I remember this day 50 years ago. I was in the 6th grade at Northboro School in West Palm Beach. We were in the final hour of class. The kids who were in the Safety Patrol had just left to man the crosswalks and hallways, I was in the back of the classroom, helping to clean up the tempura paints of art class. I was holding a big round jar of the paint, wiping the sides, when the pretty blonde girl who seemed to be a favorite of the teachers and office staff came back into the room. She was not supposed to be there. She should have been in the hallway outside the Principals office warning the first graders not to run as they left for the day. She wasnt smiling. She said simply, Principal says President Kennedy is shot. There was confusion and our teacher, Miss Williams, shushed us, putting us into our seats. The rest of the Safety Patrol kids came back. Everyone had been ordered to stay in their classroom. There was no sound of children from the hallway. Everything paused. There was a long moments silence. The classroom speaker, mounted over the blackboard and next to the American flag to which we pledged allegiance each day, made that weird snapping and clicking noise of coming to life. The principal, a distant man to us and who wore brown suits in the Florida heat was talking to someone and not directly into the big microphone that had its own desk in the front office. Yes, then a single beat, its true. The last part was not so clearly spoken into the mike but we heard it because each child and teacher sat without moving, waiting for this single voice of local authority to give us permission to move again, to come back to normal. President Kennedy has been shot and they say he is dead. There was more. There was also gasping and the girls became upset and one boy laughed. I dont know who it was. I did not look around after that. I was still holding the jar of tempura paint, thick rivulets of the excess, splashed color on the sides. It was still wet and my hands were covered in it. It was red, deep, thick red and I dont know why that was the color I was cleaning at the time. I could have been cleaning the green or the blue, my favorite color, but I was looking at this weirdly inappropriate color although I did not realize it at the time. I just wanted to clean up and go home. They let us out at the normal time, about 10 minutes later. There was no running and no laughing. Even the children understood. I rode my bike home where there was already a stack of newspapers to be delivered on my route for the Palm Beach Post and Times. I washed my hands and sat to fold them, sticking each into the old mail carriers basket. I rode my route and when I arrived home there were two more bundles. They were special editions and the top of each page was marked in big black, block letters with one word: EXTRA! The rest of that day I would not escape the feeling or the story. I stood on the busiest corner of my neighborhood, like a kid in those old black and white gangster films made in the 30s and usually starring Jimmy Cagney or Edward G. Robinson, yelling the words, EXTRA! KENNEDY DEAD! My right hand held the papers in the air and was still tinted by red tempura paint. It had caked under my fingernails. No one noticed as I sold every copy of that paper at ten cents each. I remember this.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 01:32:31 +0000
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