Monday, November 22, 2010
REMEMBER WHEN
Today is the 47th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
It is a day of memory for many of us who were "there".
Here is a guy who was there, there.
Clint HIll, Ms. Kennedy's Secret Service man.
When I say we were "there", I mean that we felt the event and its aftermath very closely. Most people can still remember where they were and what they were doing at the time they heard.
I was out on an "illegal" coffee break, my friend John and I. We snuck out a lot as there was no coffee break allowed where we worked. A vote had been taken years ago to exchange the breaks for an early out. No one asked me, so I took my break and went home later. Well, maybe not that later. A small rebellion against the biggest company that I ever worked in.
We were coming up 15th Street in Philadelphia and there was a bar open already just next to the entrance to our building. This seriously irked the Presbyterian owners of the Company. After all, they were the ones who didn't have coffee breaks. At least we weren't in the bar.
But the bar had a big window and a television and people were going nuts. Crying. Wringing their hands and coming out into the street. This is how we heard the news.
At that point it was only that he had been shot and taken to the hospital.
That is it. Freeze frame.
There are other memories of the weekend. Jack Ruby killing Oswald on live television. That happened the morning we had to take our son to the hospital with lower body pain which turned out to be a hernia.
Quite a time.
Nothing else stands out from it, not even the attempt on Reagan.
Everyone thought that it was the end of an era. A very short era.
And it was.
Labels: history, life, nostalgia
