THAT LONG AGO?

It was a Friday around early afternoon, and Benny “The Buffer” Gallinaro, Ernie “Butch” Mancuso, and yours truly were going out the rear door of John’s Bargain Store on South Ocean Avenue in Patchogue. It was a great Chinese lunch we had, and on the overhead speakers we could hear the radio, and the announcement that JFK had been shot! THAT WAS 48 YEARS AGO, TODAY!

I remember the sadness the permeated the air, young high school and college kids, dreaming of great things we could do in our futures, filled with hope for our country and determined to be successful, all because of one man. If you didn’t love JFK, you were either a Soviet spy or the older generation and a Nixon lover. And now those dreams were shot in the head!

Benny, Butch and me were in a hurry to get home to turn on our TVs and hear the news as it developed. There was a sense of great shock, foreboding and suspicion. Did the Russians do this, was Fidel Castro behind it, or was it LBJ, looking to become president? Maybe Wall Street had a hand in it? Would we be going to war, or was this a coupe by the military?

I switched on the TV in the living room when I got home, a big color screen Magnivox, and there was Walter Cronkite, wearing dark heavy rimmed glasses, giving us updates, and sitting in a pressroom, not his usual set for the evening news. Finally he stopped for a moment, raised his eyes to check a wall clock, giving us the news that JKF had died, his eyes welling up. It felt like someone had slammed the door, a shocking, earth shaking cold-shivering tremor that stole it’s way down your spine and out through your soul! It was the beginning of my life as an adult. I knew then that nothing would ever be the same again. The family, the institutions I attended, (my school burning down that previous March), the very country itself, would always be shaken at it’s roots or foundations, we were not impervious to death or catastrophe.

I remember going to work that evening in Hill’s Supermarket, next to the old Plaza movie house, since torn down, and listening to everyone, both staff and customers.  All seemed to be relating where they were when they heard the news for the first time. I saw young girls crying and big old men with their heads down.

Today, the young adults of the world, the makers and shakers, go about their history, not ever knowing the cultural and mental shock that took its toll on my generation and older. They cannot understand our prejudices, or feel our sorrow when another long established institution disappears, one we may have grown old with. They will laugh at us, have fun with the fact that we are older, and maybe that will explain how we felt with our parents, and the great depression, and WWII.

I guess what goes around, does come around!