“Thank God Nobody Wanted To Kill Me Today” John F. Kennedy 11/18/63
This past Wednesday, November 23rd, I was shocked that I had let a deeply, personal milestone quietly slip right by, without even a passing thought. There were some stories about the 22nd being the 59th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but not all that much. I was kind of surprised I blew it and don’t recall ever doing it before.
No, I was not in Dallas, eyes trained on the Book Depository. No matter what may ever be said, directly experiencing history, beats the shit out of reading about it. Well, the fact that I was a sophomore in Queens College in NYC at the time, gives me some credence. I was 18 years old, crushed and living through it.
It was the week of midterms and don’t even think I’m about to tell you what the course was and how many credits it was worth. I don’t recall if we had already started the exam, but I am pretty sure not. Once we were all in place, we were told to go home, because President Kennedy had been shot.
Going to a City College, meant you lived at home. We didn’t have the outrageous amount of money for tuition and all the trimmings for an out of town school, especially for average grades. The idea of independence and lack of accountability was very attractive, no matter how distant, especially when stuck living at home
So, I immediately went there, you know where. My mother, brother and I were glued to the box, through JFK, Cronkite, Oswald, Ruby, Jackie and John John. There are certain events that totally transcend the mundane, tent poles in our memories. We often remember where we were and what we were doing. The world stopped, initially with the murder and funeral of the president, followed by the apprehension of his assassin and then his televised killing. It was a real, live Twilight Zone.
Around that time, a lot of us young people were starting to feel hopeful about the future. Something was coming, but we weren’t quite sure what it was. However, it was far from a perfect time. We had the schizoid Bay of Pigs Invasion in ’61. In ‘62, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a study in diplomatic brinkmanship and it got everyone’s attention. Fear has a way of giving governments a free pass to excess, and, too often, blind loyalty.
Now that I think of it, how come sixty years ago, we had the technology to determine if missiles were in Cuba? Then, so many years later, we had definitive pictures of Iraq’s weapon of mass destruction that were ultimately nowhere to be found. Our technology has improved and so has our ability to abuse it.
Oh, I drifted off topic yet again, sorry.
The Berlin Wall was built in ’61. Tensions were rising between the Soviet Union and the US. Communism was like some kind of disease you could catch if you weren’t careful. The Vietnam War
was a perfect example of the political paranoia of the time. Kennedy inherited this looming debacle and we just don’t know how he would have actually dealt with it. I’m gonna guess badly.
The Civil Rights Movement was definitely coming to life. The March On Washington in ‘63 drew 250,000 people, closing with Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream Today.” Honestly, I don’t know that much has changed in that regard. It is still a dream for so many.
Elvis, the Beach Boys and Ray Charles were all pushing the musical envelope in their own unique way. The music began leading the charge, even before the charge knew it existed. The Beatles and Stones had already lit the fuse in the UK, the social grenade in the room, ready to detonate on a moments notice.
In the fifties, the Beat Generation of Ginsberg and Kerouac was innocently laying the groundwork for the social revolution of the Sixties. Timothy Leary was experimenting with LSD, when it was actually legal. All the social chess pieces were being moved into place, eventually checkmating any semblance of normalcy for quite a number of years to come. We were all on the cusp of change back then. I think Kennedy’s death began the fire, burning slowly for a few years and then ultimately bursting wide open, the flames of change engulfing the world.
Mythology definitely had its place, filling in the spaces with an idealized way of imagining the world. These days, the explosion of media coverage has pretty much stripped away the dreams, brutalizing our sensibilities along the way. Now, we seem to know everything, even before it happens!
One of the things I really liked about Kennedy was how he spoke as president and how his persona was managed and presented. I know it’s been done to death, but those TV debates with Nixon, singlehandedly elevated JFK to the realm of Knighthood over the magical world of Camelot. Keep in mind, this was still in the days of b&w television, I kid you not.
Remember, there were only three television networks and public broadcasting and that was pretty much your national media coverage. J. Edgar Hoover had long been accumulating detailed, personal files on many high profile personalities, but nothing like today. At this point, I am not sure what THEY don’t know about me, but at least I don’t care. Jay Edgar knew Rock Hudson was gay even before Doris Day. In spite of that, privacy was still a possibility for most of us in the early 60’s.
In spite of all that back then, it was definitely a simpler time. One of the things I recently learned is that I can’t use my age to claim some understanding of what it is now like at any age preceding mine. So, I can talk about my being 18 so many years ago, but I have no idea about today.
I know for certain that all of today’s lessons are taught by our history. I share my stories for that reason, cause I got some mileage.