Velociworld

NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Forty years. It's a long time. I was six, in Mrs. Schunamann's first grade class at Heard Elementary. A teacher came in and told us the President had been shot, and school was dismissed. A lot of teachers were weeping in the hallways. My best friend David Mallory and I went to the bike racks, and as we were saddling up I remember saying "I don't know why everybody's making a big deal out of this. My daddy says Kennedy was a son-of-a-bitch." Six years old, and cussing like that. I don't know why I said that, other than it made me feel better that something bad hadn't happened to a good person. Supposedly my dad and his partner, John Calhoun, shut down their law office that day and threw a party. That seems a little hardcore in retrospect, even for the old man, but I don't entirely dismiss it from the realm of possibility.

My only other real recollection of JFK was a year or so earlier. We were staying at my aunt's apartment in Waycross. The adults had gone out apartying, and left us kids to fend for ourselves. I hated that musty old apartment, and was terrified of my aunt, and remember thumbing through a magazine. It was Time, or Newsweek, or something. I don't recall. I don't even think I could read yet. On the cover was JFK and Alfred E. Newman. Alfred's "What, Me Worry?" character represented some kind of bad news for the President, because he was holding his head in his hands like he had a migraine, and was grimacing. Could've been the Cuban Missile Crisis. I KNEW who Alfred E. Newman was, but I didn't know what pissing match he was into with the President. I just remember that cover scared me.

I've looked for a copy of that magazine cover for years, but can't find it. I wonder what it meant.