Its never been the same. I was a small child doing my time in the Catholic school. Somewhere around 1 pm Miss Wegner (yes I remember her name so she must have made an impression on me) left the 2nd grade classroom. When she returned a few moments later she was fighting back tears. She announced that the President had been shot and that we could go home. So we gathered up out stuff, coats and the like and went home. I walked the half mile or so home on a busy street because that's how it worked back then only to walk into the house and see my Mom and little brother watching TV and Mom was sniffling a lot. What the heck is going on here? It was Friday ,Mom, and we got out of school early!
My memories of that time are sketchy and some may even be false. But that event was the first event I actually have a recollection of. I don't remember the 1962 missile crisis at all. In fact really all I can barely recall of my toddler years are falling in a bucket of water "helping" Dad wash the car and my Mom and Dad driving up Pine Street to the hospital cuz my brother was dying to get out of her womb and start raising hell. Other than that before 11/22/63 I am pretty cloudy.
Mom cried a lot that weekend. It was the first time I'd ever seen that. The funeral I sort of recall and more tears. Certain events define your life whether it be music or sports or movies or fuckin assassinations. The death of JFK started me onto paying attention to the world. Its never stopped.
When I was in the Dallas area for a while in the summer of 1973, while not watching the Watergate hearings, I would borrow my Aunt Doris's car, and drive to Dealey Plaza and just walk around. This happened literally every other day. It was fascinating to me. Yeah I know I was/am a real history geek.
Hope died that day in my opinion. Hope causes certain people to freak out. JFK led to Nixon. Obama led to Trump. America doesn't like hope. It likes status quo. America really does have a lot of authoritarianism in it's DNA and always has. Probably always will.
Next year will be 60 years since the defining moment of my generation. I will be there again hopefully. As we were for 50 years in 2012.
PS--I still remember my Mom saying she voted for Nixon. I remember my Dad and his straw hat with JFK's face glued to the top. I wish I still had it. Mom eventually became more "radical" than Dad and I wish I could talk to both of them about that day in 1963. I guess my lesson here is this. Talk to your parents about stuff like this because some day you wont be able to.
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I was 13 and remember it all. Saw live, Ruby shoot Oswald. Called bullshit on the Warren Commission Report and the most amazing and dreadful Zapruder Film proved I was correct. Never quite been the same since.
As the aforementioned little brother, I remember nothing. I was barely 4. I believe as Mom told me she had been playing Canasta at some lady’s house. Dad called to announce the sad news as his office had the wire services. The ladies stopped whatever Canasta is and went home. Dad had the news as early as any news organization did so mom drove home in the last few seconds of that era. Mom told the babysitter when she picked me up on her way home. We were so wonderfully insulated by the lack of today’s technolology.
Dad also called and woke us up during the first days of summer vacation in June ‘68 when RFK was killed. That I do recall that and the confusion I felt. The Kennedys felt like beloved national heroes at home but I heard a neighboring dad and the mom express their happiness that we’d be spared another Kennedy presidency.
That walk home was along a busy street that had been a 2 lane country road. It still had no sidewalks and just a dirt ditch along our side of the road for several blocks. I liked the walk on most days. Rainy or worse snowy days was gauntlet of swerving cars, pot holes full of water or slush. Sometimes a car would hit the pothole and throw up a wave of filthy water that might be masking a frisbee of death if a hubcap got dislodged. We were okay though. When we got home, mom and her car were both dry if we needed medical attention.
1968 you woke me up to tell me about Kennedy but you did not specify it was RFK. You said "Senator Kennedy" well there were two....I've never forgotten that so I was confused also...That one I remember clearly and it still brings tears to my eyes to hear the chaos of that night...Gee I wonder who those neighbors were....
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