Part V: Snakes – Then: November 22, 1963: #1 (Chapter 86)
November 22, 1963.
That morning, a dark,
foul day from rise.
The dreaded corn picking
project, sponsored by the Civil Air Patrol and scheduled for the next day, a
Saturday, hung over me like a black shroud.
Why should I waste my Saturday to hand pick field corn?
Dried up ears missed by
the corn picking machines that had started the job back in September.
I wanted nothing to do
with the Civil Air Patrol, either.
I hate airplanes!
I dreaded marching in
formation, which we had to do before every meeting.
But Nana thought I would
develop better social skills (“You’re too anti-social”) and maybe lose some weight if I belonged to
an organization. I don’t know why she chose the C.A.P. ‒ except maybe that it
was the only organization that shuttled its members around in an olive military
bus to every meeting and event.
I sulked as I walked to
school, hating Nana and the world because I’d have to get up early on a frosty
Saturday morning, wait for the C.A.P. bus, and pick field corn out by the
airport in Sergeant Bluff.
Adding insult, it was my
turn to work the scrape table in the school cafeteria.
In class, we did ordinary
things ‒ math, reading, spelling, art. I daydreamed my way through the morning,
looking out the window, biting my cuticles, picking my nose, and doodling men
and women kissing.
Fridays were difficult,
concentration impossible.
Because I had cafeteria
duty, I was excused from Mass, a plus in a sea of gunk.
Getting out of Mass made
the duty worthwhile ‒ except when you had to scrape gross food trays with a
greasy spatula. It was a dirty job ‒ you smelled like rotting vegetation for
the rest of the day ‒ and I thought it was unfair that the boys never had to do
cafeteria duty, never had to scrape gooey trays, never had to stink for the
rest of the day.
As I finished a pile of
trays, the news came.
Charley Jones, the
janitor, strolled over to the scrape table and leaned on his broom. “The
President’s been shot,” he said as if he had just told me that snow had been
predicted for that evening.
He was kidding, right? He
was a kidder anyway, always playing harmless practical jokes on us: rubber
snakes, spiders, fake vomit and turds ‒ that sort of stuff. The possibility of
that statement being even remotely true just wasn’t an option.
“Right,” I said. “And I’m
from the planet Mars. Take-Me-To-Your-Leader.”
“I mean it, Sammy. The
President’s been shot. In Dallas. About 20 minutes ago.”
I must have looked ill because Charley told me he would finish up the scraping. “Go to your classroom for more news.”