1963....Dallas, Texas..."Shots ring out"

(Editor's note: Because of the enormity of the event, this post will deal only with the assassination of JFK, a subsequent post will have additional information from 1963.)

Fifth period Science class,  Fairview High School, Dayton, Ohio.. an announcement comes over the loud speaker in the classroom. "The President has been shot".................nothing more...no explanation other than those five words..... except for a few muffled cries,  the room was completely still 

.


Was I going to go to war?.....Would there be a bomb dropped on my hometown?......Why would someone shoot my President?.......Should I go home and cry in my own room?...Should I even cry?.......I was only 15 and my life was turned upside down and hundreds of questions were racing through my mind.

Dallas was as foreign to me as China but that was where my President was dieing, .. bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to his head while his wife, covered in his blood, tried to gain some sense of what was happening.

 

Little did I know, I would be in Dallas only a year later......on my way to see my newly born niece in Waco and then 15 years later be moving to Dallas where I would spend the next 34 years of my life.


Most of you have heard the story told over and over about how the President and the first lady came to Texas to smooth over some ill feelings among the members of the Democratic Party, and you'll hear it again next year when the City of Dallas prepares for the onslaught of thousands of reporters and visitors as the 50th anniversary of his death is commemorated.

But this is simply my story....one that I think about every time I pass through downtown Dallas....every time a new conspiracy theory is debated over the local talk shows...  every time Dallas is in the news for something other than that dreadful day.... yet the newscasters find a way to bring back those events

I can remember Walter Cronkite wiping the tears from his eyes as he told the nation that the President had died. I can remember watching the Zapruder film over and over as Jackie climbs over the back of the limousine trying to protect her husband. I can remember the horror of seeing Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down. I can remember the picture of little John-John as he saluted his father's body as the funeral possession passed by led by the riderless black horse with the boots turned backwards in the saddle.

As I mentioned earlier, my first visit to Dealy Plaza was only a year after Kennedy had been shot. What surprised me the most was how short the span was of the path that the motorcade took when the shots were fired...and of course for that reason there have been so many conspiracy theories.How could Oswald have fired three shots?  Were there others hiding on the railroad tracks of the triple overpass. I wanted to get out of the car and stand on the grassy knoll.....try to embrace the moment...but we simply drove down the street and went on about our way.

Later, after I lived here for several years, I decided to take some time and try to learn as much as I could to   objectively format my opinion of what really happened. After the years have passed and millions of words have been written, I think I can finally put the events of that day to rest, well at least for now.

Sometimes we feel a need to magnify the villain  in these horrible crimes to the level of the event or to the level the person who was killed. The thought of simply a deranged man performing a deranged deed just doesn't seem to want to fit into our scope of imagination. We feel the need to make the perpetrator more than he was.

Whatever the reasons, whatever the facts may be.......the memory of where I was and what I was doing on Nov. 22, 1963 is embedded in my mind.


Next:   more of 1963...A year of unrest

1962....Cuba, Violence, Hatred and Peace

Robert Zimmerman, Folk Singer

While 100,000 people turned their television sets to watch President Kennedy tell us we were on the brink of nuclear war, a little known folk singer from Duluth Minnesota, Robert Zimmerman, was starting his career and his songs would help bring some sense to the insane world that was building around us.

 Aerial reconnaissance over Cuba had discovered that the Russians were building missile sites that would be the launching pad for total destruction of the United States some 90 miles away. While General Curtis "Bombs are your friends" Lemay, pushed for annihilating the whole island, cooler heads prevailed and averted a nuclear war.

The country was suspicious of everything...Even fluoridation of our water to prevent tooth decay was suspected of being a communist plot......my suggestion of just not brushing my teeth at night only got a stern look from my mom.

Two retail giants opened their doors in 1962....K MART and Walmart. K MART would go on to sell more than $483 million dollars worth of goods that year and Walmart would begin to capture pictures of the most idiotic people in the world that would eventually end up in emails 50 years later.

Sherry Finkbine, host of a children's show in Arizona, tried unsuccessfully to have an abortion in the United States after taking thalidomide, a sedative for pregnant women that was found to cause birth defects, and she goes to Sweden for the procedure.

The Ford Fairlane  is introduced. The "bossa nova" dance is introduced and Catholic officials in Buffalo, N.Y. forbid students from dancing to "The Twist"  because it is lewd and un-christain......That didn't stop places like Wampler's Barn and Forest Park, both in Dayton, Ohio, from having "open houses" on the weekends and teenagers would dance the night away.

Charles Van Doren cheats on the TV quiz show, "Twenty-one".............Ernie Kovacs, an early pioneering comedian, dies in an automobile accident....and EROS, a quarterly, erotic magazine hits the newsstands.

Ohio native,  John Glenn makes the first manned orbital flight for the U.S. .....President Kennedy , when asked at a press conference if any Americans were fighting in Vietnam, he answers "No" and moves on to the next question. ......and Judith Campbell, a go-between for Kennedy and "the mob" claims she aborted Kennedy's unborn child.

Gary Powers, a pilot on a U-2 spy plane gets shot down over Russia....and Rock Hudson and Doris Day star in 3 movies together.

Wilt the Stilt knocks down 100 points against the "Knicks".....Bobby Hull scores 50 goals in a season....and Barbra Streisland at age 19, stars as Miss Marmelstein on Broadway.....

Robert Zimmerman, that folk singer I mentioned earlier, writes "Blowin in the Wind " in just a matter of minutes in a cafe in Greenwich Village....and Frankie Avalon records his million-selling record "Venus"

Andy Warhol finishes his "Campbell Soup Can".....Marlyn Monroe dies of an overdose.......and Pete Best is fired by some band in England.

Casey Stengal loses 120 ......Tony Bennett loses his heart in San Fransisco....and the ZIP code is introduced in the U.S.

James Meridith enrolls at Ole Miss....I enroll at Fairview High School only to receive detention my first week see  First Week, First Detention  ...........and Jethro Clampett enrolls at Beverly Hills High School at age 22.

Sonny Liston knocks out Floyd Patterson......Frankie Valli sings "Big Girls Don't Cry"....and Bette Davis scares the crap outta me in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane"

BOOKS

Fail-Safe
Sex and the Single Girl (by Helen Gurley Brown who recently passed away)
Ship of Fools

MOVIES

Days of Wine and Roses
Dr. No
The Longest Day
The Miracle Worker
The Music Man
To Kill a Mockingbird

SONGS
Don't make me over
Duke of Earl
He's a Rebel (which would become my theme song)
Sherry
Wipe Out
Love me do

TELEVISION

The Beverly Hillbillies
Combats!
The Jetsons
McHale's Navy
and Johnny Carson begins an incredible career on "The Tonight Show"

Next: 1963....Freedom

1961....Cold War, Racism and Roger Maris

The Cold War  highlighted 1961, and for those not familiar with the term,  it didn't mean snow in Ohio.....go look it up in the encyclopedias like we had to....Google wasn't invented yet.

A new President ordered a failed invasion of Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs which would haunt him for the rest of his short term, and to some, it could very well have been the reason for his assassination. 

In the early hours of August 13, 1961 construction began on the Berlin Wall, which would separate a city as well as thousands of families.

And by late 1961, ...3,200 hundred men of a "specialized force" , known as the Green Berets, would be sent to some unknown country on the other side of the planet called Vietnam.

A revolutionary typewriter with a rotating ball capable of reproducing 960 letters per minute......hmm....you'd need 10 hands......would be invented....

On the home front, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes would attempt to enroll in the all-white University of Georgia, hundreds of whites would hurtle rocks though the dorm windows, yet they would eventually graduate from there and have careers as a CNN journalist and a physician, respectively.

The 1961 Jaguar XKE, $5,595.00, would appear in the U.S. and soon start cruising the Parkmoor Drive In Restaurant.

Ham, a male chimp, lands safely after being carried 157 miles into space. His real name was Howie, but it was shortened to Ham.

In Memphis, Elvis performs his first performance at a luncheon in his honor, his first since his discharge the previous year from the Army.

Mattel's Ken Doll, Barbie's "escort" becomes available.......hmmmm...I thought Barbie was the "escort".

Anita Ekberg stars in La Dolce Vita........mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Freedom Riders, again, if you don't know the term....you should,.... would travel from college campuses in the North to descend on establishments in the South in an attempt to test the recent Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation......thousands would be injured and several would die..Mrs. Felicia Rowe, a black Social Studies teacher at an affluent white Fairview High School, would open our eyes to the injustices of the world.

Jeff Chandler, a popular film actor, dies following botched surgery. He was only 42.

And, the M and M boys, of the New York Yankees, would chase each other all season long, with Maris belting his 61st homer on October 1. Some felt the wrong "M" won the contest.

And Audrey Hepburn would melt hearts as Holly Golightly.

And finally, a movie that would influence my life and cause me to quit playin' with trains and  quit climbiing under the seats at the Ames Theater,  and quit hanging out in the men's room and smokin' Lucky Strikes during the movie, (I'd continue to smoke for another 40 years) and finally start wanting to sing and dance and date girls.......West Side Story would debut to huge audiences......"When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way"

BOOKS

Black Like Me

The Carpetbaggers

Catch-22

Tropic of Cancer (mmmm)

MOVIES

Breakfast at Tiffany's

The Guns of Navarone

The Hustler   (Eddie Stout would get his nickname from this movie)

Fast Eddie: Fat man, you shoot a great game of pool.
Minnesota Fats: So do you, Fast Eddie

SONGS

Blue Moon

Crazy

Moon River   (maybe this is why I got so interested in mooning...all of the moon songs)

Run Around Sue

Will you love me tomorrow

TELEVISION

Ben Casey ( I had a job cleanin' urine bottles after high school....the job was crap...no pun intended...but I got to wear a Ben Casey-type shirt)

The Bullwinkle Show

Password

Next:

1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis

1960 ....(Cont.) Ted Williams, TV and Elvis

If you spent your youth in the early '60s, like a lot of us did practicing baseball everyday at places like Loos School playground and then playing Friday night games at Triangle Park, then Ted Williams was your hero. Ted Williams, considered by some baseball experts, was the greatest hitter to ever play the game. In what seemed an act of divine intervention, he blasted a home run with his final swing. He retired with two American League MVP Awards, six batting titles, a career batting average of .344 and 521 home runs.

Bottom L -R  Ernie Pierson, "The Jer", unknown, Rick Kender......2nd Row   Jimmie Sachs, "Skeeter" Kender

The first  prime-time animated cartoon hit the air waves in Sept.1960....Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone and the rest of the gang entertained kids and adults alike. Patterned after the Honeymooners, the show always started off with Fred shouting "Yabba Dabba Doo".

Although "To Kill a Mocking Bird", as I had mentioned earlier, was published in 1960, another "classic" that some of us had a chance to read....certainly not out in the open....but in the confines of a locked bedroom, a secret place behind the garage or yet back to our kingdom, at Loos School but deep in the woods behind the school......the book was "Lady Chatterley's Lover"...According to the press, it "helped usher in a new era of literary freedom"......hell, I thought it was just a book about sex.

Speaking of sex..In May, 1960, a pill received approval from the FDA and in the following 6 months over a half-million prescriptions were filled.........it was called the "miraculous tablet....we knew it as the birth control pill.

"The King": was discharged from the Army in 1960 and he recorded three No. 1. hits immediately after his release...."Stuck on You".... "It's Now or Never".....and "Are you Lonesome Tonight"......







MOVIES:                                                       SONGS:                                            
The Apartment                                                 Chain Gang                                                                 
Butterfield 8                                                     El Paso
La Dolce Vita                                                   Save the Last Dance for Me
Elmer Gantry                                                    Theme from "A Summer Place"
Magnificent 7                                                    "The Twist"
Ocean's 11
Where the Boys Are

TELEVISION:
The Andy Griffith Show
Candid Camera
My Three Sons
Route 66
Thriller

Other items in the news in the first year of the '60s decade included:

Lucy divorces Desi.........Gary Powers gets shot down in his U-2 plane....Dick Clark testifies to Congress about payola..........Arnold Palmer comes from behind to win the U.S. Open...............and Parkmoor Drive-In becomes the hot spot for Fairview and Colonel White students....

Life was pretty simple back then or so we thought...but on the horizon a terrible war was looming and it would divide our country..............and the Ruskies would be putting a man in space


NEXT:
1961...The Berlin Wall goes up......Freedom Riders.........and the Selectric typewriter is invented

1960.....A new decade...a new generation

The world was about to change....no longer would the status quo dictate the rules ......no longer would we "do it this way"  because  "our daddy and grandpappy did it this way"......

It was a time when I, even as young as 12 years old, would begin to question my faith in religion, begin to question authority and wonder how in the hell would hiding under my desk keep me from getting blown up by a nuclear bomb.

McDonald's had just opened it's 200th restaurant and upstart arch rival Burger King would begin to compete along with Red Barn and White Castle.

I watched Richard Nixon sweat on TV..as he debated  a 43 year old young man with "long hair", a funny accent and a hot wife.....for the top job in America.

Coca-Cola was now available in cans, we all hated the metal taste......and "The Daughters of Bilitis", a lesbian organization, held its first national conference in San Fransisco....hell, I wasn't even sure what a lesbian was.

The Andy Griffith Show premiered..... Bill Mazeroski belted a game winning home run in game 7 of the World Series, and Elvis Presley was singing "Are you lonesome tonight".......

A new author had just published her first book, "To Kill a Mockingbird"....a group of seven cowboys, led by Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen,  would rescue a small Mexican town from bandits....and Janet Leigh would be sliced to pieces while an ear shattering shriek would echo though the darkened Ames movie theater.....


Chubby Checker would cover Hank Ballard's song, "The Twist", and I would practice it every day upstairs in my bedroom on Sandhurst Drive, in anticipation of performing some day at Menker's Party Hut, a small quanset hut where music and dancing took place every weekend and where I first learned about rock and roll and how dancing could impress the ladies

 Thousands cheered as a young black woman named Wilma won three gold medals at the 1960 Rome Olympics and some young boxer named Cassius would take home a gold medal as well....yet back in the United States people jeered as some young black adults tried to order lunch at a counter in Woolworth's in North Carolina.

In the words of  Charles Dickens, "It was the best of times. it was the worst of times"


NEXT:

Ted Williams plays his last big league game and homers in his last at bat......and Fred and Barney appear on ABC.