THE BALLAD OF JFK

THE BALLAD OF JFK:

48 years ago, a few days after the assassination, I sat down and wrote this in about 15 minutes, to the tune of a song I often was singing in those days, Woody Guthrie's "Dust Storm Disaster." I was a Cold War vet in my mid-20s, politically naive, another dumb American citizen, and at the time I had no clue of the horror and historic significance of what was happening in my country, a de facto coup d'etat. I would learn a lot in the near and distant futures, all of it frightening and disheartening. I learned from Voltaire that the world was one thing, my garden another. I learned to enjoy myself despite politics.


Here's a vignette from my new novel in progress ...

The Old Masters, 1963

COMING DOWN THE HALLWAY, CJ ran into Henry, a graduate student in English, whom CJ knew from folk music circles. Henry's face was wet and swollen, as if he'd been weeping.

“About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters,” said Henry, his voice shaking.

“Is something wrong?”

Henry said, “How well they understood its human position. How it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.”

“Henry, what is it?”

“Auden.”

Suddenly Henry embraced him. He said something that was muffled against CJ's shoulder. CJ pulled back.

“They shot JFK,” said Henry.

The President died before CJ was able to get home to Helen, where they cried together. As painful as it was, they couldn't stop watching television. Helen called her parents. CJ called his mother. They stayed up too late and went to bed too tired to make love.

Apparently a lone nut had killed the President, who in a few days would be killed himself on live television. CJ watched the rerun in horror. First all the horrific beatings of Negroes in the south, and now this – what was the world coming to? Over a decade would pass before CJ began formulating an answer to the question, one that was far more terrifying than anything that had occurred to him at the time.