22/11/63 by Stephen King

Author Stephen King and I are members of the same generation-we are both sons of what has been called “the greatest generation. And just as every member of the greatest generation can recall where they were on December 7, 1941 when they heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, every member of my generation can recall where they were when they heard the news that the greatest member of the greatest generation President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated.

For me, I was in class that day at George Mason Junior/Senior High School in Falls Church, Virginia. The public address system came on abruptly throughout the building, and we were told that classes were going to be cancelled that day. Then we were instructed to go to our last period classrooms and to wait to be dismissed [i.e., wait for the school busses to arrive] there. When I got to my last period classroom, there was a turned on TV, and my classmates and I watched as CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite tried to explain to the world what was going on in Dallas. JFK had been shot. It was the teary watershed event of my generation.

I remember the quiet bus ride home keeping my emotions from welling up; I remember yelling for mom with tears in my eyes and voice when I got home; I remember the incredulous look on her face when I told her the horrible news.

My grandmother and great aunt were coming up to visit that weekend, and they with my parents and brother went over to nearby Washington DC for the funeral. I couldn’t go. I was too torn up-too sadden-by the death of the president.

Instead, I stayed home and watched everything on the television. I saw the photograph of LBJ being sworn into office on Air Force One with Jackie standing by in her blood-stained dress; I saw the rider-less horse, and I saw little John saluting as his father’s funeral cortege rolled past; I saw Lee Harvey Oswald being shot down himself by Jack Ruby. I saw it all. My whole generation did, and our hearts ached.

For me and I believe for others, it was a hurt that took a long time to heal. And afterwards any mention of the assassination stirred up sadness for me. Even songs like “Abraham, Martin and John” and “American Pie” brought back sad memories of that tragic day. Now I know the song is about the plane crash that took the life of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, nevertheless I was reminded of JFKs funeral and Jackie dressed in black every time I heard the lines:

 …Bad news on the doorstep - I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside the day the music died

And I think that a lot of people thought what would have happened if the music hadn’t died that day in Dallas and if JFK had lived through his trip to the Lone Star State. It would have been a different world, a better world. For instance, a lot of people like to believe that JFK was too smart and pragmatic to have allowed America to be drawn into the Vietnam War. This is the premise of Stephen King’s book “11/22/63.” A young school teacher is shown a way to travel back to the late 1950s. After he’s told that by saving Kennedy he would save everyone who had died during the war in Southeast Asia, he accepts the commission to go back and prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from shooting JFK.

As he waits he learns the great, good, bad and evil about those happy days. Diner food compared to modern fast foods was delicious. Cars looked so cool. Everything was cheaper. Everybody smoked cigarettes. The air in every factory town was more polluted. Segregation segregated. Most importantly the teacher realized that everybody was oblivious to what was terribly obvious to him.

In this strange new world of a half century ago, the teacher falls in love with a colleague while at the same time he stalks Oswald and waits for his moment of destiny with the assassin. What will he do after Dallas? Will he live in past or should he try to take her back to this time of the Internet, hip-hop and Starbuck on every corner. The past is obdurate and difficult to change. Likewise one has to consider “the butterfly effect” which hypothesizes that even the slightest thing a person does now [whenever that might be] may/might/will have a great effect on what happens in the future.

I usually read King’s novels when I’m on vacation or want to take a break from the books that I usually read. They are like brain candy-something light and easily digested. Still, some of his books like “The Green Mile” are wonderfully poignant; “22/11/63” was one of these.

 I have to confess I enjoyed King’s travelogue through time. After all, that was my boyhood, and like all Americans, I tend to be more nostalgic and ahistorical than I should be. Still, I can remember being back then in that classroom waiting for the buses to pick us up. My classmates and I learned more about the horror and idiocy of violence and hatred than we ever did watching westerns on the television. We had been ignorant to the world good and bad around us. We shouldn’t be now.

As the fiftieth anniversary of JFKs assassination nears it’s worthwhile to think back to that terrible day. It stills makes me sad. And I know all of the forthcoming books, TV specials and cute, commercial, commemorative crap that will be available soon are going to sadden me more. After all, that was my boyhood. Still, Stephen King’s “22/11/63” is a useful reminder that we cannot change what has happened without changing what’s happening now and what may/might/will happen next.