1963 –The Year I Turned Seven
The Death of Camelot
As I
continued to dwell internally in “Vinny Land” I managed to
be aware of the events of the time.
I remember
watching the news and seeing that President Kennedy and
Martin Luther King, Jr. continue to battle racism. There
were the two hundred thousand people that marched at our
country’s capitol
Some
people were nervous about the black community rallying
together.
Martin Luther King Jr. composes his famous “Letter from
Birmingham Jail”. I remember the horrific vision from TV
news that in Birmingham, Alabama, Sheriff Eugene “Bull”
Connor have thousands of African Americans, many of whom are
children arrested and then orders fire hoses and police dogs
to be let loose on the crowd of demonstrators.
I remember
the mixed feelings that people had when they heard
Martin Luther King,
Jr. delivered his “I have a Dream” speech on the steps at
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
I remember
how excited we were as a nation when Kennedy visited Berlin
and was welcomed as a visiting movie star. He visited his
ancestral home in Ireland and was greeted by the Pope.
I remember
exactly where I was the day Camelot died – the day the music
died. Kennedy Assassinated on Friday, November 22nd
it has been said that everyone can remember where they were
when they heard the news that President Kennedy was killed.
I was at St. Francis I walked in on Sister Grace Beatrice as
she was weeping dreadfully. Every one was in a state of
shock and school was closed early that day. I came home to
see my mother weeping piteously from the news that President
Kennedy was assassinated. Literally the grief was wide and
deep for a long time. I think his untimely death damaged the
country and the damage is still felt to this day.
In the
past fifty years I have not seen the same affect from the
death of any other American or World icon; not Bruce Lee,
Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, John Lennon, or even Robert
F. Kennedy, no one’s death has had such deep impact.
My mother
claimed that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was
responsible. Since then the conspiracy theories abound, from
the soviets, the CIA, the mafia, the alien conspiracy, The
illuminati simply everyone has been implicated.
The alleged assassin
of Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald is shot and killed by Jack
Ruby in Dallas, Texas on live national television.
Beatle Mania was all
the rage this year a new buzz of excitement hit the
air when on February 1963 for the first Time the Beatles
were heard in America. On August of 1963 on American
Bandstand in Philadelphia on the Dick Clark – She love
you and then I want to hold your hand.
Unbeknownst to me at
the time Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were expelled from
the teaching faculty of Harvard University. Timothy Leary
for not showing up to teach his former classes and Richard
Alpert for allegedly sharing with some of his students off
campus his stash of LSD or Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.
Some
new music was; Go Away Little Girl by Steve
Lawrence, Walk Right In by the Rooftop Singers,
Hey Paula by Paul and Paula, Walk Like a Man by
The Four Seasons, Our Day Will Come by Ruby and the
Romantics, He’s So Fine by the Chiffons, I will
Follow Him by Little Peggy March, If You Wanna Be
Happy by Jimmy Soul, It’s My Party by Lesely
Gore, Sukiyaki by Sakamot.
The great
movies of this year were
Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, The
Longest Day, Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O’Toole, Omar
Shariff, and Anthony Guinn, How the West Was Won, Mutiny on
the Bounty with Marlon Brando, Son of Flubber, To Kill a
Mockingbird with Gregory Peck, Bye Bye Birdie, Come Blow
Your Horn, Tom Jones, Lilies of the Field with Sidney Poiter,
and Hud with Steve McQueen.
This year my
mother read these books:
The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna and J.F.K.: The Man and
the Myth by Victor Lasky.
This year
Nobel prizes were awarded to
Eugene Paul Wigner, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, J. Hans D. Jensen
for physics; Karl Ziegler, Gjuilo Natta for chemistry; Sir
John Carew Eccles, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, Andrew Fielding
Huxley for physiology or medicine; Giorgos Seferis for
Literature and the Red Cross for Peace.
Some new TV
shows was
The Beverly Hill Billies, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lucy
Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, Petticoat Junction, and My
Favorite Martian with Ray Walston and Bill Bixby,
The Art Linkletter
Show, Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre, The Dakotas,
The Danny Kaye Show, The Farmer’s Daughter, The Fugitive,
The Judy Garland Show, Mr. Novak, The Outer Limits, The
Patty Duke Show, The Richard Boone Show.
This year other notable
Starships of basic primate design were also launched into
this world to explore the Cosmos. I mean notable because
they are both famous and their sphere of influence has been
greater than most humans both good and bad.
These Starship Primates
are:, Larry the Cable Guy - American comedian and he will
play a key role in mankind’s salvation; Quentin Tarantino -
American actor, director, writer, and producer who is
destined to become one of my best friends and will
eventually make a movie about this book and my life in the
genre that he is so famous for; Jet Li - Chinese martial
artist and actor who will also play a part in the movie that
Quentin will film and direct depicting my life.
Also this year the
following females destined to become my lovers or perhaps a
permanent mate are: Phoebe Cates - American actress, Lisa
Kudrow - American actress, Tori Amos - American singer,
Lauren Holly - American actress, Kathy Ireland - American
model and actress.
Sadly this year mankind
will experience a loss of Sri Deep Narayan Mahaprabhuji – a
Hindu saint
