A memory of sadness unsoftened by time

President Kennedy (Courtesy photos)

It was a Friday. Just like today.
At Derby Academy in Hingham, that was always the early release day, always a joyous start to the weekend.
We got out of school around noon and I hurried with my friend down to get on the Eastern Mass. Street Railway bus out on Route 3A in Hingham. I think the fare was 20 cents.
We were headed about 12 miles up the highway to Quincy, a huge, wondrous blue-collar city filled with the cacophony and edgy characters that would make a couple of 11-year-old boys squeal like Mark Twain and Huck Finn along the rough and tumble docks of a Mississippi riverboat.
Here was the true melting pot of America. And amid this melting pot of America was a store that captured its essence: The Bargain Center, founded in 1938.
It was like a giant flea market inside a sprawling building that took up an entire block. The buses dropped you off outside its door.
Inside we’d mostly just watch the shoppers, laugh at funny looking old ladies and men and create some minor mischief if the opportunity arose. Mostly we were good.
But this day turned out to be a little different than most Fridays at the Bargain Center.
Grownups who’d been laughingly poking bargain tables for household deals suddenly showed concerned looks. We paid no mind; we were there to have fun and moved to another section of the store.

The Bargain Center

More of the same. Some women had tears in their eyes. Others were crying.
What’s a couple of 11-year-olds to make of such behavior? In grownups, no less.
We looked around a bit dumbfounded.
“You boys should get home,” an old woman scolded us wagging her finger.
We looked at her quizzically.
“The president’s been shot,” she said, her old, wrinkled face full of grief. “President Kennedy’s been shot. You should go home now.”
That moment of dull despair and confusion lies still palpable in the recesses of the memories of that day.
Not really discussing it, or wondering why, we mutely sought out a bus to go back to Hingham and our families, talking quietly about what had happened and trying to process this profoundly sad news. We didn’t even know if the wound was mortal.
In fact, when President Kennedy arrived at a Dallas hospital doctors knew he wouldn’t survive. He died within a half hour of being shot.
It was a Friday. Just like today.