Mexico City, Mexico
November 22, 2013
Can It Be 50 years? I think this is what alarms me most about the 50th anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. I'm finding it incredulous.
I was 14 and in the 9th grade at Mount Assumption Institute in Plattsburgh. (The school has long closed its doors and now the building is an aparrment house, but in 1963 it housed around 250 boys--half of them students who lived there full time. The rest of us came from the envrions of Plattsburgh. In 1963 I was old enough to remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I imagine anyone still alive who was in 9th grade that day can tell you the same thing. I imagine, too, it is that way for those old enough to remember the events of 9/11.
It was around 2:30 in the afternoon--a Friday just as it is today--and I was in Latin class--one of my favorite all time high school classes. Brother Francis, the principal, broke over the PA system--something rarely done--to tell us the President had been shot and was dead to an assasin's bullet.
At home it was only my mother, my brother and myself. My dad was in the hospital and would be there for the entire weekend. To this day I have no idea what he was doing there. HHe was only 51. My parents were quiet about this sort of thing. Something coronary rings a bell.
At 23 Grace Avenue television was highly controlled. We were allowed one or two programs on Friday night, a partial run on Saturday and only the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday night. It had always been this way and it would not change all the way through high school. This didn't stop us, of course, from 'visting' friends whose parents were far more lenient, but by and large, we lived in an almost-TV-free-zone. (To this day I watch very little television. In fact, I only owned an ancient black and set hand-me-down, minus cable, when Steve came into my life. Over the years I don't think that my money has ever contributed to the purchase of televesion set. It's something I could live without.)
But the TV-use rule was lifted the weeklend of November 22nd-25th. It's not like there was anything on anyway except the ongoing drama occurring first in Dallas then in Washington.
That Friday was unusally warm and that afternoon it had fallen to me to burn the week's garbage. We could still do that in 1963. It would be seven more years before the Clean Air Act put an end to that. In the back yard were several old oil drums used for buring. I loved this job. I could have been a teen age arsonist, but burning the family garbage seemed to satisfy whatever weird urge that lead me to like this job.
Only my mother was working the family business--a telephone answering service--the 'board' as she called it. Perhaps there had been someone there that day, and I'm sure the night person came on duty. My father would never have lefte my mother with this type of responsibily so I can only assume that his hospitalization had been serious.
Friday's warm weather gave way to a cold rain on Saturday. We all stayed glued to TV, but that afternoon I walked down to the Sears Roebuck Catalog Store on the corner of Margaret and Cornelia Steet. The Christmas catalog had come into the house in September and I'd perused it many times looking for potential Christmas gifts. In so doing I found what I thought would be the perfect gift for my brother--a Howdy Doody ventrioquest puppet.
I must have paid fo it up front. That fall of 1963 I'd somehow gotten a job selling Sunday newspapers to people scattered over a wide range of homes in the north end of town. I only sold the Syracuse Herald Tribune, but it was enough of a job to put me in spending money for the week.
The puppet would arrive later, which is was it did, becasue I have home movies of him opening the gift then hamming it up in front of the camera. The camera--itself an ancient piece of machinery--had been given to me as a gift that Christmas or the one earlier. That camera, and the one given to me a few years earlier, started a life-long love for photography. (I still have 8mm film converted to VHS and now converted to DVD. The films--all silent--are the only animated witnesses to a time long gone.
On Sunday I did my paper route. When I'd finished, I stopped into the hospital to visit my dad. I had a few papers left over. The day had turned cold and the rains from the day before had pushed in a cold front--cold enough to skim the pond in front of Physician's hospital with a thin layer of ice. I ioved all things winter in those days and I remember sitting at the edge of the pond throwing twigs and small pebbles off the surface. I knew enough not to walk on it.
I'm not sure what was the greater priority--the ice or the visit to my dad, but I eventually got into the hospital. While walking through the halls some people noticed I had Sunday papers and asked if they were for sale. I was happy to unload them. I'd just have to carry them down the newspaper distributor's office later in the week for a refund. This just meant more money in my pocket. Not that it was a lot, but it was a whole lot more than I was making if I'd not had a job.
When I got to my dad's room I told him what had just happened he encouraged me to try it again the following Sunday.
Which is what Idid.
That week I went down to lower Bridge Street to the newspaper office. I ordered multiple copies of the New York News, the New York Times, the Albany Times Union and, of course, a few more copies of the Syracuse Herald Tribune. I told them to deliver them to the entrance to the hospital.
The following Sunday the papers were where they should be. I found a movebale cart, arranged the papers, then went door to door on each floor. No one challenged a 14 year old boy selling newpaper in the halls of the local hospital.
I'd sell the papers for more than asking price. I figured that my door to door service was sufficient reason to inflate prices.
I kept this job until I graduated from high school 3 1/2 years later and no one in those years ever challenged those inflated prices or my right to sell papers in the halls of the hospital. The money I earned allowed me to ski each Saturday with the high school ski club. It put me in new clothes purchased from Merkels and it's probably the initial source of my junk food habit.
In the hospital my dad was folloiwng the nation's drama as well, but I honestly don't remember ever having a conversation about it. All of us were horrified and Iimagine it was the same for him.
On Monday we watched the funeral. I remember thinking I would like to be there to witness this. I knew this was a deeply historical event We'd already been to Washington, DC several times before and I saw no reason why I couln't have done a trip like that on my own.
On Tuesday we were back in school. Life went on. School dances resumed. My dad came home from the hospital. It wouldn't be for another 14 years that he'd have a first real coronary issue.
I think about all these events because I'm stunned today that 50 years have elapsed since that day. Imagine measuring years by 50! Projecting 50 years ahead on that late November weekend of 1963 was unimaginable, just as it's unimaginable to project 50 years ahead to 2063.
At that time I had a clear memory of reading a bit of yellow journalist press about a man who did unnaturally in some lurid sort of way.
He was in 60's. Old, I registered.
Even my parents weren't that old.
And now I'm 64, and Medicare is breathing down my neck. Now I'm older then either of my parents were on that day 50 years ago.
Today, I know things would be different. In 1963 the nation came to a stop. People were sad. I think if our current president were assasinated, there'd be celebrations in the street. Today we hate with a vengenace I don't think existed fifty years ago. There was no Fox News spreading lies in 1963. There were no pundits ready to stoke up people's emotions with lies and mistruths. Maybe it's naive on my part to think that way, but we're so fragmented today that it's not likely the nation would behave in the same way it did in 1963.
The world was far less polarized. Perhaps there was a 'them vs. us' mentality, but I think 'they' had more manners and respected the loss 'us' experienced. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's an illuson to think 1963 was different. Maybe I'm just looking at that time from the eyes of a small town 14 year old boy.
All we saw that weekend in late November 1963 was a beautiful young woman and her two small children--widowed and fatherless--walking behind the horseless carriage carrying the coffin of a young, handsome President.
We've lost something precious in those ensuing years. There is nothing wrong with innocence. There is nothing wrong with not knowing every negative detail about someone's life.
50 years! This is what spooks me the most. I have a cousin who will celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary in a year. My own 50th high school will be in less than four years.
Now there is far less time than there is more.
At times--usually early in the mornng when I can't sleep--this weighs heavily on my mind.
But it makes me grateful as well.
I write this on a two hour flight from Cancun to Mexico City. This follows a two week Southern Caribbean cruise and a week on the Mexican Riviera.
The 14 year old boy skimming stones and twigs off the hospital pond that weekend long ago could never have imagined all he'd have waiting for him
While waiting for the fight, I noticed a slogan on an aircraft of an unidentified airline: 'Live the dream' it said.
A friend reminded me recently that I've had a very good life, an envious one, he said.
And, yes, it has been good. Very good. And while I don't relish Medicare as my primary health insurance, I realize I've had 20 more years of life than the young President killed 50 years ago today. Almost 25 more than his young son who, as a child, saluted his father's coffin. I've even had more years than his young widow.
I have lived the dream and my friend is right.
It's been a very good life.
And we need benchmarks like this to see to recognize these things.
November 22, 2013
Can It Be 50 years? I think this is what alarms me most about the 50th anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. I'm finding it incredulous.
I was 14 and in the 9th grade at Mount Assumption Institute in Plattsburgh. (The school has long closed its doors and now the building is an aparrment house, but in 1963 it housed around 250 boys--half of them students who lived there full time. The rest of us came from the envrions of Plattsburgh. In 1963 I was old enough to remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I imagine anyone still alive who was in 9th grade that day can tell you the same thing. I imagine, too, it is that way for those old enough to remember the events of 9/11.
It was around 2:30 in the afternoon--a Friday just as it is today--and I was in Latin class--one of my favorite all time high school classes. Brother Francis, the principal, broke over the PA system--something rarely done--to tell us the President had been shot and was dead to an assasin's bullet.
Everyone was stunned, of course. I suppose if I had been in in a school with girls, tears would have erupted.. We were sent home at that moment and told that there would be no school on Moday--the day of the funeral. The country immediatly went into mourning. All activites were canceled. I'd been looking forard to a dance. There were always dances in those days--at the YMCA; at the Bailey Avenue School gym and at church halls. But not this weekend.
At home it was only my mother, my brother and myself. My dad was in the hospital and would be there for the entire weekend. To this day I have no idea what he was doing there. HHe was only 51. My parents were quiet about this sort of thing. Something coronary rings a bell.
At 23 Grace Avenue television was highly controlled. We were allowed one or two programs on Friday night, a partial run on Saturday and only the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday night. It had always been this way and it would not change all the way through high school. This didn't stop us, of course, from 'visting' friends whose parents were far more lenient, but by and large, we lived in an almost-TV-free-zone. (To this day I watch very little television. In fact, I only owned an ancient black and set hand-me-down, minus cable, when Steve came into my life. Over the years I don't think that my money has ever contributed to the purchase of televesion set. It's something I could live without.)
But the TV-use rule was lifted the weeklend of November 22nd-25th. It's not like there was anything on anyway except the ongoing drama occurring first in Dallas then in Washington.
That Friday was unusally warm and that afternoon it had fallen to me to burn the week's garbage. We could still do that in 1963. It would be seven more years before the Clean Air Act put an end to that. In the back yard were several old oil drums used for buring. I loved this job. I could have been a teen age arsonist, but burning the family garbage seemed to satisfy whatever weird urge that lead me to like this job.
Only my mother was working the family business--a telephone answering service--the 'board' as she called it. Perhaps there had been someone there that day, and I'm sure the night person came on duty. My father would never have lefte my mother with this type of responsibily so I can only assume that his hospitalization had been serious.
Friday's warm weather gave way to a cold rain on Saturday. We all stayed glued to TV, but that afternoon I walked down to the Sears Roebuck Catalog Store on the corner of Margaret and Cornelia Steet. The Christmas catalog had come into the house in September and I'd perused it many times looking for potential Christmas gifts. In so doing I found what I thought would be the perfect gift for my brother--a Howdy Doody ventrioquest puppet.
I must have paid fo it up front. That fall of 1963 I'd somehow gotten a job selling Sunday newspapers to people scattered over a wide range of homes in the north end of town. I only sold the Syracuse Herald Tribune, but it was enough of a job to put me in spending money for the week.
The puppet would arrive later, which is was it did, becasue I have home movies of him opening the gift then hamming it up in front of the camera. The camera--itself an ancient piece of machinery--had been given to me as a gift that Christmas or the one earlier. That camera, and the one given to me a few years earlier, started a life-long love for photography. (I still have 8mm film converted to VHS and now converted to DVD. The films--all silent--are the only animated witnesses to a time long gone.
On Sunday I did my paper route. When I'd finished, I stopped into the hospital to visit my dad. I had a few papers left over. The day had turned cold and the rains from the day before had pushed in a cold front--cold enough to skim the pond in front of Physician's hospital with a thin layer of ice. I ioved all things winter in those days and I remember sitting at the edge of the pond throwing twigs and small pebbles off the surface. I knew enough not to walk on it.
I'm not sure what was the greater priority--the ice or the visit to my dad, but I eventually got into the hospital. While walking through the halls some people noticed I had Sunday papers and asked if they were for sale. I was happy to unload them. I'd just have to carry them down the newspaper distributor's office later in the week for a refund. This just meant more money in my pocket. Not that it was a lot, but it was a whole lot more than I was making if I'd not had a job.
When I got to my dad's room I told him what had just happened he encouraged me to try it again the following Sunday.
Which is what Idid.
That week I went down to lower Bridge Street to the newspaper office. I ordered multiple copies of the New York News, the New York Times, the Albany Times Union and, of course, a few more copies of the Syracuse Herald Tribune. I told them to deliver them to the entrance to the hospital.
The following Sunday the papers were where they should be. I found a movebale cart, arranged the papers, then went door to door on each floor. No one challenged a 14 year old boy selling newpaper in the halls of the local hospital.
I'd sell the papers for more than asking price. I figured that my door to door service was sufficient reason to inflate prices.
I kept this job until I graduated from high school 3 1/2 years later and no one in those years ever challenged those inflated prices or my right to sell papers in the halls of the hospital. The money I earned allowed me to ski each Saturday with the high school ski club. It put me in new clothes purchased from Merkels and it's probably the initial source of my junk food habit.
In the hospital my dad was folloiwng the nation's drama as well, but I honestly don't remember ever having a conversation about it. All of us were horrified and Iimagine it was the same for him.
On Monday we watched the funeral. I remember thinking I would like to be there to witness this. I knew this was a deeply historical event We'd already been to Washington, DC several times before and I saw no reason why I couln't have done a trip like that on my own.
On Tuesday we were back in school. Life went on. School dances resumed. My dad came home from the hospital. It wouldn't be for another 14 years that he'd have a first real coronary issue.
I think about all these events because I'm stunned today that 50 years have elapsed since that day. Imagine measuring years by 50! Projecting 50 years ahead on that late November weekend of 1963 was unimaginable, just as it's unimaginable to project 50 years ahead to 2063.
At that time I had a clear memory of reading a bit of yellow journalist press about a man who did unnaturally in some lurid sort of way.
He was in 60's. Old, I registered.
Even my parents weren't that old.
And now I'm 64, and Medicare is breathing down my neck. Now I'm older then either of my parents were on that day 50 years ago.
Today, I know things would be different. In 1963 the nation came to a stop. People were sad. I think if our current president were assasinated, there'd be celebrations in the street. Today we hate with a vengenace I don't think existed fifty years ago. There was no Fox News spreading lies in 1963. There were no pundits ready to stoke up people's emotions with lies and mistruths. Maybe it's naive on my part to think that way, but we're so fragmented today that it's not likely the nation would behave in the same way it did in 1963.
The world was far less polarized. Perhaps there was a 'them vs. us' mentality, but I think 'they' had more manners and respected the loss 'us' experienced. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's an illuson to think 1963 was different. Maybe I'm just looking at that time from the eyes of a small town 14 year old boy.
All we saw that weekend in late November 1963 was a beautiful young woman and her two small children--widowed and fatherless--walking behind the horseless carriage carrying the coffin of a young, handsome President.
We've lost something precious in those ensuing years. There is nothing wrong with innocence. There is nothing wrong with not knowing every negative detail about someone's life.
50 years! This is what spooks me the most. I have a cousin who will celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary in a year. My own 50th high school will be in less than four years.
Now there is far less time than there is more.
At times--usually early in the mornng when I can't sleep--this weighs heavily on my mind.
But it makes me grateful as well.
I write this on a two hour flight from Cancun to Mexico City. This follows a two week Southern Caribbean cruise and a week on the Mexican Riviera.
The 14 year old boy skimming stones and twigs off the hospital pond that weekend long ago could never have imagined all he'd have waiting for him
While waiting for the fight, I noticed a slogan on an aircraft of an unidentified airline: 'Live the dream' it said.
A friend reminded me recently that I've had a very good life, an envious one, he said.
And, yes, it has been good. Very good. And while I don't relish Medicare as my primary health insurance, I realize I've had 20 more years of life than the young President killed 50 years ago today. Almost 25 more than his young son who, as a child, saluted his father's coffin. I've even had more years than his young widow.
I have lived the dream and my friend is right.
It's been a very good life.
And we need benchmarks like this to see to recognize these things.
