That gray November day
I think it was a gray, misty day in Delaware: November 22, 1963. We lived near the Delaware River in the area known as Edgemoor, north of the city of Wilmington, and fog on the river was a typical autumn occurrence. Maybe I'm lost in the fog of memory, but I seem to remember a mistiness in the air, a dank chill. Or perhaps that's the "pathetic fallacy," a literary device which depicts nature as a mirror for our moods (see the storm on the heath in King Lear ). In any event, in my recollection of that day, fog overlay the familiar landscape. On the day President Kennedy was killed, I was in the 5th grade at Edgemoor School -- but I wasn't in school that day. I have forgotten why not. I was not ill, since I was able to run errands with my mother. We were at the Merchandise Mart, a nearby shopping center, and Mom had taken me into the Bank of Delaware, where she wanted to check on an item in her safe-deposit box (we always called it the "safety-deposit box&q