November 22, 1963/2013

It has been fifty years since the Kennedy assassination and the true beginning of the “sixties.” On that November 22, in 1963, we who were very young, and living a relatively slow paced, black and white, half hour of news at seven existence, were slammed into a world of real time murder, distrust, intrigue, and confusion. I can still see Sister Benedict dropping to her knees in our classroom gripping her cross and telling us all to kneel down right now and say a prayer for the president, who might in fact be dying. I ran the six blocks home to my mother who uncharacteristically hadn’t heard what had happened.  I remember trying to sort out the reality of it all. He was actually dead? Shot in the head? There was Jackie with blood all over her, people running around with guns, police cars, Air Force One, a casket, darkness, lights, he was dead. On a sunny Friday afternoon a week before Thanksgiving, just like that?

All of us experienced it in roughly the same way, a coming of age that was unwelcome and frightening, and which unbeknownst to each of us, was a catalyst for things to come. Indeed, some would argue it all went to hell after that. From Vietnam through Watergate and back again, we lived and rambled through the sixties until 1975 when that last chopper left Saigon. Now looking back it is difficult to recall what the country looked like pre-1960, except that it was more hidden from view and therefore less urgent. Things were brewing, and we were involved in marches and readings and singing and protests. But it was being fed to us in small doses, maybe two minutes out of an evening news broadcast or a few questions on a talk show or during a press conference.

All of that changed with the media becoming more and more the defining force in our daily lives, gradually building up to the then improbable 24 hours of broadcasting on too many channels to even count, and of course the internet. Now everything is thrown in our face, from massacres to wars to assassinations to tsunamis to nuclear accidents, to real time terrorist attacks, and we become skeptical of “Breaking News” stories…is this an earth shattering story or another cruise ship fire?  It’s difficult today for our younger brethren to appreciate the impact of that infamous “News Bulletin” with Walter Cronkite interrupting the midday TV shows with the news of shots being fired at the presidential motorcade in Dallas. Yes, it was a different world then, it was primarily our parents’ world, and ours by inheritance, and we watched it evolve in very short time from a decade of assassinations, war, and riots, to the high definition, information overloaded, yet essentially similar world we have today.

When we remember JFK this November 22, we remember what our country looked like then and the turmoil that was just beginning for all of us. For many of us who lived through those tragic days fifty years ago we look back not only in sadness but in awe; awe at the profound, twisted effect a tragic assassination has had on our history, and sadness that in experiencing the loss of a president we lost forever our basic innocence, our faith in a human capacity to seek out the good and just in all things.  

October Baseball

    I remember the World Series as a frustrating time of having to run home from school to catch the middle-to-final innings of the baseball games on television, wondering why everyone in the world got to watch the entire game except us kids in school. It seemed it was always the Dodgers and the Yankees, except for the few years that the Milwaukee Braves got to play and my mother cheered for them as only an old Boston Braves fan could do. Of course there were no wild card games or series, and no division play-offs. We had the American League and National League, about sixteen teams, two pennant races and winners, and then the World Series, played on sunny afternoons on black and white TV. Both leagues played under the same rules, pitchers came up to bat or were taken out of the game, good hitters had to take the field as well as hit, and managers had to manage.

I also remember being a Red Sox fan and never being able to root for the Sox in the series until 1967. That was the year we played the Cardinals and I arrived at Fenway in the wee hours to wait in a mile long line for standing room only tickets. And then watching batting practice from my standing perch in the back of the back row of the first base grandstand, afraid to move and lose my spot, I saw the great Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson warming up and knew there was no way that the Sox were going hit this guy. No way. And so it went, 1967, 1975 and again in 1986, until 2004 when they finally did it. Those of us who were die hard fans from the 50’s and 60’s onward will never forget that full moon over Fenway and the childlike thrill that came, along with a few tears, when the Sox won it all.

Each October the drama is played out for another group of teams and their fans, kids and grownups alike. Now there are more teams and more games, wildcard and division championships, night games in vivid HD color. And either because of the changes or in spite of them, it is still October baseball, with cheers and broken hearts, winners and losers, heroes and goats, and a great dramatic run to the final game that will determine the World Champion. In these uncertain times that make us all wonder when the next brick will fall, we still have the October Classic.  So as Ernie Banks would say: “Let’s play two!”  

There Used To Be a Bookshop

The Chestertown Old Book Co. closed in April after ten plus years of dealing in rare and second-hand books. A sad day for us, as it is for so many small booksellers lately. It's a difficult thing to throw in the towel on a business you love, but the choices were few and pretty clear.

So now we move on. The Chester River Press is still functioning albeit a bit wobbly after the bookshop's demise. The two enterprises meshed nicely and the bookshop provided the ideal setting for discussing book layouts, type selection, paper, printing and publishing options, editing, cover design, etc. But we will continue as a Press, and I urge you to check the website.

Much of the remaining book stock from the Old Book Co. will be sold at auction by Waverly Auction in Falls Church, Virginia. We still have some business left to do with customers who left their books with us and we will be contacting them soon. The bookshop's email account was closed, and the best method of staying in touch is to contact us at...info@chesterriverpress.com.