A childhood belief about family

I was three years old when JFK was assassinated. Though I don’t remember it, I knew it made an impression on me.

My uncle Joe was about 15 years older than me and he lived at my grandmother's house. Joe was kind of a wild fella back then, always getting into trouble. He also had hunting rifles in the house. I was afraid of the guns, but was fascinated with the big scope attached to one of them.

Once when I was five or six I got up the courage to look through that scope. I was totally amazed and intrigued with the crosshairs that I saw superimposed on what I looked at through the scope.

Some time after that I was reading through a book my parents had about the Kennedy assassination. To my absolute horror, the book contained (what I later realized was) a photographic re-enactment of the shooting as seen by the assassin. The picture showed a limousine from behind, with people in it and a man I knew was supposed to be Kennedy. The photo was shot through a scope like my uncle’s, and the crosshairs were aimed directly at the back of Kennedy’s head.

In my young mind, I could only draw one conclusion: My cousin Joe had killed President Kennedy.