Archives from my MusicPlus blogging site.

from Chpt.1, page 3
I came back to their houses, to the compound at Hyannis Port, in the spring of 1980, ten years and a few months after my boss Joseph P Kennedy died and his widow made good her threat to fire me. Rose Kennedy thereby kept a promise she had repeated many times, usually when I least expected it, during the eight years Mr. Kennedy was confined to his wheelchair, crippled and speechless from a stroke.

from Chpt.1, pages 3&4
Standing again on the veranda of the big house that crisp and windy March afternoon, I thought back to the day I left the Kennedys. The decision to dismiss me as chauffeur had seemed petty of Mrs. Kennedy, especially considering the many times I had saved her husband's life. Whenever that alarm bell hooked up at my place at Hyannis Port or Palm Beach went off in the night, it always made me think that I was back in the navy. It was a connection I could never shake in those drowsy waking seconds before I remembered that the alarm was a signal; the boss was having an attack and would need oxygen, and off I'd run to help save his life. I never got used to that damn bell, although I got used to Rose Kennedy telling me that when the Ambassador died, the family would no longer be able to keep me on.

p.4 Torn Lace Curtain - cont
I couldn't really blame Mrs. Kennedy for her attitude, not when considering all she had been through. After all, I was the one who'd had to tell her that her son the president had been shot in Dallas. I understood what she'd gone through, all right. But why did she have to lie about my termination? If she thought that made it easier on me, it didn't. All she had to do was tell me the truth, that she wanted to be alone. I would have understood.