The string…
…the cat.
Andy moved in closer.
Preparing to pounce!
Moments before the pounce!
Yes, Andy had a good time with the string. It’s always a winner to bring out some string when it involves Andy!
=(^+^)=
An American president died from an assassin’s bullet on this day in 1963. If you were alive and of an age to be aware of the bigger world then, this day always brings back memories of where you were, how you reacted, how it changed your perceptions of the world. He was no saint it turns out, a horndog, yet while he was President of the US, he and his wife brought class and a bit of magic to the presidency. He was the first Catholic president, something as impossible to imagine then as the first black president would be in 2008.
“The bastards shot the President!” That’s what I said to my mother when I stepped in the door at home that fated Friday. Of course, it turned out just one bastard was involved, but his act robbed us of a leader. Then, Jack Ruby shot him two days later, an act shown live on American television quite by accident. I was at church when it happened, but the act would be shown over and over on television coverage that didn’t return to sitcoms and sports till after the funeral Monday. I sat in front of the television watching it all, as did a nation.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
29 May 1917 – 22 November 1963
I was a youngster. I mainly remember the funeral on TV and my mother crying.
I never cried more than I did those terrible four days, Friday the 22nd through the next Monday. How could such a thing happen in America, I wondered, not thinking that there had been three presidents assassinated earlier and at least one attempted assassination.
The moment we learned of it became one of those still life instances, when we remember with perfect clarity everyone and everything around us, when the news came in.
I heard it from History teacher who came to class, announcing, “This is what happens in rotten capitalist America! It could never happen here.” I refrained from reminding him of botched assassination attempt on Lenin. Years later, there were a few assassination attempts on Brezhnev, never made public.
My own father survived an assassination attempt when he ran for County Judge back in 1949. He was a Marine. Heard a nose in the bushes and his instinct was to hit the ground. A bullet went over his head and a car sped off. He crawled the rest of the way home, kept low.
OMG, what a story, dear Lavinia!
America! Good grief!
It was just the last of four total presidential assassinations – Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley were assassinated before Kennedy..
I know; we learned that each one of them could only happen in a rotten capitalist country.
I was a freshman at the University of Akron on my way to a required class that was taught via CCTV – we all sat there watching
The string looks like twine, do young folks even know what twine is? I was just three years young in1963 so this doesn’t hit me like it does you, Doug. What a sickening tragedy. God bless him.
That is package wrapping twine not used up before tape got good enough to pass muster with the post office.
I see, thanks. My grandparents used twine frequently. 🥰
I did, too, though this is stiff stuff, apparently run through glue or some such to keep it held together, The string I recall using more often like cotton or some softer material, and it often was used in stores to bind packages. I recall it being on a cone-shaped core and being threaded through an eye so it pulled out straight.
Good captures of Andy mesmerized by string! It was a horrible shock that day. The school put the coverage on the PA system.
Fridays was the day we discussed current events in a civics class I was in. That afternoon, we had more than we could handle.
Sad …
I was 21 – I remember it well, although the date itself is not etched in my mind
I think it is more likely Americans recall the date since practically every year there tends to be some sort of commemoration or mention on television and in the newspapers here. It’s probably the same for 9-11 (11-9-2001 your way) here. By coincidence, the telephone number to contact with emergency and police services here in emergencies is 911, so there is an instant mnemonic for Americans for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon.
Good points
what a sad day….. it is good to keep this memory alive…. maybe we will learn something from the sad things of the past….
I doubt it where knowledge of the past seems slight or nil. That describes the typical citizen of the US.