November 22. Where I was.

The little icon on the side of the screen says Nov 22.  I know where I was in 1963.  I was in Oberlin Ohio, facing a mid-term in introductory Calculus, the section for math majors, and I was also taking introductory chemistry the serious one. I was a freshman (even women were freshmen in those days) living in a cinderblock dorm with a roommate I didn’t get on with, who had borrowed from the lending collection and hung in our small shared room a print of a not-young woman from Picasso’s blue period, a picture I found disgusting. I had a boyfriend, my very first, and an English introductory literature class that thrilled me, and a lavish enough allowance to go to the college bookstore and buy almost any book I liked. That’s where I was.

I carried whatever I was buying that day to the counter of the bookstore, the counter in the back. There was a TV running in the background.  Black and white.  And the woman at the counter, a not-young black woman, said “the President’s been shot” and my first thought was that it was the president of the college, President Carr, and why on earth?  And then I took it in, a little.  But I am not always a fast processor. So I went to the library, I found one of the desks up in the stacks on the south side next to a window overlooking the former theology school, and sat there studying.  Until this huge bell started to toll, not on any schedule but in the middle of the afternoon.

I think we all knew what it meant. Put down our books and streamed in with students and professors coming from every direction to Finney Chapel, the largest building on campus. I have no memory at all about who spoke or what they said.  There was probably some sort of prayer. I wasn’t a believer in those years. 

When I was getting ready to go to college, my dad had suggested I buy a tea pot and a set of cups. I bought the tea pot in Atlantic City, a black English one with flowers and gold painted on it. The cups were pure 60s straight sided coffee cups with white saucers, each one a different bright colour including, of course, orange and green.  I had never made tea for my friends but that day I did, boiling the water in the pot with an immersion heater before putting in the tea bags.  Somehow we got milk and sugar, maybe from the kitchen downstairs, and we sat on the floor together. Somehow I did know how to do that.  We didn’t have the internet or even a running television and we weren’t frantic to get instantaneous updates.  We needed to not be alone with it, and for that short space of time we had each other’s company.

Photos: Kennedy motorcade in Dallas from WikiMedia public domain, rendered here in black and white; the other images may be subject to copyright. Coffee cups image from 1stopretroshop.com; teapot image from Ebay. Finney chapel from website/blog http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/11/finney-chapel-oberlin-college-90-north.html