacramento 17 days earlier, on 9.5.75.