SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1963 2013: On this day a half century ago, in the
wake of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, about all anyone could do was
hunker down in front of their television set to mourn the tragic loss of this
visionary leader. That’s precisely what I was doing.
And so, it was inevitable
that I’d soon become an eyewitness to something no one, especially a youngster
(I was 9 at the time), should’ve ever been forced to endure. My childhood innocence
would soon be shot to hell.
My NBC
affiliate, WWJ-TV Detroit, channel 4, was broadcasting the live, national feed;
the network cameras set up in the basement of the Dallas, Texas municipal
building; where the cops were in the process of transferring Lee Harvey Oswald from
the city jail to the more “secure” county lockup facility. It didn’t take long
before these lawmen had discovered exactly how flawed their game plan had been;
i.e., how sloppy their efforts had been in securing the route taken. Maybe they
just didn’t care what happened? Or was it more a matter of hoping someone would
make “something” happen?
That “something”
did happen. At 12:20 EST, I distinctly recall watching a man, wearing a hat and
dark colored suit, emerge from the throng of reporters. He turned out to be
some sort of self-appointed, one-man firing squad. For him, it was simply a
matter of READY… AIM… FIRE!
Fire he did. Oswald
dropped to the ground (subsequent replays from different cameras / camera
angles as well as still photos showed the grimace of agony, which contorted his
face). Then, before the flummoxed, incompetent cops had even begun to react, I
had reacted. My first thought was, “Now what? Would someone else soon step out
from the shadows to kill Ruby?” Was that the general MO of this locale or just
some random, isolated incident?
True, if Oswald
really had been guilty of the crime he was accused of, punishment was required.
But, what the hell had happened to the concept of innocent until proven guilty?
Of course, at that point, Ruby’s gunfire had made such a trial impossible. Nope,
there could be no orderly, legal proceedings where, via the carefully presented
testimony and examination of the forensics, we could’ve perhaps patched
together what actually happened in Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963?
Moreover, not
everyone believes in the death penalty. Looking at this from a more evolved
perspective, had the (then) 24-year-old Oswald gone to trial and been proven
guilty, had he been serving a life sentence, he may’ve still been alive today.
Even though it’s highly unlikely that he’d have ever taken the witness stand
back in 1963/64, who knows? When an incarcerated man comes to the realization
that he has fewer days ahead than those behind him, he sometimes softens into a
what-do-I-have-to-lose, tell-all mood. And tell-all is exactly what we have needed for the past half century.
Of course, maybe
there really was nothing for Oswald to tell?
Well, if
anything positive emerged from this long, fifty years ago, blood splattered
weekend, it has been my consequent attitude; i.e., my loathing of firearms (and
all things related to them).
As for the
flipped out flip side of “our” “civilization”; i.e., the others out there… WAY OUT THERE? Well, these are the ones
who learned the exact opposite lesson. Their “role models” were / still are
Oswald and Ruby. They got off on / still get off on a vigilante / Wild West /
anything goes mindset where the sound of BANG…
BANG… BANG is the soundtrack of their
lives; the “music” that tops off their Top 40 Hit Parade; that “catchy tune”
that plays over and over and over
again in their warped minds.
Over the course
of the past half-century, this foul ‘tude has had plenty of time to fester and
devolve America into our present-day, lowercase america… A.K.A., a gun sick
society seething with raw, insatiable bloodlust.
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