San Antonio (part 1)....the end of a presidency and the beginnings of chaos!

Well, our journey has brought us to San Antonio Texas....a real culture shock for a kid who was brought up on the East coast!. We arrive early summer of 1963. I was pulled out of the 11th grade in Lutherville/Timonium Maryland just weeks before the end of school. I will be discussing my enrollment into MacArthur High School and the interesting things that happened to me in my Senior year in later posts.

But first, I need to touch on maybe the most significant event of the 20th Century and the event that would be the beginnings of 7 years of total chaos both for me and our Country. That of course was the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Friday November 22, 1963.

I have always been a healthy kid.....never ever missing a day of school because of illness or accident. I think I even got gold stars for my attendance. But that was about to change. Friday November 22, 1963...I woke up feeling really bad. I got up and started to get ready for school but I felt so bad that I told my mom that I thought I needed to stay home. I really wanted to go to school because our high school football team was playing a big game that night against Robert E Lee....our crosstown rival!!. I didn't want to miss the pep rally and all the fun stuff we did before these big games but I was so sick....I just fell back into bed.

Around noon, I turned on the TV....yes, I had a TV in my room and was starting to watch the local news. Well, as we all know....a bulletin came on saying President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I thought it was a joke at first but the more the news played, the more it became real. Remember, we are in San Antonio, just 5 hours south of Dallas. I called out to my mom who was in the kitchen making me lunch. I yelled at her to come into my bedroom.....I think the President had been shot!! She rushed in and sat on the end of the bed and we both watched the TV until it was confirmed that yes, he had been shot and yes, he had died. I noticed that my mom was crying and I really thought to myself...why would my mother cry over something like this. My mother was not a crier. She got up and quietly walked out of my room. I heard her dialing the phone....she was calling my dad. You know, it's funny but I don't even remember my dad being around during any of the next four days. He may have been traveling, I just don't remember.

Well, like everyone else in America, I stayed glued to the TV. For the next four days, I did nothing but watch TV. I liked NBC, so that's the network I watched. Even then, NBC was a liberal network and yes, I was noticing stuff like that. I was a very aware teenager....maybe to aware in retrospect!!  So anyway...I watched all day Saturday and into Sunday. I watched live, as Lee Harvey Oswald what shot dead on live TV.....talk about your reality show. I saw Jack Ruby get wrestled to the ground and eventually hauled off by the Texas Rangers. Those were heady times and the world was changing. This was just the opening salvo. I watched the funeral on Monday and by that time, I had forgotten about my flu...the football game was canceled so I really didn't miss anything and we were back to school on Tuesday.

This memory is probably the most vivid one I have.....I can remember everything. I guess it is for everybody who was around that day and witnessed it all happening live.

Well, life goes on and Johnson was made President. No small coincidence that Lyndon Johnson was from Texas....just sayin'!!