Justice in a 53 Chevy

Its that day again. It's forty three long twisted years. I wake in the morning to that thought and the idea that forty three years used to be a whole lifetime. He was forty three when he first took the job. I am now older than he was at the end...

I long to take a bath. A hot bath that will clean my soul. A bath that can help me forget and remember. I want to forget all of the corruption, the hidden things, the racism, the imperialism, the endless God dammed lies that I have discovered my country consists of. I want to forget seeing prophets shot like rabid dogs in the street. I want the sound of mourning droning bagpipes to leave my psyche.

I want to remember what Camelot felt like, to be able to touch the thought that we as a People could and would live up to our best selves. I want to remember Thanksgiving as a joyful holiday that is not tinged with my Presidents head exploding in a convertable under the bright cold sunlight of a Southern fall morning. I want high noon to have no meaning to me.

I want to forget spooks, mafiosi, sick bastard triple dealing National Security functionaries, Cubans, Clay Shaw, Oswald, Jack Ruby, Bunker Hunt, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, G. Gordon Liddy,Loren Hall, Camp Street, Carlos Marchello, J. Edgar Hoover in a dress, the grassy knoll and the Texas School Book Depository. I dont want to know so much about crappy Italian rifles, ballistics, Killing zones and triangulation, and the arguments about why a head may explode and the jet effect. When I see Arlen Spector, I dont want to think "Yeah"magic bullet" you asshole."

I even wish I could forget the heros. Mike Canfield, A.J. Webberman, Lisa Pease, Jim Garrison, Congressman Henry B. Gonzales, not that they deserve to be forgotten, but that remembering their heroism, I must remember the crimes and the coverups. I must remember our Government is always lieing to us. Always. That of the People By the People for the People is an slogan, not a reality.

I wish I could forget the horror of my fellow citizens on that day. The grieving that never really ended, the horror of the various revelations slowly unfolding year after year. Fat Frank Sturgis talking to Jack Anderson about the super secret CIA agent who named the Bay of Pigs landing craft after his adopted City, his Wife, and his Oil company- Houston, Barbara, Zapata. Hmmm Who was that? (Hint both he and his son have served as President)The House Select Committee owning up to the fact that there was more than one shooter, uh duh.

I want to forget Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald on Saturday morning Television before my childhood cartoons where the bad guy dies and lives in the next frame. The good guys and the bad ones die and never get up. The death of the good paralyses others who would be.

Somehow, amoung all that would be forgetfulness, I dont want to forget driving to In N Out Burger with my Father and Grandfather in Dad's 53 Chevy that Sunday evening when we all didnt go to Church. Dad and my Grandfather were upset about the Texas police not protecting Oswald and letting him get shot. I piped up. I was a super patriot of a kid. I was happy Oswald got shot, he had killed our President and deserved to die. In that forest green 1953 Chevy Bel Air with the white roof, my Father and my Grandfather, slowly and carefully and while loving me and something sacred and eternal, explained to a seven year old the concepts of Justice, of due process, the idea that it was better for the guilty to go free than the innocent be punished. I came to understand in that short drive, that all men stood before the Court as innocent, that even a man accused of assasinating the President deserved a trial and had to be proved by facts and evidence to be guilty. Oswald was, as far as we could know, innocent, perhaps there were others, how would we now know? It was a profound series of moments and revelations. Justice became a real thing to me that evening. I and many of my generation have spent our lives looking for the others.