In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I decided to read Stephen King’s 11/23/63. Before starting to read, I revisited memories from that time as a twelve year old with little political awareness aside from the fear that permeated my home during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The day of the assassination, everyone I asked remembered, as I did, being dismissed from either school or work. My mom taught reading at a Catholic Remedial Reading Clinic. A priest in obvious distress announced what had happened and sent everyone home. Our junior high school principal’s voice broke over the intercom. He couldn’t disguise his tears. He told of the assassination and declared school dismissed. I usually walked home from school, but that day my mom picked me up. Somehow she knew she needed to do so. I sensed, but did not comprehend, that something life altering had happened.

I vaguely remember Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, live, in black and white. My family huddled around the television in the basement and watched the drama, unscripted, unpretentious, as it occurred in real time. It wasn’t like television today. No blood.  No guts. Maybe a puff of smoke?  A wiry, little man crumpled to the ground. A swarm of men subdued the shooter. Anarchy, a word which meant nothing to me, might have seemed closer to the lives of ordinary people after that televised event.

What stuck in my mind was the caisson transporting President Kennedy’s body. I watched the infamous riderless or caparisoned horse, a tradition in ceremonies for fallen soldiers dating back to Genghis Khan. The stirrups housed boots placed backwards in them. Walter Conkrite voiced a compelling narrative. He commented that the skittish horse seemed to not want to complete his journey. I thought the horse symbolized a world that didn’t want to believe our president had died.

My mom celebrates another birthday in October. It seems her wisdom grows exponentially with every year she ages. I had never asked her how Kennedy’s death affected her. She answered with succinct wisdom: “When you remember exactly where you were when something happens, it is an historical event. For me, the first time was Pearl Harbor. The second was Kennedy’s assassination.” She continued. “Even if people didn’t agree with him or vote for him, they felt optimistic because of his ideals.” My parents had supported him. My aunt, a staunch Republican, had too. Mom recalled a pall over the country comparable to the nation in mourning post 9/11. “You don’t expect an assassination in your lifetime.” Mom knew the name of the horse that had pulled Kennedy’s coffin through the streets of the capitol. She also knew that Black Jack, a half-Morgan, was named for General John J. Pershing.

My best friend, Gina, described an initial buzz in her household. Her father, a nuclear physicist, reacted because of the implications for his profession. Her mother responded as a woman and a mother with concerns for Mrs. Kennedy and her children. Gina remembered a subdued hush in her neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Children stayed inside. People displayed flags. And the world waited for what would happen next.

When I bought 11/23/63, I had stopped reading Stephen King. I didn’t think he could top Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, It, or Misery.  How much imagination can one man have? The mere heft of the book presented reading it as a daunting task. At over eight hundred pages, I knew this would be no two-day-nose-in-book venture. It took me several days interrupted by work, school, and daily travails to finish, and several more days for the contents to percolate in my head. Weeks later driving to the gym, the brewing epiphany hit me. King’s novel about the possibility of time travel was so brilliantly executed it became a portal for the reader. I visited web sites that discussed the extensive research Mr. King did to construct a credible portrayal of the 60’s. He created magic. The settings established themselves as characters. His attention to the details of clothing, social mores, street names, architecture, and, of course, music transported this reader in time and place. The more I read, the more I experienced the cultural immersion of a time traveler.

Al Templeton shows Jake Epping/George Amberson the gateway to the past. Due to illness, Templeton realizes he can’t carry out his plan to stop the Kennedy assassination. Al provides Jake with the information and the means to complete an act that will change the course of history. Ever cautious, Jake does a trial run and facilitates the death of an abusive husband and father. He returns to his present and confronts the basic law of time travel: Changing the past results in unpredictable outcomes. When Templeton dies, Jake makes peace with it and decides to follow through with Al’s plan.

There the history lesson begins. Mr. King takes us to Dallas and Ft. Worth and gives us a sense of the economics and politics of the time. He depicts Lee Harvey Oswald as a skinny, abusive man with mommy issues. His mother, Marguerite, interferes with and taunts her son. The group Jake observes could easily be labeled a terrorist cell today. As the reader becomes privy to Jake’s meticulous planning, the writing illuminates the dynamics that lead up to Kennedy’s death. History comes alive. And the reader enjoys an alternative ending.

Many theories persist about the assassination of JFK. This novel shifts the focus away from the question of “who” to the “what ifs.” Had Kennedy not been killed would the United States still have amassed $500 billion in arms sales during the Viet Nam War? Would the Peace Corps have been as successful? Would the Federal Reserve have been restructured to prevent the ruling powers from manipulating the economy? Would Camelot have been a sustainable ideal?

Because I live near Dallas and have worked with doctors who trained at Parkland, I feel a second-hand closeness to that day in 1963. I walk by the book depository with trepidation and walk along the grassy knoll expecting to hear shots and to see ghosts. I miss the security of thinking things like that don’t happen in my country. I long for a leader who inspires with words like: “Ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.”

“Anybody here seen my old friend John…I just looked around and he’s gone.” Dion

 

 

 

 

 

 

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