“The Summer of his Years ”

I had planned to publish a paper I wrote on Kennedy in College, called “My Tarnished Camelot”, but I

have not been able to find it. I know I have seen it in the last five years. So instead, some thoughts

from November, 22, 1963 and the weekend that followed:

  To my Mother who was born in 1918 the pivotal event in her early life was not Pearl Harbor, by then she had graduated from college and been married almost 9 months, but instead was the year 1936 when she was 18 and of course the event was the abdication of the British throne by George the 8^th (The Duke of Windsor,) over Wallace Simpson his future wife. To my mother it was the most romantic thing possible, and she told me she cried at the time, it was a visceral event for her. ( From my reading of history, it is a good thing for all of us that this shallow and vain man and was not the King of England and had any kind of British Bully pulpit prior to and during World War II.) She was 18 and in College at the University of Utah.

 To me a confirmed member of the baby boomer generation, the pivotal event in my life, is of course November 22, 1963 and the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That fall I had just started my first year of what we then called Junior High School and they now refer to as Middle School, at  Bryant Junior High School. I had just finished what was called first lunch and was just settling down in my Spanish Class, when I heard a loud uproar from other parts of the building. A few minutes later, although it seemed to be an eternity, an eternity with out knowing what was happening, remember there were no smart phones, no texts, email or twitter, and no one had entered the room from outside and said anything. I did notice that the teacher Miss Ohme seemed sad and removed, after awhile an announcement came on the classroom speaker and told us that the President had been killed and that school was ending. Normally we had a bus that took us back up the hill to the avenues, but no arrangement had been made to have the bus there, much earlier that day, so I started to walk up I street.

   I soon ran into my cousin through marriage Jon Roylance. His mother had recently married my Uncle Ranch Kimball, whose second wife Helen had died in 1962. Helen was my mother's only and older sister. We were not entirely quiet on the walk up the hill, but we did not spend very much time discussing the events of that day. At the corner of I street and 13^th Avenue I said good bye to Jon and walked over to H street and on the corner my families home.

My mother was in tears and like most American's we spent the rest of Friday , Saturday , Sunday and the funeral Monday watching the television coverage. I will add at this point in time, that my family for whatever reason was an NBC family. My Aunt Pat Fontaine, one of my father's sisters, in the early sixties had been part of the cast  on the Today Show. . I watched almost religiously the nighty Huntley Brinkley report and although my father and I would watch Walter Cronkite on the 20^th Century Series, we were not for the most part a CBS following family, other than for dramatic programs.

  There are so many poignant memories I have from that weekend, but they probably would not differ that much from most people, John John's salute, Caroline putting her hand under the flag to touch the coffin directly, A magnificent eulogy from Senator Mike Mansfield, “she took the ring from her finger and placed it in his hand”, Black Jack the riderless horse, The black watch bagpiper's, the demeanor of Charles De Gaulle, the outfit of Haile Selassie, the funeral cortege , people walking during various parts of the procession and the haunted figure  of Robert Kennedy. . And the throng's of people beyond a number I could understand, standing in line to walk by the coffin in the rotunda of the Capitol. With my father, Bob, I watched the first televised murder on Sunday of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby and I can remember as if it was last week, Tom Pettit's comments, “He's been shot!, He's been Shot! , Lee Oswald has been shot!”

  Like many American's we purchased the “Torch Is Passed”, book on the Kennedy's, I remember when they came out reading Jim Bishop's book on Kennedy and I have read many times and still have the original family copy of William Manchester's ,”Death of a President.” Over the ensuing decades I have read every major biography of John F. Kennedy, a lot, but not all of the conspiracy theory books, and Norman Mailer's Pulitzer wining Oswald Tale and Vincent Lugosi’s “Reclaiming History.” Just recently I have watched the PBS special's devoted to JFK and Nova's investigation. And yes, I have watched Oliver Stone's JFK several times, although it make me mad each time I have seen it.

 I have never fully understood why a majority of American's still doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was

a lone gunman and that Oswald acted alone. I suspect that it stems from the fact that how could some

one so regal in the good sense of the word, as John F. Kennedy was , be taken out by such a

non-entity. The scales just do not seem to balance in any way shape or form. Of course the fact that

Oswald was never able to explain his actions, has added to the question marks.

  If I have learned and come to understand anything from these countless book and biographies I have read, it is was what a compartmentalized person JFK was, how fragile for most of his life, his health was, how his friends tried to arrange things so that he was virtually never alone, I guess all those countless hours in the infirmary at Choate and the time he spent at the Mayo Clinic, took their toll, and that although Lee Harvey Oswald suffered from dyslexia, he was not stupid, in any sense of the word.I also can't forget Lee Harvey Oswald's mother Marguerite . And still feel sorry for his brother Robert who's life was for ever changed and who had done nothing wrong.

   I think about November 22^nd. Each year, and with this being the 50^th there has of course been much public discussion. I am not sure that this country has ever really gotten over the assassination of President Kennedy and although it was the first of a number of senseless murders, I always seem to link JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and RFK and finishing up with Kent State as being a line of horrible transgressions on our collective psyche . I remember saying to myself that I would be in my sixties when the 50^th anniversary came around and it seemed a life time in the future. It has been a life time and in mostly good ways this country has changed a lot.

 Today's title comes from a song just after the Assassination, the recording I first heard was on the NBC program with David Frost, “That Was the Week That Was,” which was broadcast on November 23^rd, 1963. and was sung by someone name Millicent Martin. The song was actually written by Connie Francis. I can still remember the whole song from memory. “Forget I can't, I still recall his eyes.”

With next week marking the 50^th. Anniversary on the 22^nd. Of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The watershed event of most baby boomers I thought I would share a sonnet I wrote in High School.

I plan next week to also share a paper I wrote about Kennedy from Prescott  College.

THE CARDINAL

The Cardinal in Red a complex man.

Drones across the grave his nasal tears.

Speaking the words distilled two thousand years.

Does as he always does the best he can.

Do you remember how it all began.

Our understanding flags there's no such plan.

And thus we've had commissions talks and books.

And tried to make an elegance of grief.

We've tried interpretations on for size,

But cried inside recalling boyish looks.

Though young, though old, its shaken our belief.

Forget we can't, I still recall his eyes.

"Long Days Journey into Light"

I have to admit that I have used this same title for an article I wrote several decades ago, about a Motorcycle ride to California for the Stinger, the monthly newsletter of the Beehive Beemers, BMW Motorcycle Club of Utah. I used to write articles fairly frequently and served as the editor of the newsletter for several stints.. The title of course is a re-phrasing of the Eugene O'Neill masterpiece, “Long Day's Journey Into Night, a play that I have seen several times, have on disc with Katherine Hepburn , Sir Ralph Richardson, a young Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell, and and have read several times. In an interview once O'Neill was quoted as saying “ Happiness, I will write about happiness if I ever see it.” I have always been partially drawn to that brooding Irish and Northern climate countenance, but equally drawn towards much of T. S. Eliot's poetry such as this line from Portrait of a Lady, :” I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world to be wonderful and youthful, after all.” Now back to the journey

This is the earliest in the year that I have ever ridden from Salt Lake City through the Great Basin, my great good keep, to California. In mid-March I flew down to Fresno for a week to assist my sister Kathy in preparing a HABEAS  petition on behalf of a death row inmate. We talked about me coming back to help her finish it up, but the difference in flying between buying the ticket two weeks in advance, rather than a month was a couple of hundred dollars and I told her I would ride my BMW instead

Originally, I was planning on leaving the morning of April 6^th. But in looking at the weather, and in seeing that it would be Conference weekend for the LDS Church, and probable rain, I decided, on the spur of the moment to leave the afternoon of Thursday the 4^th of April and my plan was to ride to Tonopah where I would spend the night. In the morning I rode Frontrunner to my office at Thanksgiving Point, did office type things for awhile and I caught the 12:16 train back to Salt Lake Central. On arriving home, I quickly loaded the bike, Saddlebags were practically packed for my anticipated Saturday departure and by about 1:45 in the afternoon I was heading West on I-80 and my turnoff at Wendover for highway 93A to Ely. It was a very windy day, don't know what it was on the Beaufort scale, but it was maybe a notch or two below the issuing of a high-wind warning between Salt Lake City and Wendover. So with new tires, new riding boots and fresh spark-plugs and the remains of the day before the candle that lights the sky would disappear on the horizon, I started the wend towards California. On a motorcycle trip, I am always like a small boy, gregarious and eager to experience everything going around me at the same time. Milking the day for all its worth.

I have written many times, about how much I love this type of desert riding, I always feel tucked in and look forward to the isolation, being surrounded by world class performer's on my i pod and the chance to let my mind go where it wants to go. I have long conversations in my head, with someone I have known as long as I can remember, which is back to when I was about two and a half years old. Most of my sisters have memories going back to about the same age, so it must be a genetic thing. The last time I rode almost this almost same route to California was in May of 2011, and I had opted to wear my lighter, but more stylish riding suit and did not take my heated jacket or gloves. This year I took both and wore my winter, heavier and not very flattering, but warm suit. I looked like a cross between the Michelin man and the Pillsbury dough boy. At Wendover, after gassing up, I turned the thermostat, for my jacket and gloves to almost the lowest setting and looked toward White Horse Pass and the unfolding of my afternoon jaunt. The first time I remember being on this road was when I was five or six and I went with my father to McGill Nevada. The mine was still open then, and my father's company had done some sort of electrical job there and he needed to go out for a brief meeting. My then good friend John Mooney went with us and we went out and back in a long day. I always think about that as I ride through McGill, it was much more robust 55 years ago than it is today.

At Ely, after gassing up again, I turned on to the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, what a nice sounding name, so much better than Bangerter Highway. This is of course, Highway 6 and I would be on it, till its junction with California Highway 395 at Bishop California.

As always I think about Jediah Smith and the other early explorer's of the American West and the Mountain Peaks in the distance, that may to this point in time, not have been climbed by anyone. The Great Basin at its most extreme. I thought as I rode along, the hum of the bike giving me an OMMM sound and whatever music was playing about the majesty of the Great American Desert. The little outposts along the way, where people have tried and usually failed to etch out a living and live a life. I pulled into Tonopah a little after 6:00 pm Pacific Daylight Savings time and got the last room at the Tonopah Motel where I have stayed a couple of times.

When I got up the next morning at O-dark thirty, there was ice on my bike and sheepskin cover for my seat. After gassing up at the Chevron in Tonopah, and eating a muffin and drinking some grapefruit juice, I have always preferred traveling, feeling a little hungry, I headed West out of Tonopah towards Boundary Peak and the California border just before Benton and then on to Bishop, Big Pine, Lone Pine and eventually the junction with 178 through Lake Isabella, which has some fairly sharp corners, listed 25mph turns, that I take at 35 or 40 and eventually towards its junction with Highway 99.

Highway 99, I have decided is an unloved major artery in the San Joaquin Valley of California. There are places that have new pavement, but much of it is I am sure the same road that I rode my BMW R90S on in the late 1970's on my way to Fresno. Instead of listing railway stops as Eliot did in a poem I go over from way-points on my GPS , Delano, Pixley, Tipton and Tulare, but can't come up with a good or decent rhyme.

Once I had parked my bike at my sister's house, I did not pay any attention to it at all, except to move it into her garage, that she does not use, because in my haste in leaving SLC I neglected to pack my motorcycle cover.

The next eight days were 12 to 14 hours a day seven days a week on the Habeas Appeal. Imagine if you can, working on the most complex jigsaw puzzle you could imagine, and not having the benefit of looking at the cover to see what it will look like. That is pretty much what it was. Thanks goodness for a search-able trial file and hard copies as well, looking for this and that. You tell a story relating to the subject of the appeal and almost every other sentence you have to reference either a defense chronology done by an expert, witness interviews, which need to be redacted; what an ominous word, it conjurers up visions of secret records kept by seldom mentioned governmental departments, and the trial transcript itself. It ended up being about 1500 pages of exhibits and the HABEAS Appeal is another 400 or so pages. This all needed to be bound with red covers and margins of X and 9 copies prepared. All the other major courts in California to my knowledge, accept electronic submissions on cases, but the Supreme Court Of California does not, although they did want a CD of the exhibits.

I left early Monday morning on the 15^th of the month for my ride back. A friend called me and said that I should consider delaying my departure because of storms both in Salt Lake City and Nevada. I quickly pulled up the Weather Channel on my phone and Tonopah was still warm, but windy and I headed towards there. I told myself, that if I got to Tonopah before 3:30 in the afternoon, I would continue on the additional 170 miles back to Ely. At Boundary peak the pass is called Montgomery Pass and it reminded me of my friend Randy Montgomery who died in a freak motorcycle accident in Wolf Creak about 14 or so years ago. He had been involved in planning for the Olympics, and more importantly he had young children he did not get to see grow up. Such a pity.

Needless to say, I got to Tonopah a little after 3:00 pm,but before 3:30 and started back towards Ely knowing that I would probably run into rain before I got there. Eliot again, “Time and the bell have buried the day the black cloud carries the sun away.”

Just before I got to Ely is started to rain and just as I got to a motel in Ely it started snowing. Not a good omen, for Tuesday morning.

My bike was completely covered in snow, and I had to chip ice around the ignition so that my key would go in and do the same with the gas cap, so that I could fuel the bike. I decided to wear my glasses, rather than contacts and had planned on eating a hearty breakfast, to building up fodder to keep me warm, at a cafe in Ely, but the one I usually go to, is out of business. Again a muffin and juice at the Shell Station. I turned the heat up, for it was cold in the mid twenties and after talking with some people in the service station decided that I would still head back on 93and 93A to Wendover, rather than the longer route to Delta. It was snowing lightly when I left Ely, but it was not really sticking to the roads. Just North of McGill the snow picked up and my face shield was fogging and icing up. That means that I had to crack it enough to be able to see, but then my glasses got covered with snow and actually froze. There were several places where I could only go about 25 to 30 mph and I thought once or twice about turning back, but was worried about going down in the ice, if I tried to turn around. The bike made a couple of fish tale motions and I found I was better off riding in a lower gear towards the top of the rpm band, than trying to up-shift and keep the rpm low. I promised Pig Bodine, that’s my bike's name. Its the name of a character from a Thomas Pynchon novel, that if it got me through, I would instead of my annual coating of Zymol wax, I would do it twice this year. That seemed to do the trick and a ride that usually takes a little less than two hours, ended up taking almost three. White Horse pass that I had been dreading the whole ride from Ely was completely clear and Wendover was windy, but not too cold. At the Wendover Chevron station, I rewarded myself for having withstood the ordeal with a snickers. My boyish demand for a daily dose of excitement, temporarily satisfied I contemplated the rest of the ride home.

To make up for the slow time between Ely and Wendover, I rode the 120 miles home from Wendover to Salt Lake City at 85-to 90, figuring after my harrowing morning, a speeding ticket would be a small price to pay, but I was fine, the radar detector chirped a couple of times and it was windy, but I was toasty warm.

Pig looked unloved, uncared for and somewhat abused, and after unpacking, my somewhat wet gear, I gave him a bath.