The Inevitable Question For My Fellow Geezers:

by Jim Furnish

Posted to Utterances on 2003-11-17 17:30:00

Someone is bound to ask it here sometime this week-
You know you remember and you know you remember very well:

“Where were you when John Kennedy was shot down in Dallas Texas, Nov. 22 1963?”

Me? This 13 year old had faked being too sick to attend 8th grade that morning, opting to lay around alternatly watching the morning gameshows like Price Is Right,etc. and watching the surf out out our living room windows. I was there alone when the first announcement broke the program. The first report at a liitle after 11a.m Pacific time was that JFK had been shot while in a parade in Dallas, nothing more nothing less.

I think they returned to the dumb show that was on. Of course it wasn’t very long until a shirtsleeved and baffled nervous Walter Cronkite was on screen trying to make sense of it all. Then off came his glasses, the tears came, the voice cracking as he stated President Kennedy had died of a gunshot wound to the head.
The heretofore unexperienced heaviness of the event stunned me immediately.
Enough to decide I better walk the mile to the little 120 student grade school I went to and be with the people I was most familiar with besides my family. I figured nobody else knew because there were no televisons at our school and I would be the one to break the news.
As I approached the schoolyard, I could see the other kids coming out. The principal had got the news ,too and shut the school down. Such a gloomy time. People just cried wherever I went. Even the smallest of children were affected. There was no laughter, no play. The adults were just jolted out of their regular routines and they all seemed to just stare at the tube with their mouths open and talking quietly amongst themselves.

That weekend was just a long gloomy downer as all the drama was rehashed and picked apart. They had a man to blame it on, and then we watched him get gunned down while he was in a police station handcuffed and surrounded by cops.
Strange days.
All life seemed to come to a standstill in our tiny town the day of the big funeral service. Such images. All black and white of stiff and somber soldiers and muffeled drum beat dirges, an old wagon carrying a flag draped coffin, a noble young widow and little kids- a beautiful spirited black riderless horse with boots turned backwards in the stirrups. Stern faced diplomats marching besides stiff upper lipped brothers.
Anyone who watched it probably can never forget it. All burned so indelibly in our memories. Those long distant black and white images from forty years ago.

Will you share with us your impressions, please?