And You Are There

I was in fourth grade when John F. Kennedy was assasinated. We had come in from lunch, and I was staring out the window at the Catholic School across the street and saw someone come out and lower the flag to half-staff. I asked Mrs. McSweeney who had died, because we had learned flag etiquette and knew that was what the lowering signified.

She didn't know, yet. It was announced across the school intercom shortly thereafter. I remember sitting on the floor watching his funeral on our black and white tv. I guess my mother kept me home, or, good Southern Democratic town that it was, school was suspended for the occasion.
I was sitting on a hotel bed in Kingston, New York, right off the NY State thruway, when Howard Cosell broke into the Miami Dolphins game to tell us all that John Lennon had been shot. I called The Coolest Person in the World, and we cried together.

Howard Cosell? That's who broke the news to me that my idol was gone? How much did that suck. And the Dolphins were winning? Losing? Winning, I think. I think it was an important game, maybe one that determined if they went to the Superbowl that year. I don't remember anything about the game, just that I'd come down out of the top of the Catskills where I was holed up, to Kingston, so that I could see the game on cable. All I remember is Howard Cosell and the horrible, horrible news.

Yesterday, there was a photo of some old geezers in their uniforms, the handful of survivors of Pearl Harbor. It was buried in the Herald, somewhere in section A, but not on the front page. Not even a banner over the title, like they do for the first day of Kwanzaa. The most horrible throwing of the gauntlet of war of the last generation, and it doesn't even get a nod.

Today, there's a little something on the wires about it being the 25th anniversary of John's death at the hands of "a deranged fan". Huh. Yeah. Sort of obvious, isn't it? I mean, a normal fan isn't going to kill the person they adore, are they? But it has become part of the myth, part of his name: Mark David Chapman, a deranged fan.

And back in November, on the 23rd, to be precise, there was no mention in the Herald at all of what anniversary of a national nightmare we were recognizing.

Time heals all wounds, they tell us. But I think that sometimes, we need to pick at the scabs, and never let the hurt heal altogether.


PS: CBGBs is safe until next year. They got a year's extension on the lease. At least I don't have to go into mourning over that.