Sunday, November 24, 1963
Death has been working overtime.
Today he had a national television audience.
But today Death did us a big favor because every TV camera in America
was in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters when the assassin
UgLee Harvey Oswald was supposed to be moved from there to another jail.
There was a soft BOOM and the TV image rattled for a few seconds.
Good riddance, UgLee Harvey!
You killed our beloved gorgeous President,
So we kill you!
And the killer of a killer is our friend.
His name was Jack Ruby and when the television stations replayed the BOOM
one million times you could see the hero’s gun with Lee Scurvy Oswald
in the middle of the TV screen. All of the television replays
were exactly the same.
If all of the TV cameras in America were in that Dallas jailhouse basement,
why were all of the pictures the same on every TV station?
That is just a thought from me.
Some thoughts are darker than others but nothing could be darker
than the death of President Kennedy.
No more will I ever hear him talk with an accent that made me
react the same way I do when Elvis Presley shakes his hips.
Maybe there is only one TV camera good enough to show the killing
of the assassin of our Catholic President.
Television showed the killer’s death over and over again
and there were no commercials for Coca-Cola or Lucky Strikes
or someone telling us to See the USA in a Chevrolet.
The LadyBugs were at my house again today and every time
Lee Longgone Oswald died, Rita Conners cheered the loudest.
My mother was in the kitchen with Rita's father.
My father wasn’t home.
Because of the assassination he was driving
all over Manhattan delivering the New York Post
with big bold headlines about our dead President.
The next editions will have new news stories about another dead person
but at least it would be good news this time.
There wasn't a TV in the kitchen so my mother and Mr. Conners
came into the living room after the first BOOM
but didn't cheer the replays like we did.
Twenty minutes after the first BOOM, a police captain
read a statement from Jack Ruby:
I had to kill the killer of the President before he got his day in court.
We cannot have Jackie Kennedy, our beautiful First Lady, suffer one moment
in a courtroom with that vermin slime assassin.
Maria Popaluski called him Ruby Jack but I wish I had said it first.
The cheering stopped after Rita's father said, very solemnly,
"We will never hear the end of this."
A few minutes later, my mother turned off the TV and the girls went home.
I went into my room and wrote all of this in my diary
when my mother walked in with a dish.
"This is just what you need, Tina."
It was a salami and provolone sandwich with lots of macaroni salad.
My favorite Sunday supper.
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Footnote
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF 1963 is the copyrighted property of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.
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