Part V: Snakes – Then: November 22, 1963: #2 (Chapter 86)
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| JFK Photo, Cecil Stoughton: White House Photographer (Public Domain) Overlay: Somber Children on a Playground (AI) |
“The President is Dead.”
As we sat in somber rows,
the announcement came over the loudspeaker.
Sister Ursula, the
principal, had hooked the radio through the loudspeaker system, and
minute-by-minute reports had been given until the final report: “The President
is Dead.” The principal announced that school was dismissed, that we should go
home and pray for our slain president and his family.
As I packed up my book
bag, P.J. Bert, a skinny red-haired boy with pimples who would later become a
notorious (and rich) palimony lawyer in Hollywood, tapped me on the shoulder.
His eyes, red and
glistening. “See you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“The corn picking.”
“Oh, that. Well, I’m not
going.”
Certainly, under the
circumstances, Nana and Pappa would not make me go corn picking, now, would
they? I planned to spend the weekend mourning a man that I had always
fantasized as the father I never had ‒ except for Daddy Platts, who I hadn’t
seen in years, and Pappa, who was old, not young and dashing like Camelot.
“Well, then. See ya
Monday.”
A lifetime away. “Yeah.
Monday.” I picked up my bag and followed the others out of the classroom.
There was no joy in that
day’s early dismissal, no “whoop!” as we filed through the hall and onto the
street. Silence as the macadam crunched under our boots, our leather book bags
dragging on the icy ground, our coats hanging open, our tears stinging chapped
cheeks.
The world seemed bleak
and shadowy, although the sun shone through thin, high clouds ‒ an eclipse of
the most enduring kind. A shadow would follow my generation wherever we went or
whatever we did.
For years, Boomers would refer to significant events in their lives in terms of before or after November 22, 1963.