A Moment of Calm in the Kitchen

It was a few days before Thanksgiving 60 years ago. I was in my second year at university, walking across the Cal campus when the word reached me somehow, I'm not really sure how, that President Kennedy had been shot. Stricken and disbelieving I headed for a friend's dorm where a group of students was gathered around a radio. We all listened without speaking as first we heard about how shots had been fired into an open car in which the President and his wife Jackie (in a pink suit) were riding along with The governor of Texas and his wife. A secret service man threw himself across the car and threw the president to the floor. The car diverted immediately to Parkland General Hospital.

Not much time elapsed before the announcement came, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States was dead, shot by an unknown gunman.

We were expecting two of John's Cal Tech buddies for the weekend, up from Southern California to watch the Big Game between Cal and Stanford. By the time we realized that the entire country had come to a grinding halt, BIg Game was cancelled, nothing was open, they were on their way. We spent the weekend in our one bedroom apartment doing the only thing there was to do...watching the whole bizarre progression unfold on our little black and white television. The arrest of Oswald, the funeral with Caroline and little John and their mother, in darkest widow's weeds and veil watching the casket pass by. 

As the weekend went on we were a captive audience. There was nothing to do but sit and watch, shake our heads, shed some tears and even resort to some black humor. It was surreal.

The paper was full of all of those pictures and stories today (except for the part about me and three men trapped in a tiny apartment for the weekend.) What I can't remember is where Frank and Harold slept or how we fed ourselves. It was just hour after hour staring in disbelief at the end of Camelot. 

It wasn't until after Frank and Harold went home that Jack Ruby, a somewhat sleazy strip club operator shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the hallway of the police station. There is still talk of conspiracy, but really, nobody could have planned such a bizarre series of events.

It was an odd juxtaposition with the final preparations for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I was busy in the kitchen all day (except for a brief foray out to PIlates). It seemed appropriate to take a picture of John surveying the scene as darkness was falling outside the warm kitchen.

I hope that all who celebrate Thanksgiving can put aside all the dire current events for the day and enjoy a happy Thanksgiving with family. and friends