Back then, I was a twenty year-old college student. I gave little thought to 47 years into the future. If anyone had asked, I don't think I could have imagined what the world of 2010 would be like, other than some vague Jetsons-inspired flotsam involving flying cars and silver jumpsuits.
I couldn't imagine what my life would be like either. At 20, it was difficult to picture myself as an old man. I figured I'd die long before then - quickly and in a tragically-cool way, perhaps sliding off a cliff at high speed in a Bocar. That would impress all my car buddies who would toast me with something expensive and alcoholic at my gravesite.
Some of the friends whom I visualized at that graveside fantasy are now dead. I have toasted their lives, sent condolences to their families and mourned their passing. I never expected to experience that. O tempora! O mores!
Many friends are still alive and I celebrate that. When we visit these days, we oft speak nostalgically about our pasts, remembering youth, stamina and mobility. And discuss the aches, medications and limitations of our present. Mortality is more apparent to us now.
As an optimistic kid of 20, I thought I was invincible. I even felt some of that in my 40s. I bet Jack Kennedy felt that way, too.
On a sunny Friday afternoon in November 1963, I was leaving a Villanova University classroom after taking a thermodynamics exam.
In the hallway, the professor pulled several of us aside and whispered, "The president's been shot in Texas." He had no further details, so I hurried to the parking lot, hopped in my red VW Beetle and clicked on the radio, waiting for the tubes to warm up.
I headed for home in Northeast Philadelphia. Just as I got on the Schuylkill Expressway, JFK's death was announced. Not knowing what to do, I turned on my headlights. As did most of the other cars on the road.
I soon learned that Kennedy was shot while riding in his big navy blue Lincoln.
That custom open parade car will always be associated with President Kennedy. Folks of a certain age, whether or not they're 'car people', think of Jack every time they see a dark-colored, '60s-era four-door Lincoln convertible.
That slab-sided Lincoln design has become one more icon of the New Frontier which John F. Kennedy proposed. At his inaugural, he said, "The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it - and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."
The torch had been passed. The 1950s were gone and the future had arrived.
Think about it. President Eisenhower wore hats and was chauffeured around town in a big 'ol bulbous black 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan limo. It made sense. Ike was a white-haired, bald, kindly old guy with glasses. My friends had grandfathers like that. They wore hats and had dowdy, 10 year-old cars. And they were married to grandmotherly-looking women - like Mamie.
They played golf and were nostalgic about the good old days - America's Past.
Then Jack Kennedy came along - what a contrast. No glasses, no hat, a head full of rich brown hair, a hot-looking cosmopolitan babe of a wife. He was nobody's grandfather. He was a new generation - a man who looked forward, not backward: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
JFK represented America's Future - the promise of a bold, bright, perfect tomorrow. As the lyrics from the Broadway musical, 'Camelot', proclaimed:
It only made sense that such a President would be matched up with a new kind of car - not some big old chrome-laden whale but a contemporary car with clean lines - a sophisticated car to fit the kind of guy Jack was.
The vehicle was derived from the all-new 1961 Lincoln Continental - the one with the style-setting, slab-sided design.
For 1,000 days, we associated John F. Kennedy and the valiant things for which he stood with the handsome man flashing a big grin and waving from the rear seat of his Presidential Lincoln.
He died in that very car.
The events of November 22nd put an end to JFK the Man.
His promise was unfulfilled, his administration unfinished.
Objective evaluations by historians would later place him in historical context and dim his halo somewhat.
His human failings and his perilous health would be endlessly and sometimes almost-gleefully dissected.
Camelot was allegorical and not particularly accurate.
But JFK the Legend was born on that November afternoon. Even when we strip away the myths, hyperbole and the what-ifs, Jack Kennedy lives on in our memories as a forever-youthful, optimistic fellow, full of great and daring ideas - pursued with "viggah," passing by in a long, elegant Lincoln.
Rest In Peace, Jack.
Forty-seven years ago today, America was