48 years

If today is November 22nd,” I said to my wife; “it’s the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.”
Today seems to come-and-go any more, but the assassination was watershed for old geezers like me.
Finally it seemed our nation was emerging from post-war fatuism, and all-of-a-sudden BOOM!
I was in my sophomore year of college.
I walked out of the Chapel building basement at college, where I’d had a class, and word was spreading like wildfire.
All-of-a-sudden Walter Cronkite was announcing the president was dead.
It was like the world had ended.
Kennedy seemed to signify the reemergence of reason over post-war excess.
Detroit was no longer trumpeting tailfins.
Kennedy was not perfect — there certainly were enough donnybrooks in Washington.
But it seemed he was more than the caretaker Eisenhower seemed to be.
During Eisenhower it seemed there were no donnybrooks in Washington.
Kennedy was involving us, and there could be differences.
Failures were out in the open, not swept aside in post-war jingoism.
But all that goodness ended when Kennedy was assassinated.
Some of my college-mates drove down to Washington to witness the funeral procession.
A friend suggests this nation is done, and I sort of agree.
And it seems the end began 48 years ago.
(At least Obama hasn’t been assassinated yet, and I’ve been worried.)