November 22, 1963 The End of the World

November 22, 1963 The End of the World

Worked on my book yesterday. I have 113 pages and I still have a long way to go. I keep changing the title. Yesterday, I was reviewing the part I wrote about the day JFK was assassinated. Here is what I wrote. It starts when I was at my Freshman English class at Amarillo College:

On November 22, 1963, I attended my 11 AM English class as usual. I was taking two classes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. My earlier class, American History, had been cancelled that day for a very special reason. My teacher, Dr. Gettys (I don’t remember her first name any more) was a die-hard Texas Democrat. I remember that she was a blood relative of Temple Houston, son of Sam Houston. She and her husband, who was also Dr. Gettys, had held a big party at their home for all their students a couple of weeks before this. I remember (Mr.) Dr. Gettys looked like a real Kentucky colonel with white hair and a goatee. Come to think of it, I guess he resembled Colonel Sanders. I remember being impressed with all the beautiful wood in their house. Wood paneling, wood staircase, wood antique furniture. Just such a beautiful home, lots of Civil War things, not like a lot of tacky Texas interior design with eagles and flags, this was restrained and tasteful. Real class. Like something you see in Architectural Design Magazine, or House Beautiful.

But that had been earlier in November. On this Friday, my Dr. Gettys, (Mrs.) Dr. Gettys), had cancelled classes for the day in order to travel to Dallas to see President Kennedy in Dallas that afternoon. I was impressed that she was going to see the President, but my family was Republican, so I wasn’t as impressed as I probably should have been.

My English class ended at exactly 12:30 PM. I remember going out to the parking lot and there was a little snow on ground left over from a couple of days before. When I started my car, the radio was already on and they were reporting something that had happened in Dallas. Something about shots being fired at the President.

That moment was the end of my childhood. Everything changed after that and my life never went back to the way it was in the summer of 1963, when everything was simple and predictable and normal. I knew even at the time that it was the end of something, maybe the end of everything. Two hours later, I was entering the Air Force Base. It was a major SAC (Strategic Air Command) base. The whole purpose of the base was to keep SAC bombers in the air at all times. They carried atomic bombs, ready for World War III.
All of a sudden, a gate I went through three times a week, at the same time of day, was totally transformed from a friendly open road where smiling MPs would wave me on through, to some kind of foreign county where the guards carried guns, and not holstered guns either, they held them in their hands, and everyone had to get out of their cars and open their trunks and I didn’t know where I was anymore. I never found my way back to my life, the life I thought I was going to have.