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Anyone old timers around in 1963? Curious to hear stories if you were. The NYT has a nice piece today on the real vs. perceived divisiveness of America at the time.

Thanks

I was 9 and heard about it after school from another kid and thought it was just a crazy story until I got home. All I really remember was that it was a massive shock to the adults and all TV was preempted with the news and I couldn't watch any of the very few kids shows (similar to that annoying Cuban missile crisis) .

Regarding divisiveness, being one step above white trash gypsies, we lived in upstate NY but traveled the south a lot. Seeing blacks in tobacco road shacks lined with newspaper walls for insulation registered as an affront to how people should live but that's all that registered. The deep south was full of billboards saying "Impeach Earl Warren". I asked my parents about it but didn't understand the explanation so I just went back into my box of comic books that we traveled with.

in '67 +/- I had the great misfortune in that we were living with my grandmother in Zephyrhills, FL for a while. Almost every black I saw was along the side of the road. They were either fishing in miniscule streams with cane poles or part of a chain gang. Blacks in Zephyrhills were literally kept on the exact other side of the tracks and their roads were unpaved while the white roads were paved. My dad would pack up all kinds of used stuff and bring it to the black families and let the kids shoot my BB gun. He'd then go home and complain about agitating niggers like MLK. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance in my life at the time but I didn't understand it.

I was not a bright kid so I'm sure I missed a lot - unless it was in a comic book.

[quote="DrDonkeyLove"]

The deep south was full of billboards saying "Impeach Earl Warren". I asked my parents about it but didn't understand the explanation so I just went back into my box of comic books that we traveled with.

I was a eleven and heard the news from my sixth grade teacher.

DDL I lived in the Deep South at that time and don't recall seeing those billboards, but I
am not calling you out on that. Just doesn't register in my memory.

In December 1976 I moved to Central California and noticed a slew of billboards stating
"California has Brown Rot". There were only two things those signs could have meant.

I was two months shy of my fourth birthday and the Kennedy Assassination was the first news story I remember. I remember my Mom and older sister watching the funeral on TV and I remember, (I think) a full page photo of Oswald on the cover of the (NY Daily News?) newspaper. I think I remember those two things because of the strong emotions that must have been in the air. (I think Mom & Sis were crying and I think there was collective shock when the newspaper was published.)

I hate to say it but I'm enjoying reading these accounts.

Bob Wildes wrote:

DrDonkeyLove wrote:
DDL I lived in the Deep South at that time and don't recall seeing those billboards, but I
am not calling you out on that. Just doesn't register in my memory.

In the interests of accuracy, I dug through a bunch of cobwebs and think I saw them driving from New Orleans to the east coast along whatever road did that in those days. It was before the interstate highway system was finished and prior to Lady Bird Johnson beautifying our highways by regulating billboards. And by "full" I probably mean enough where I'd see one every hour or three.

To go back to the original question of divisiveness, a great leveler of that can be travel. Getting from here to there over long distances is infinitely easier now than it was before Eisenhower's interstate highway system. Definitely much more bland and sterile en route, but easier to accomplish for sure.

I was sitting in my third grade class in Catholic school when my teacher, Sr. Harriett Seton, was called from the room in a rush. Another nun whose name escapes me commanded us to sit and pray and also quickly left. Even on Catholic school "Shut up lock down" mode, word somehow filtered through to the classroom that the president had been shot. At first we didn't believe it and thought it was someone's joke to explain the nuns' unusual behavior until they sent some older kids in to act as monitors. In those days there were always a couple of kids who had hidden transistor radios.
Word had not yet reached us whether he had died but we could hear the wailing and gnashing of the nuns as they went bat shit crazy over their beloved Catholic president.
The lay teachers took over for a while and went from room to room leading rosaries. This was at a time when their was shit load of nuns and few lay teachers.

I don't recall how much later it was but when you're saying forced rosaries it seemed like forever, Sr. H.S came back with tears streaming down her face and stated that the president had been killed and we would be going home early.
After that, I just remember that I was pissed that there was nothing but news on TV for the weekend.

My mom would have been around 7, I was a negative 12.

Fuck JFK.

I like to joke about some of his exploits, but he was a fucking prick who's been practically deified even though he was a fuck up and had the misfortune to be shot by a borderline retard.

I was two days short of my 13th birthday and remember my favorite shop teacher taking the all boys class out into the hallway at Jr. High school and telling us what had happened. At first we knew he was shot but not dead. News was slightly faster than the pony express back then.
I remember my mom crying while watching the news. As to the country being divided, I remember the nashing of teeth in our town over a Catholic being elected.
Later on I was watching a live news special and saw Oswald being shot.

Very interesting stuff. The NYT also has a nice piece on the pallbearers, as well as a editorial rebuttal to the revisionist history Baffled subscribes to.

We spent a nice moment in my classes discussing how we sometimes forget that history happened after we read the pallbearer article. An even nicer moment was bumping into a WW2 vet in NYC on Veterans' Day and introducing him to the kids I had with me for a lecture trip. They were stunned/appreciative/in awe when he burst into tears describing the Battle of the Bulge.

I'd like to hear what Andy and Tim have to say about this. Tim's writer perspective would be interesting and informative and Andy may have been working on or already had a Phd by then so he'd be keenly aware of the times as well.

baffled wrote:Fuck JFK.

I like to joke about some of his exploits, but he was a fucking prick who's been practically deified even though he was a fuck up and had the misfortune to be shot by a borderline retard.

Be careful, you are fucking with baby boomers' Camelot fantasies here. Reality is unnecessary and unwelcome. It's not about him, it's about our belief in the him we created. Hmmm, sounds strangely current somehow...

I was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin and heard the president had been shot from some other students. I recall trudging back to my dorm and listening to the radio. No dorm TVs back then. The event didn't fully hit me for days.

A decade later, when I was working at Rolling Stone, we did an experiment in "participatory journalism." We asked people to recall that day. There were some amazing and heartfelt stories. Rather like this thread.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiTgDBNQ3lU[/youtube]

We have a ton of Misfits on our ipod at the gym. One day I was at my desk and a mom came in to talk about signing her kid up for some classes. The ipod was on shuffle at very low volume as we started to talk, I wasn't really paying attention, and so it took me about thirty seconds into the song to realize that mom and I were about to hear about what Glenn Danzig would like Jackie O to do to him. My right hand's never moved that quickly in my life.

Kid did not end up taking classes at the gym. Whoops.

Ed Zachary wrote:

lol

My turn:

Cave Canem wrote:I was sitting in my third grade class in Catholic school when my teacher, Sr. Harriett Seton, was called from the room in a rush. Another nun whose name escapes me commanded us to sit and pray and also quickly left. Even on Catholic school "Shut up lock down" mode, word somehow filtered through to the classroom that the president had been shot. At first we didn't believe it and thought it was someone's joke to explain the nuns' unusual behavior until they sent some older kids in to act as monitors. In those days there were always a couple of kids who had hidden transistor radios.
Word had not yet reached us whether he had died but we could hear the wailing and gnashing of the nuns as they went bat shit crazy over their beloved Catholic president.
The lay teachers took over for a while and went from room to room leading rosaries. This was at a time when their was shit load of nuns and few lay teachers.

I don't recall how much later it was but when you're saying forced rosaries it seemed like forever, Sr. H.S came back with tears streaming down her face and stated that the president had been killed and we would be going home early.
After that, I just remember that I was pissed that there was nothing but news on TV for the weekend.

Doing the math I must have been in fifth grade, our teacher was a lay teacher and one of the best; but I remember the same general confusion, lock down and the forced rosaries.

Though about half the teachers were lay teachers they were all thoroughly vetted German American Catholics so it was only natural that their reaction was similar. It didn't occur to me until much later in life that all the nuns that taught us were the unmarrieable daughter of S.E. Indiana German farmers, who had been shipped off to the convent during the depression. It must have been a miserable life; and JFK's election was a bright spot.

I was in my classroom trying to teach slow learners to learn to read beyond first grade level when another teacher came to my door and told me that the president had been shot. I turned and announced it to the kids and most of them stood up and cheered!! There were no black kids in that school or black families in that district near Albany, NY. Just mostly poor white trash. Then from there everybody was glued to their black and white TVs for days before it all started to sink in. The rest is history unfolding, the Democrats had seized power and it ain't good.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTAan-fd9PU[/youtube]

Did anyone ever figure out why Kennedy left office early? I know he was shot, but so was Reagan.

The assassination really impacted me because I know somebody from Texas and, if I had been born and had been in Dallas that day, it could have easily been me.

Terry B. wrote:The assassination really impacted me because I know somebody from Texas and, if I had been born and had been in Dallas that day, it could have easily been me.

Would we could be so lucky.

I was born in Dallas (St. Paul's).

Andy's story was the most interesting one.

I hope you're all proud of yourselves.