Saturday, November 23, 2013

50 Years Ago......Yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


                                  Can you believe it, darlings?????????????

                                   I meant to write this, yesterday, of course, but so much got in the way!  Besides, I just had to write about the Career Girls!  Which was 50 years ago, just last  Summer!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                    So, where was I, on November 22, 1963?  You know I know this one, dolls!!!!!!!!!!

                                    I was in third grade, (Mrs. Bergen; you have heard enough about her, loves!!!!!!!) and, just four days before, I had  turned 9-years-old!!!!!!!!!  My mother had scheduled me for a doctor's appointment, after school, to get my Measles inoculation, which I was none too thrilled about, as I hated, and feared, getting injections at the time.  Now, at this stage of my life, they are a dime a dozen!!!!!!!!

                                    So, I was fraught with anxiety, over this.  Also, because, as I kept urging my mother, I had to be back home, by a certain time, because CBS, Channel 2, on its Early Show, which used "Syncopated Clocks," as its theme, was going to broadcast the movie, "The Snow Creature," about an Abominable Snowman type monster, (I had a fascination with this legend, at that time!!!) and I just had to see it.

                                     We got to the doctor's office, I put up my usual fuss, but I got the shot, and we were on our way.  As consolation, my mother and I stopped off at some coffee shop, so I could have a Coke, when one of the waitresses said to my mother, "Did you hear, President Kennedy was shot?"  This was the first either of us heard about it.  Soon, news began to spread throughout the place, people were upset.  We got home and turned on the TV, which meant all programming (including "The Snow Creature," much to my consternation, then) was cancelled!!!!!!!!!  I still recall the headline of our local paper, The Daily Home News--ASSASSIN KILLS KENNEDY--yes, in caps!  That was the day, and how, I learned the meaning of the word assassin.

                                 After this point, things get foggy.  It is my recollection we had days off from school, though I cannot be sure.  But I do know that the TV set was on for days, tuned in to all the events.  I also recall, vividly, witnessing Oswald's on camera murder, by Jack Ruby.  I still recall my reaction.  I reacted as though it were the most natural thing in the world.   Was I a sociopath?  Hardly; I did not even know the word, then!  But, having witnessed what had   gone before, over the past several days, as surreal as it all seemed, by the point of Ruby's murdering Oswald, it all, somehow, seemed natural.

                                  Of course this date was THE benchmark one for my generation--the Baby Boomers.
And while Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were gunned down, equally tragic, they were somehow, not as impacting.  Maybe because I was older.

                                   I never thought, in terms of the future, there would be another devastating day, which would globally unite all generations!

                                   I had not counted on September 11, 2001!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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