Jack O’Shea’s bar and TV shop on Main St., Fethard.
This piece was published in ‘Ireland’s Own’ in November of 2018.
A Day of Days
It was an ordinary day that would later become a day of days. A day that would live forever in my memory and in the memory of millions. One that began for me as just another schoolday in November. Just another Friday that carried no inkling early on of what evening would bring: news of the killing of a president.
I’d raced home from school at lunchtime. Thoughts full of what I was missing back in the schoolyard, bolting my lunch, running back to join in the games before the bell sounded for the end of play.
Unaware as I ran that a new day was breaking over the city of Dallas: that the president’s killer was waking to what seemed another ordinary day, leaving his house for work at the Texas School Book Depository: but secretly going over what he was planning to do some five hours later.
It would take but a minute and shock the world.
The day dragged along as ordinary days do. At five-thirty I was sitting in the kitchen eating supper. Bickering with my brothers over who was getting most to eat.
While the great man who would soon be no more was at Love Field airport. Sitting into a limousine, setting off in a motorcade for downtown Dallas, tens of thousands thronging the streets, waiting in the Texas sunshine to smile, to wave, to cheer their president as he passed. Lee Harvey Oswald was already in position at a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository high above the happy throng in Dealey Plaza. Overlooking the motorcade route.
Gun ready, sights set. Waiting.
At six-thirty Tony had called and we’d gone to watch whatever was showing on the television sets in Jack O’Shea’s shop window on Main St. The November air cold on our bare legs as we passed the cinema. Glimpsing the projectionist through a window, loading that evening’s film onto the projector. A film that would not be screened.
The river glittered darkly below us as we crossed the convent bridge.
The year was paling towards its end. November had but a week remaining, our thoughts and desires were turning towards Christmas.
JFK had already been fatally wounded when we’d left the house. But we didn’t know. Those who were there looking on did not know. The shots had rung out, he had fallen, slumped against Jackie, people still cheering and waving to him even as his life ebbed.
Meanwhile, we were standing close up to the shop window, cold creeping into us through our thin-soled shoes, settling on our backs like a damp dew from above. People stopping for a moment or two to watch the black and white pictures, asking us what was on, saying what a miserable night it was before hurrying off home to their fires. A sports program of no interest to us was being broadcast. Still we stood, still we watched, waiting, wishing something exciting would appear on the screen. Something with a story, something with drama. Even if we couldn’t hear the dialogue very well.
But drama greater than we could ever have imagined was already unfolding.
A caption suddenly flashed onto the screen: ‘Special News Bulletin.’
We became curious when the newsreader appeared, struggling to compose himself, as he read the bulletin. Through the plate glass window we strained to hear his muted voice. Kennedy, shot, Dallas, were the words we made out. We stood unmoving for a moment, staring at the screen, trying to make sense of what we’d heard. A test card appeared. Doom-laden music began to play.
Then, without speaking, we wheeled away, raced for home, gripped by a strange, un-nameable, fear.
The mother was standing, pale-faced and stunned, beside the radio, listening intently, raising a hand for silence as I burst in.
‘He’s still alive,’ she said. Reading my face. There was hope so. We sat there in the kitchen, clinging to that. Trying to visualise what had happened in that city in Texas. It was unthinkable, unimaginable that he would die. He who had been here a few short months before, so glamourous, so full of life. A hero to us, now fallen to an assassin’s bullet.
But very soon another bulletin killed our hope. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was dead. Slain by twenty-four year old Lee Harvey Oswald with three bullets fired from his mail-order rifle. What he’d done had taken but a minute out of all the minutes of that ordinary day. But the enormity of his action brought us and the rest of the world to the edge of doom – and catapulted an unknown library worker and an ordinary day, November 22d 1963, into history.
If you wish to share this story choose one of the options below.
Jon Fog 