I was in elementary school in Ft Worth near the airport where JFK landed; stayed home 'sick' that day to watch my little brother while Mom was shopping.

My best friend's family were Republicans, and I had heard the campaign slogan, "Nixon, Nixon he's our man, let's put Kennedy in the garbage can!".

My brother and I were playing army with imaginary bolt action rifles, and when I saw the motorcade on tv leaving for Dallas, I aimed, cocked the bolt and fired 3 times.

A little while later Walter Cronkite was on the tv reporting that Kennedy had been shot. Think it was the same evening that the rifle was recovered, and when I saw it was a bolt action rifle I freaked out and thought it was my fault!

Then when I was in jr high we moved to Irving, a few blocks from where Lee Harvey and Marina had lived. Which freaked me out again. Then later, of course, Martin and Bobby were also assassinated.

Lou Reed wrote a narrative song about JFK's death. Bob Dylan wrote at least one.

The Byrds rewrote the lyrics on an older song:

#11

I went to university in Commerce, and Paris was a great little town to visit (picking mushrooms from under cow paddies along the way!). I hear it's still very nice.

The article was a couple of years old.

#22

You missed all the fun! Elementary School Cold War Nuclear Bomb 'Duck and Cover' Drills in the school building halls... like that was going to help!

Black and white tv, dial telephones. The Lone Ranger. Elvis. Rock and Roll. Texas Swing.

A young, charismatic liberal-ish decorated war hero President assassinated in the streets for being a liberal, and many of the Republicans snickering behind their hands. Or laughing out loud in some parts of Texas and Mississippi (where slavery was sorely missed).

The Beatles. Day Tripper was played over the school announcement system in our 6th grade by some kid I think.

She's a big teaser
She took me half the way there
She's a big teaser
She took me half the way there, now

Of course, those lyrics were always sung as pr*ck teaser.

Good times... well, until MLK was also assassinated in the streets for being Uppity While Black.

And then Robert Kennedy, who likely would have been the next President, was gunned down in a hotel kitchen, again for being a liberal and not being sufficiently racist and being suspiciously Catholic.

Then you missed Tricky Dick, whom JFK had barely defeated in 1960 and whom defeated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 because George Wallace go 14 percent of the vote, and most all of the racist vote, but who Resigned just before he would have been Impeached for trying to rig the Election.

And Vietnam, where America's morals-free corporate owned President Nixon landed us. And whom Americans of all ages, after my gen prodded them into it, joined mass coordinated protests in cities big and small all over the country ran him out of office and the country out of Southeast Asia.

Of course, he was nowhere near as efficient at corporate politics as Reagan of the Trickle Down MYTH and the Fake Hostage Crisis whom you might remember

Now, since 2010 and CU's Money as Speech, the elite own everything; all of one Party and enough of the other) and including their Clown Puppet in the WH, whom the same white nationalist faux-christian populist rwingers that backed Nixon and Reagan (and GW, who doesn't actually exit now, and never did!) thinks loves them.

It were be funny were it not so sad.

George Carlin had this to say about these kind of assassinations: