The death of President Kennedy is the first 'public' fact of which I have some memory. I had just turned five at the time (a little more than a month before). I have some earlier personal memories, including a happy one of playing around on a dumpster outside our family home -- then an apartment building in East Hartford. The big green dumpster was a blast. My big brother and I crawled around on it like it was a jungle gym. But by 1963 we have moved into a nice ranch style house in Enfield, with an actual backyard, and our own trash cans. No shared dumpster. Dad was working second shift at the time. He could now afford to commute to and from work from a suburb a fair distance to the north of East Hartford (he had moved us to the apartment at a time when it was necessary for him to walk to and from work there.) To be precise, he could afford to become a member of a five-man car pool that did so. He thus used his own car only once a week, leaving it with Mom the other day...