(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Memories Of This Auspicious Day [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-22 Today is the 60th anniversary of the JFK assassination. I’m still waiting to find out what really happened; even as a child, I knew something was a little off about the whole sad affair. It was a sunny, crispy-cold day, that time of year when the Halloween candy was gone, but it was too early to put up Christmas lights and stuff. You could tell by the temperature that we were in for serious winter weather, the kind that brought blinding white mornings and snow days that were spent flying down a hill in the park on the family toboggan. I walked home from school for lunch that day with my 2 brothers. Dad was making us a hot lunch, probably hot dogs or grilled cheese with canned tomato soup. We always went home for a hot meal on dad’s day off; now that my younger brother was in first grade, mom went back to work in the admissions office at Alverno College. Except for that one day a week, all three of us carried a little metal lunch box with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (that’s what mom made for me, I don’t know what my brothers got), some carrot sticks, a thermos of cold milk and a little plastic baggie with delicious homemade cookies. We were standing at the crosswalk on the corner of Oklahoma Ave. and 41st, with full and happy tummies, when the crossing guard came over to me and said “The president’s been shot” in a voice that was deliberately quiet so my younger brother wouldn’t hear. It was surreal; this pretty, sunny afternoon in late fall, feeling shreds of my childhood innocence start to peel away. We got let out of school early that day, I think I was home by 1:30 pm. Never before and never since has there been such a quiet 3rd grade classroom in Blessed Sacrament School. A pair of nuns rolled a black & white TV in on one of those 60’s AV carts, and a room full of eight-year-olds watched as Walter Cronkite tried not to lose his composure as the words he had to read got more horrific. The country’s first Catholic president passed before the end of the day. 90% of my south side neighborhood was Catholic. But the image that has stayed with me all these years, sharper than little John-John saluting his father’s casket as it rolled by on a horse-drawn carriage, was seeing sheriff’s deputies in cowboy hats walking Lee Harvey Oswald down a hallway to his death. The cowboy cops held each arm, occasionally shaking him roughly to make it look like he was resisting, pushing him front and center like a target. Self-righteous patriot Jack Ruby stepping out of the crowd to shoot Oswald in the stomach. Oswald screaming and collapsing in pain. Even an 8-year-old girl in Milwaukee knew something was wrong with that picture. I’m sure my parents would have rushed to shut the TV off, but the network had cut into whatever Sunday morning program I was watching with a live broadcast, and my parents were in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday paper. I wonder what great secret will blow out like decades-old dust the day all those records, letters, taped phone conversations etc., are finally released; everything some three-letter government agency buried 60 years ago, thinking none of it would ever see the light. I’m beginning to think it never will. If you like my work you can support me at Paypal dot com, Pamela Becker, wingednag at gmail dot com You can support our art at: ko-fi.com/pambecker84288 [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/22/2207568/-Some-Thoughts-and-Memories-On-This-Auspicious-Day?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/