It never seemed to matter to us which team won. Just hollering for Tom, Bill, or Jim, and hoping they noticed us was thrill enough. After the game, we would pile into People’s Drug Store, commandeer the soda fountain, spin our stools, and blow straw wrappers at each other until it was time to leave (or we were asked to).

On this particular day, after a lengthy farewell to friends we would see at school the next morning, my sister and I stopped for a half-pound scoop of warm salted Spanish peanuts at the Planter’s store on Fifteenth Street, distinguishable by the giant figure of Mr. Peanut, wearing spats and a monocle, tipping his hat from the roof of the shop. Walking up the street, munching our snack, we talked about the only thing we ever talked about: boys. At Pennsylvania Avenue we turned left by the Treasury building and headed toward Seventeenth Street and our streetcar stop. It was about two in the afternoon.

Suddenly, we became aware of a commotion up ahead, and people were running frantically toward us. “What’s happening?” we called to a lady racing by carrying two heavy shopping bags. She screamed something about the president’s getting shot, and disappeared around the corner. Our natural curiosity honed by a steady diet of Nancy Drew mysteries, we continued on, oblivious of any danger, unaware of the gravity of what we had just heard.

Policemen on horseback had surrounded what we would later learn was Blair House, where President Truman and his family were living while the White House was being renovated. Emergency personnel were scrambling to cordon off the block. Dodging the ambulances and police cars that had converged, sirens wailing, on the east side of the mansion, my sister and I got close enough to the driveway to see a body (actually, all we glimpsed were the feet) surrounded by Secret Service men. We decided it must be the president, as the lady had said.

In seconds, we were ushered away from the area. Filled with the importance of what we had just witnessed and eager to get home to tell our parents, we ran the four blocks to our streetcar and boarded, our hearts pounding with excitement. It felt strange sitting there among the other passengers, who had no idea the president had just been shot. They were