November 22, 1963 is the kind of day in which people always remember where they were and what they were doing at the exact moment that day burned into their memories. I remember I was in the locker room with my classmates changing back into my street clothes when the announcement came over the school PA system.

"Attention everyone," came this barely changed, frightened voice over the speakers. "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas, and they say he's in the hospital right now..."

School let out early that day, and before I took my first step off campus towards home, the president had already been declared dead from the gunshot wounds of an assassin.

I hadn't really thought much about the president or the government before this. I was 13 barely more than a month, obsessed with girls and popping my first zits. But even in my self-absorbed little world I could see that nothing would be the same after this. In my lifetime, an elected president was killed in front of his people, and

no one could come up with a logical explanation that didn't sound like history's most elaborate and underhanded coup d'etat.

My mother, no big fan of the Kennedys, was not particularly saddened by the event, and I half suspect she wasn't all that surprised. We watched the funeral procession and the burial at Arlington on TV, and then we switched channels.

More immediately significant in my life was my mother's bout with pneumonia that kept her out of work for two months and suddenly sandbagged with medical expenses she could barely afford to pay. Bob was still living with us at the time, and still helping out, but it was plain to see that as 1964 rolled around we would have to move out of this big house I had come to love.

I was really looking forward to another year at Campos Verdes Junior High. I had made a lot of friends there, and I enjoyed the two years in North Highlands that passed by too quickly in which I was coming out of the shadows of a troubled and bleak time in my life.

Being the baby in the family, my opinion didn't matter, and I didn't offer it, fearful that my brother would slap me out of it or my mother we make light of it. I'm sure a lot