Thursday, November 21, 2013

Once Every 20 Years

Less four months.  You can't miss November 22's significance, no matter what you think of Kennedy - we have a tendency to commemorate in a big way in increments of 50 and 100 years.  I was thinking, though, that there's three moments in my almost 60 year- long-life that I clearly and distinctly remember where I was and what I was doing. Hence the "once every 20 years.

The first, of course, is the assassination of JFK.  I would have been 9 years old. We were on the school bus on the way home and the bus driver at some point said something to the effect of  "Well, President Kennedy was killed today."  Which silenced the bus load of kids pretty effectively.  I remember that as I got off the bus in front of the house, Mom was coming around from the clothes line with a basket of laundry and she was crying and then I knew it was true.  What I find interesting is that I have no memory of knowing who President Kennedy was.  Or even what a president was.  My memories of anything with "President Kennedy" attached start at that moment.  But I must have known or a sense of "It's true" wouldn't have been significant.

And then I remember sitting on the sofa with Mom and Dad and watching Ruby shoot Oswald live on TV and Dad said "Well, that's not going to help anything."  I count that day and the day of the actual assassination as one - they're sort of merged in together.

And then there was the shuttle Challenger disaster.  Oh, how I loved the idea of the shuttle program.  It wasn't deep space, and the ships were shaped wrong, but we were going back and forth into space and that was something I had dreamed of for at least since the first time I read The Wonderful Flight To The Mushroom Planet.   One of my coworkers would bring in a little black and white TV and at first a goodly number of the office would squeeze into his cubical to watch each launch.  Eventually the flights began to be routine and while Dixon would still watch each one most of us just went about our business.  Then one day he burst from his cubical - "The shuttle has exploded!"  And we pushed in and watched in horror - a horror not lessened by its playing out on a small black and white screen.

Finally, of course, there was 9/11.  I was teleworking, sitting at the dining room table, on the computer.  My daughter and I were IM-ing and I had to reboot the computer.  Whatever program we used for IM back in the day always popped up with a news headline when first opened.  I don't remember the exact wording of the headline, but I clicked on the link.  Only a single brief line about a plane flying into the World Trade Center.  Its brevity told me that little was known yet, and of course I assumed it was a small plane.  Wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened.   I'm not sure if I turned the TV on right then or if something about an update caused me to later on, but of course that was the end of work for the day.  And for several days after.  They closed the government and sent people home.  I was glad I had been teleworking - the sudden flood of people trying get home gridlocked the city and left thousands of people very vulnerable to any further attacks that might have come.  The folks who commuted by public transportation in particular - just because the government suddenly closes doesn't mean the train system has staff on hand to start running trains up the line. 

If I keep to the average there will be at least one more memory-searing day in my life. I'm not really looking forward to that.

16 comments:

  1. Wasn't around for Kennedy, but I recall being in Math class in the 6th grade when the Challenger explosion happened. They pulled all the kids out of class, crammed us all into the library, and dragged out the old TV on its wobbly cart to watch as the events unfolded. Then we went back to class. I found out about 9/11 when I went in to work that morning, it was playing on the TV in the break room. Someone asked me as I walked in the store if I'd heard about the plane hitting the WTC, and I hadn't, I just assumed it was an accident or, like you, a small prop-driven plane. When I walked in, I watched, live, as the second plane hit, and I stood there dumbfounded. They flipped to an image of the Pentagon, and I knew it was no accident. We dragged a TV up to the customer service desk and grabbed chairs from the furniture dept (office supply store) and spent the rest of the day like that. Lost more money in utilities/payroll than we made (sold a variety of sodas to employees, and I bought some magnetic business card printer paper...took them home, printed American flags, and handed them out the next day. Two days later, corporate was selling the same things, the sorry bastards). My response to anyone asking what we should do was "nuke the bastards". Still is.

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    1. It took a while for the magnitude of what was happening to sink in on 9/11. It was outside of our ken.

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  2. Interesting set of choices... I have those plus the moon landings, and Columbia exploding on re-entry, along with Reagan being shot.

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    1. Those are the three for which I have the most detail in my memory. I remember the others, and I think I remember watching the moon landing, but there's no detail.

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  3. The JFK thing changed my life. I evolved into an investigator. Oswald was shot on my birthday.
    The Challenger exploded on a day I lost a job.
    I was working on 911, but got to see much of it on TV. Our company had offices in the Twin Towers...

    Thanks for remembering,
    gfa

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    1. Wow - 6 degrees of separation... Amazing how many people I know who had connections affected by 9/11, including my boss at the time who lost his brother-in-law in one of the planes.

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  4. What you and Old NFO said, plus the attempted shooting of Pres. Ford (Squeaky Fromme, anyone?). I'm 58, and remember the Kennedy-Nixon debates, plus watching Kennedy & Eisenhower in the 1961 inaugural parade, sitting up on the backrest of the convertible limousines.

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    1. It occurs to me that although we may well have not always had a TV - we were rather poor. That may be why my memories don't include things prior to a certain point.

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  5. One of the few folks who remembers The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, I see. I still own a copy.
    Barely remember the Kennedy assasination. Remember the moon landing quite well, at age 9. Challenger disaster and 9/11 were memorable - a couple of times when everyone at work remained glued to our tv sets until sent home for the day.
    Maybe we'll get lucky and get through the next half century without any more truly life-changing national tragedies.

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    1. I read Mushroom Planet many times. And designed a "rocket" that I wanted to build. Having no concept of jet propulsion, it involved fire. Fortunately, I was never able to build it. I probably would have set the field on fire a second time if I had ...

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    2. Ummmm...yeah...there was the whole firing pottery thing...

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  6. I want to add se of m memories the Mason Murders,Jonestown, and the assination attempt on Pope John Paul ll

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    1. While I have a memory of the Manson murders, I don't remember it happening. The other two I remember the days after, but not where I was or what I was doing when it happened.

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  7. "If I keep to the average there will be at least one more memory-searing day in my life. I'm not really looking forward to that."

    I think the next one, coming soon to a theater near you...and me, is going to be much more up close and personal.
    The politicians aren't going to solve the problems we face.
    I grieve for my children and grandchildren.

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    1. I think our administration's foolishness with Iran virtually ensures that the next one will be nuclear.

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