Life's Bone

I was working as a draftsman that day. Drawing up plans for the new convention center in Chicago. McCormick Place. That may sound glamorous, but it wasn't. Mostly I was drawing out things like the kitchen sinks, and stainless steel buffet counters for the numerous kitchens in this place, etc. Quite boring, actually. November, 1963. I had abruptly dropped out of college because my dad had been killed just two months earlier, in September in a car wreck. My mom was still in the hospital from the same damn wreck. All the innocence of life before had gone down the drain. And so, I was at my drawing table that day...the same place my dad had been working as shop foreman. I drew up the blueprints of the stuff his men then created. And now I was doing this job without him. Pretty heavy shit for a 19 year old. And then the news hit the radio. Kennedy was dead. I didn't know what to do. I left my job. Everything stopped. Everybody just went home. I walked down Wabash Avenue toward the bus stop that would drop me at the train station and was just trying to get home. I ducked into a Catholic church...and I wasn't even religious then...or now. I just needed to sit down. I cried for my dad that day, and for JFK. 1963 was a helluva year.