1963

Waxing Crescent Moon

It's a tossup, really, as to which year was the shittiest, 1963 or 1968, but since today is November 22, I am going with 1963.

I will skip the part where my Dad died that July because, well, I am still not over it. Sometimes I think I am over it, but not really. Wakes and funerals and kitchens full of well wishers' leftovers still make me sick to my stomach. I was eleven going on twelve, getting ready to go into sixth grade at St. Monica School in Dallas, Texas. It was like a bomb went off in my heart. Dallas, Texas. I hate that place. I will always hate that place.

Shortly after that, right about when school started, the father of my sister's best friend died. She had a little sister who was in my grade, but I hardly knew her. I would never get to know her. We were tragic, walking zombie-kids. Shocked to the quick.

I had a cool "lay" homeroom teacher, Miss Chiles (not a nun), who liked me and tried to cheer me up every day. She rubbed the back of my crew cut head when she passed down the aisle and nicknamed me "Minkhead." The other kids stared at me and at the little-sister girl with kids-whose-Dads-died stares, with sad, uncomprehending, that-must-suck stares. I just sat there, a desk-trapped, crew cut, tragic zombie.

Then November 22 came along. It was an exciting day. In every classroom, somebody brought a portable black-and-white TV to put on the teacher desk. President Kennedy, the Catholic president, was arriving at Love Field in the morning. We got to watch him and Mrs. Kennedy get off the plane and shake hands with the crowd. One of the girls in our class was there with her family. Her parents let her skip school that day so she could see the President in person. That was cool, really special. We tried to spot her in the crowd, but we didn't see her. Then it was back to business - reading, writing, and arithmetic until lunch time. After lunch, the teachers were going to turn the TVs back on so we could watch the motorcade.

The boys were playing an empty-headed touch football game on the playground when the rumors started buzzing. Some girls came up and said the President had been shot. It didn't seem real. Nobody really even believed it and some of the kids started making jokes, like "yeah Jackie shot him, she was mad and pulled a gun out from her purse and blasted him good." Everybody laughed it off.

But teachers were everywhere all of a sudden. White as sheets. Nuns in black, as grave as caskets. We all lined up and filed inside in silence. We sat in our desks in our English teacher's room. We didn't know it then, but later we found out she was the one who played the big fat prostitute in The Last Picture Show. The TV was on. The President was dead.

The whole school went into solemn, grevious lockdown. Circle the wagons. All those doomsday drills, walking out into the hallway and lining up against the wall and crouching down with our arms over our heads, none of that prepared us for the black cloud of pure evil that settled into our lives that afternoon.

They herded us into the church and mobilized the priests and altar boys with incense and gravitas. We prayed the rosary over and over. Loudly. Together. Eight grades of kids, four full classes per grade, fifty kids per class, an army of baby boomers and their teachers booming Our Fathers, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's - soul weapons against the madness. Crying parents trickled in, joining in on the ringing, sorrowful wails. What the bleeding hell.

At home, Dad was so not there. The rest of us, the remainders of us, the sad, scattered, exploded bits of us, sat and watched the TV. Over and over. This awful, putrid stuff actually happened mere miles away. It felt like if you opened the door to the house, the shots would still be echoing, the gun smoke would swarm onto your clothing, the President's blood, the buoyant, handsome, Catholic President's blood, would be there, flowing slowly down the street.

Time crept by and we were still watching the TV, over and over, a day or two (a month or two?) later, Oswald was in the station and we watched it live, I'm pretty sure we watched it live, as Ruby just walked up and shot him, the wincing, handcuffed idiot, in the stomach. Just like that, our lives were ruined all over again.

And Caroline and John John, days (months?) later, we were still watching, the freaking horse, the freaking casket, the freaking widow, the freaking D.C. procession.

1963. There is no limit to its sadness. Innocence sterilized.

Peace, Love, and Remembrance,
Jim