JFK

The JFK assassination … 56 years ago today.

I first became aware of it sometime around 5th grade or so. Must’ve been 1978, 79. It was one of those SRA kits we had to do back then. An SRA kit was a big box of about a hundred laminated cards the size of a regular sheet of paper. Each card contained a mini-article or a short story that sequentially got more difficult, harder and harder, as you progressed through them. You read through them, answered questions, and every now and then the teacher moved you up a level. Memory is vague, but I believe my first encounter with the events of November 22, 1963 was from one of those cards.

Then nothing for twelve or thirteen years. Oliver Stone’s JFK came out around Christmas 1991, and I saw it with pals and girlfriends in the theaters. It intrigued me, me who knew little of it as back then I was in the thick of my musician / band phase, and I rarely had time to crack a book (and if I did, it was of the horror King – Koontz variety).

Then again nothing for six more years till, one Memorial Day weekend, stood up by friends, I found myself alone doing laundry at my parents’ house. My stepfather had some books on the assassination, and on a whim I cracked one open. (Six Seconds in Dallas, by Josiah Thompson.) I was riveted, and read through the other two or three he had until the wee hours of the morning.

Then again nothing for nine years, till the bizarre fascination returned with a vengeance. From about 2006 to 2011 I bought a dozen or so books on the assassination and read or skimmed through them all. Not sure why, exactly, but I was taken in with the immensity of the alleged conspiracy. The little micro discrepancies as well as the big picture stuff. Like my childhood interest in Squatch and aliens and the paranormal, I was never a true believer, but I enjoyed the creepy campiness of what I was reading.

Then, in 2011, I read Gerald Posner’s book on the assassination and chased it with chunks of Vincent Bugliosi’s. Both men are firmly in the Lone Gunman camp, and both wrote with precision, power and passion and I was persuaded.

But I still appreciate a good conspiracy now and then.

Over the years I’ve posted a bunch of stuff on the topic here at the Hopper:

Overview, written on the forty-fifth anniversary

How I’d investigate the assassination, had I a couple million dollars cash laying around

Elm Street slow-down

How the cult of conspiracy has crept into our culture

Review of the exhaustive Norman Mailer book, Oswald’s Tale

How deep the rabbit hole

And yesterday’s entry into the labyrinth, White SuitConspiracy.

I think I’ll follow up this post with a list. Bloggers like lists! I like lists! I think I’ll list the best books on the JFK Assassination I’ve read, for those who may be interested in dipping a toe in the water or comparing notes …

Stay tuned.