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77 ELEVEN TWENTY-TWO 6 It is 10:30 p.m. and I am tired. But before I leave this day, it is fitting I should write down its date, as it is one none of us will ever forget. So exhausted am I in mind and spirit I cannot find other words. Good night, my dear ones. I know how much this day’s infamy has shaken you. —Mom writing her parents, November 22, 1963 My memories of JFK’s assassination want to come in shivering from the cold of a Minnesota November and stand by the big furnace in the Millstone’s basement. It’s been turned on since October, and you can see the flame in its belly through the slots in the iron door, roaring orange to send steam up four floors to distant radiators. Outside in the valley, thin not-quite-winter snow blows through the fields of cut cornstalks. In the yard, our secret summer places are abandoned; June’s bicycles are in the garage, July’s toys in the bushes under a layer of leaves and frozen crust. Even October’s color has flown south. Everything about November 1963 is in black and white, like the news shows on the television set in Dad’s study. Down at the school in Mrs. Maus’s fourth-grade classroom—up on the wall above pictures of Pilgrims, Indians, and turkeys—is the intercom speaker. From here our principal, Mr. Patzer, announces, “Boys and girls, I’m sorry to say that the president of the United States has been shot and killed. There will be a period of national mourning and school will be dismissed for the rest of the day.” There is a cold quarter-mile walk home with brothers Collin and Danny, up the steep hill and past the Hallenbecks’. Soon we are clomping into the Millstone, peeling parkas and dropping mittens. Roger and the oldest three are out of town—on a sightseeing vacation in New York City—and so we call for Mom, breathless to tell her the news. She answers from Dad’s study, where we find her in front of the TV. There are no cartoons, no commercials, just the man with the black glasses sitting at the desk with the phone on it ELEVEN TWENTY-TWO 78 and talking in that voice adults use when something really bad is happening and they don’t want you to feel the way they feel. It’s not until we’ve been in the study for a while and seen the look in Mom’s eyes that we realize something big and terrible has happened. The country’s father was suddenly gone and the world wasn’t as safe a place as it was at lunchtime in the gym. By bedtime, a light snow is falling. Jeff, 2006 On November 21, 1963, the night before it happened, Dad and we three oldest boys had gone to New York City, just to visit. Did the usual stuff—top of the Empire State Building, toured NBC, watched the taping of a TV show, The Match Game. That evening the four of us were at dinner in a little restaurant. Dad was across from me and I remember it was a tense dinner. I think Kip and Dad were having one of those discussions that bordered on an open argument. Dad was boozing and I remember he said none of us should “get nervous and start masturbating.” There were other demeaning remarks, but that’s the one I remember. Somehow, Dad became so irritated with Kip he suddenly told Kip and me to just go; go off and do whatever we wanted. Dad got up, took Chris and left. I remember watching them cross the busy New York street and disappear. The next morning, the twenty-second, Kip was too pissed off at Dad to stay any longer and left for Minnesota. Dad, Chris, and I took a subway downtown to see the Statue of Liberty. It was there on the train someone told us JFK had been shot. We never went out to the Statue of Liberty. Instead we stood along the wrought-iron fence in Battery Park listening to someone’s radio. That night, Dad went out and took pictures of Broadway. All the advertising lights were off, restaurants were closed, and there was very little traffic. Kip, 2006 I was sitting in a plane at O’Hare when the captain announced Kennedy...

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