I just read the lyrics of "Murder Most Foul" by Bob Dylan for the first time. I did that after reading up on the reasons for the lyrics of "Desolation Row" in an article that elaborated on Dylan's perspectives. My original interest was the meaning of the second sentence of that latter lyric: "..They're painting the passports brown..." So, I am now letting this "gode" me into writing about my own experiences in November 1963, not because I think it is a brilliant answer to anything Dylan, nor even because I think it is somehow brilliant insight, but rather because I am unemployed and need to make some money.
We were living in an apartment complex my father was managing part time in Vancouver, Washington. My father had owned a house farther North, but bought this to bring in more money while he worked for his father at Burgess Floorcovering, a reasonably successful downtown Vancouver business grampa had started before I was born.
The apartment complex, apparently gone now, had a big lawned patio lined with boxwood shrubs and walkways leading to the four lane street that fronted the complex to the south. Looking at Google Maps now, I suspect the east west street was Fourth Plain Blvd. There was a convenience store called the Teepee to the east on the south side of the street which appears to be gone now. At any rate, it was four lanes, and that seems to be the only candidate. I think Kaufman was the cross street nearest. The apartment building is apparently gone now. I was four years old, but this was a memory I have long replayed. I only discovered later than my memories do seem to be accurate from this age. It looks like it could have also been W. 15th St. There is similar structure there now. The building I refer to was brick, I think two stories (perhaps three), and a U shape. The One on 15th now has a simple I shape and a parking lot where the patio was. At any rate, the main specific detail of importance was the patio with the two parallel walkways going from the south facing side of the building onto the four lane street.
The first thing in my memory that month was the birth of my brother Jimmy. Detailing that further might be unfair to him, but the important matter was that all of a sudden I, as a four year old, was getting little or no attention. I had already, from the time I could walk, established myself as a troublesome child who liked to wonder off. I had bad asthma, and I wanted to move around, perhaps to get more air or something, though that is my guess, not a memory.
After about a week of this, I was out on the patio, trying to occupy myself to some satisfaction without getting yelled at, and at some point my attention came to a large metal garden-hose holder wheel leaning against the brick wall. The hose was put away for the Winter, and my recall is that it attracted me as a thing that would roll, so I rolled it out to the sidewalk. Not yet being a person of great insight in geometry nor physics, I recall almost immediately trying to roll it down the walkway. It turned out this walkway had a greater grade than my inexperienced eyes anticipated, so it quickly rolled too fast for me to catch, down the sidewalk and into the street, with my concerned self chasing after it. Before I realized it, I was out in the middle of this very busy urban roadway with lots of horns honking and even some people yelling at me. I grabbed the hose holder and brought it back to the patio as quickly as I was able, leaned it back where it had been. I do not recall what I did next, but I do recall feeling very deeply what an incredibly stupid and perilous thing I had just done and that I never, ever, ought to do anything like that again.
That being said, for the next week or so, I recall nothing memorable.
Then, on the 22 of the month the President was assassinated. I do not recall that it was the twenty-second of November. I barely recall much else about things at all except that there were no cartoons on television for a whole week. The TV was full exclusively of stuff about Kennedy, and eventually I recall this horse-drawn hearse. Now that I think about it, all this likely bled into December before my next act of blatant stupidity, but that is literally what I recall: the lack of TV of any serious interest to my four year old self. You can probably understand my perspective. At any rate, at some point, I was once again bored out of my mind, and I was once again out in the patio, and I once again looked at that hose/wheel thing, and once again I tried to roll it down the walkway and once again it rolled into the street and once again there were lots of horns honking and people yelling and once again I got it, ran back into the patio and put it back in its place and re-admonished myself about how stupid that was and that I should never ever ever do that kind of thing again. This time, thankfully, at least as far as I can recall, the self-admonishment stuck. I recall no such idiocy by me during other killings or distracting events or times of TV media drought. However, I did soon learn to go off wandering on my own for all day long, leaving my parents frustrated but getting them used to my being able to survive such sojourns.
You might also understand and believe when I assert I did not tell anyone in my family about this for almost 50 years, when my parents were elderly and I figured it might be a lifely topic of conversation. I fear I overestimated any possible salubrious effect it might have had on my mother.
What great insight is there to my story? Is it even realistic? I have read and been told several times that memories like that do not last, get corrupted, and should be taken as suspect. However, I do seem to recall things well, and when I have been able to check, they seem to be correct. I don't seem to have a tendency to taint or bias my memories. My brother and I are both now in our 60s. My parents are both gone. There are many other interesting decorations around the tale that might be unhelpful to add. However, one of the things that stands out from Dylan's piece is the stark insight he had at that age, while I was still beginning to absorb life. All those songs and all those lyrics in said songs he cites are a massive foundation of thought and societal context that at the time I was far too young to fully parse, let alone to get the gestalt of potential corruption around the assassination around everything from the corrupt government to the organized crime associates who were after Kennedy. However, I spent a lot of my time in those days in my mother's car listening to AM radio. Most or all of those songs I have revisited since, with apparent memories of those experiences, but certainly weak ones. However it is solid to say, all those words were a part of my early thought, my early learning of English, and my early learning about life in general.
Now those things seem very poingnant. For many who perhaps do not feel empowered or at least are not well enough studied to confidently think about such things, they still are just taking things in the best they can, like I and my two siblings in my mother's car in 1963 driving around with the AM radio on. But this is not about my wanting to chide my fellow citizens, nor to engage in any kind of dominance behavior over my relative strengths. What I want to see is my fellows also to see all these little pieces, externally, and in their personal lives, and muster a sense of community enough to talk with each other about them, with patience and openness. As a fellow I respect, one Larry Johnson interviewed on a Youtube channel I follow, recently pointed out, we have gone from a literacy rate of around 97% in 1950, to one of perhaps around 70% now, and those who are literate now are at a lower level, with large numbers under a 6th grade level. This is NOT from immigrants. It is not from communist infiltration. Quite the opposite, it is from acceptance of authoritarian perspectives which steal away community resources, diverting them to everything from direct transfer to existing wealth holders, to funder the murder of other peoples around the world. Yes, we have over double the population that existed when I was running out into the street in 1963, but the humanity is still there to honk and stop in time. The humanity is still there to talk to each other frankly about what the real evidence is, and about what seems to be incorrect. Now, the urgency is much greater. Now, we have already destroyed much of what we inherited. Now we'd better hurry up and do it if we are to extricate ourselves in any possible way in time. Apocalypse should not be a goal, but a thing to avoid.
Copyright © 2026 Xeno Campanoli