Like it Was Yesterday...

It was 60 years ago tomorrow.  November 22, 1963.

I remember that day as if it were yesterday.  The day Jack Kennedy was murdered.

To set the stage, I was hustling some "hearts" in Northwest Missouri State College's Community Commons.  That's what Liberals call a huuuuge dining hall.  It makes them feel more like it's important, so they must be important.  

Anyway, I was always hustling something.  Pool was my old standby, but poker, pin ball, drag racing, or even pitching pennies closest to a crack in the sidewalk.  And trying to earn a living taking $cash from the local student body was my goal that fateful day.  But it was early afternoon when the announcement came over the TV...

12:30 p.m. CST.  President John F. Kennedy had been shot!  The thousand or so kids in the Commons fell to a hush.  Sort of a rolling quiet all the way to an audio nothingness.  You could have heard a napkin drop in a room full of 1,000 kids.  Someone turned up the little TV in the corner to max and we crowded around it.  For an hour or more we were glued to that little TV.  We followed Kennedy's limo from Dealey Plaza, the locus of the shooting, and on to Parkland Hospital.  And from then we waited.

And waited...

The announcement came over the TV loudspeaker a bit later.  John Kennedy was dead.  Everyone sucked in their breath in unison.  This could not be happening, I thought.  Not in America!  They proceeded to transport his body to the airport, and then on up and into the belly of Air Force One for its trip back to Washington.  Vice President Johnson was sworn in as President as the plane took off on its journey into history.

To say we were shocked would be an understatement.  We were gobsmacked!  There were kids walking around in a daze, tears running down their cheeks!  You must remember those were the long-lost apolitical days.  Where being a Democrat or a Republican didn't much matter between friends.  Even enemies!  But when having your President murdered, did.  It put the entire Nation into a Major League funk.  And us as well.

The kids in the Commons that day had all grown up in an era when we all stood, hands over our hearts, facing the Flag and repeating the "Pledge of Allegiance" at the start of each school day.  And then later, in high school, we'd stand at attention by our desks as the principal read the "Pledge" over the loudspeaker as school started.  Hands over our hearts, facing the Flag, as always...

There was a Flag in every school room, of course.  Because this was the United States of America.  The Country that had Saved the World!  And we knew we'd already won the population lottery by being born in the only place on Earth with total freedom.  

Or, at least it was back then.

There were conflicting reports about how JFK was shot as soon as the smoke was clearing.  And I, being a certified gunsmith and competition shooter, knew the physical limitations of the weapon the accused was purported to have used.  In fact, I purchased one exactly like it via an ad in the back of "Field & Stream Magazine" in 1960 or early '61.  

It was a Mannlicher-Carcano carbine in 6.5mm.  That's about .270 caliber, roughly, or about what you'd use to hunt deer.  It was Italy's military equivalent of the German Mauser rifle patent, the most popular firearm in the world at the time.  it was both quickly and poorly made of all stamped pieces (not forged), and was infamous for its inaccuracy.  The one I bought included a 4x telescopic sight and cost me, are you ready for it?  $9.95.  Only.  

So now I was supposed to believe that a sometime communist revolutionary ex-Marine could fire three shots out of a rickety old bolt-action, WW2-era rifle, in something like 5 seconds, at an open limo travelling around a curve, at an estimated 9 mph, from the third story of a brick building, through a bushy tree.

Ummm, no!

I wasn't buying it, and neither were my friends.  To the point where four of us hopped in my 1963 Plymouth Sport Fury.  It fit four, and four of us made the trip.  Non-stop.  From Marysville, Missouri to Dallas, Texas.  17 hours straight.  At 100 mph for most of the way.  We were on a mission.  We were going to go there, look things over for ourselves, and figure out what happened.  We had appointed ourselves as investigators on behalf of those who couldn't make the trip.  That was back when we actually thought we could change the world.  And we were set about to do so.

Yeah, that's what we did.

We arrived at about 6:00 a.m.  We stopped for some coffee and doughnuts and directions to Dealey Plaza.  It looked pretty much as we'd seen on TV as we arrived, except the crowd had dispersed.  There were only a few dozen mourners left to mark the scene of the crime.  We drove past the infamous Texas Book Depository Building and parked across the street.  We exited my car and did an immediate 360 degree scope-out.  I stood directly across from the infamous "grassy knoll."  I viewed the entire scene.  And I can tell you there had to be a second shooter.  

If not a third. 

We stayed for the day and night and the next morning before departing for home.  At a more liesurely pace.  For we had gotten what we'd come for.  We'd decided for ourselves what must have happened by simply viewing the scene critically.  And many others had done the exact same thing.  However young and dumb we were, smoke could not be blown up our collective arsses.  

We weren't buying it.

P.S.  The Postcript of this blog posting is that the Warren Commission met for a year, reviewed some, but not all of the evidence, and quickly issued its "findings."  JFK was shot by a lone assassin.  Can I say, Bulls*it?  There are at least three main theories as to who put Lee Harvey Oswald up to it:  The Mob, the FBI and the Cubans.  But believe me, it wasn't only Oswald.  He was made the patsy sure as night follows day.  And anyone who paid attention knows it.  But as with now, there are way too few folks paying attention...

If you'd like another opinion on the matter, read Mark Lane's, "Rush to Judgement."  It's a 1,000 page, page-turner.  It lists all the evidence and all the efforts to cover it up.  And you'll be happy you read it because you'll finally know, and sorry you read it because you'll finally know...  

Very simply, the Warren Report was intended to defuse a bomb.  A civil war.  It did tamp down some of the uproar over this outrage at the time, but not all.  There's still an undercurrent of disbelief running through our society.  There's still the feeling that we were manipulated to make this story go away.

It hasn't gone away.  

I doubt anyone in my family knows of this, as I don't recall ever mentioning it.  But I'm telling it now.  On this occasion, as well as on so many other occasions, folks like me found out the Government had lied to us.  They started with Roswell, and just couldn't stop.  We caught them at it.  

This was the death of America's innocense.  And one could say it's been a downhill trip ever since...