Fifty years ago, I arrived at my friend Danny Rich's house after kindergarten.
"The President has been shot," he said.
"No," I corrected Danny, "The President has been shocked." I can recall my feeling of complete conviction on the matter.
The evening before, my father had warned me that it was dangerous to stick a fork into an electrical outlet because I would get shocked. I don't recall ever wanting to stick a fork into a wall plug before, but since I had been told not to, I had been thinking a lot about doing it. So, of course President Kennedy had put a fork in an electrical socket. He was the President. He could do whatever he wanted and nobody could tell him "No."
As I explained to Danny what had really happened, I could see a clear picture in my mind's eye of the President, with his big head of dark hair, down on all fours, sticking a fork into a White House electrical socket. In fact, I can remember it vividly today.
Was the President, you might ask, wearing pajamas with feet in them? Probably, but I wouldn't swear to that under oath.
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22 comments:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/17/world/europe/ancient-skull-human-evolution/index.html?sr=fb112113skullevolution3p
I was in my first grade class in the southwestern suburbs of Houston. Ms Johnson told the class President Johnson was shot. And then she started crying.
Ms Johnson seemed ancient to me, but she was probably about 40.
The name of the school was Jefferson. Grades 1 through 12 in the same school. Every face was white.
Lunch in the cafeteria was a quarter. Little milk carton and a burger and dessert and veggie. The smell of the cafeteria will stay with me forever.
That was a different america. Astronaut Scott Carpenter's wife drove her car into my grandmother's rear bumper at a stop light in downtown houston about that time. No harm, no foul.
My grandmother owned a sheep ranch in west texas. My dad quit his job at Esso (the forerunner of exxon) and left houston and went back out to west texas to run as gas station and ranch sheep.
I attended the remainder of first grade and then second grade in the 2 room school house in langtry, texas. Across the street was judge roy bean's courthouse. At that time, hanging from a pole in front of the judge roy bean courthouse was a straw man mexican hanging from a rope. He wore the traditional mexican garb, complete with sombrero.
No mexican faces in that two room schoolhouse, even through it sat literally on the edge of the rio grande river, looking down on it from a canyon rim.
Of course political correctness got rid of the mexican hanging in effigy decades ago.
They stole that America from me.
To the question "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?", not many people can answer what I can answer. Namely, "I was - according to what my (now deceased) parents assured me - pigging out on my second birthday, oblivious to everything in the world except the chocolate cake that I consumed in elephantine quantities." So in my case, disinclination to fetishize Camelot must have kicked in pretty early.
Hilarious. That was a funny blog post.
When I was five years old, John Lennon was shocked. My mom was very sad. I had no idea who this John Lennon man was, or why my mom was so upset about him being shocked, but I knew that you should never, ever play outside in a thunderstorm. I was sure that was how he got shocked in the first place.
I stuck a fork into an electrical outlet once when I was about 5. I was shocked and the prompt scolded by my Mom.
I don't know Steve.....I find your testimony credible!
Other evidence: Janet Reno's Florida witch hunts for satanic child abusers, The McMartin Day School case, and all the other incidents of prosecutorial misconduct and ritual child abuse hysteria that ran amok in this country claiming hundreds of innocent victims in the last decades of the 20th century.
So was he shot or was he shocked? I'm confused.
"Shocked"? What a dumb kid you were, Steve!
Here in DC, all my playground friends and I instantly understood that Kennedy had been "shot." What we couldn't figure out was why would Oswald do it, and whether Ranger Hal was in on the plot.
This post actually sounds like the backdrop of a new surreal novel. Is this what this is? Not bad for an opening hook.
I was in third grade in a NYC catholic school. The Mother Superior came into our class in the afternoon and whispered (loud enough for all to hear) to our teacher "The President's been shot". Somehow a transistor radio was found and we all huddled around to get the news.
You grew up in California. What time did you return home? You may have been the last person to learn of the assassination.
OT:
The ancestors of the Eloi live among us.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/20/girl-who-got-punched-in-head-gives-lame-liberal-speech-humanizing-her-attackers-video/
“The Middle East once again proves that if you eat right, exercise regularly and don’t smoke, you’ll live long enough to see everything, including a day when the Jews controlling Jerusalem and the Sunni Saudi Custodians of the Great Mosques of Mecca and Medina would form a tacit alliance against the Shiite Persians of Iran and the Protestants of America,”
“alliance” against “Protestants of America”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/opinion/friedman-lets-make-a-deal.html
I remember the announcement in 3rd grade, over the PA system in the hamlet of Sheldon, Illinois.
A few of us guys, hyper after recess and wired on chocolate milk, started mock choking, making strangle noises and theatrically collapsing on the floor ... right up until a hefty Illinois farm girl and classmate, Janet McDonald, clapped me upside the head and cried out, "that's not funny!"
There is actually a little truth to all the 'Texas Bashing' that the Democrats spread about the assassination. I was in Texas at the time when I heard of the shooting and indeed everyone was happy.
I was in the Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The training sergeants who had previously been taciturn all at once became talkative. They were excited. They were anticipating war.
One of these geniuses volunteered that the shooting left 'a nice looking woman for some man'. Yes spirits were running high. It was a time of great hope for the future.
Albertosaurus
http://minutemennews.com/2013/11/welfare-recipient-get-sit-home-get-smoke-weed-still-gonna-get-paid/
If this is so common, why not voter fraud?
http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/11/4th-grade-textbook-white-voters-never-vote-black-president/
http://www.omaha.com/article/20131117/GO/131118876#.Uo-cT9K-o2R
I remember that day clearly; 16 & knew pretty much everything, thus when the Dallas Police spokesman announced over the radio that LHO had passed the "paraffin test" (no gunpowder residue) I then pronounced him innocent. How "shocking" to hear otherwise.
I think you were right. The socket was right by the grassy knoll.
One of these geniuses volunteered that the shooting left 'a nice looking woman for some man'.
Only if his name happened to be Aristotle Onassis.
"pat said...
I was in the Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The training sergeants who had previously been taciturn all at once became talkative. They were excited. They were anticipating war.
Albertosaurus"
I knew it must have been so. Our own peripatetic Albertosaurus was nearby on the that fateful day. Did you, by any chance, happen to be in the lot behind the grassy knoll, Pat?
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