11/22/63: Are you old enough to remember?

The brainstorm, as columnist brainstorms go, was simple enough: stroll the mall and ask people where they were when President John Kennedy was shot.

The 46th anniversary of that infamous assassination is today.

Few events, if any, have had a more galvanizing effect on the nation. It was as if time stopped at the crack of the assassin's rifle. People might forget what they had for dinner that night, or who won that weekend's football games, but nobody forgets where they were when they heard the awful news on Nov. 22, 1963.

But there is one qualifier: you have to have been alive.

As I walked through The Gateway, looking for people to talk to, I soon realized there are plenty of Americans — especially the sort of Americans who hang around the mall — who hadn't yet been born when the president was shot.

Anyone under 46 does not qualify. And realistically, anyone under 50 doesn't either, since infants can't be expected to remember such things. A group that happens to include our current president.

The first man I approached, a homeless person feeding pigeons on 200 South who certainly looked old enough, was 45.

Oh-for-one.

This was going to be harder than I first thought.

But I persisted. Around the corner, first in line for that evening's Salvation Army dinner, was "Wayne," a man from Reno with a ready smile.

I asked Wayne what brought him to Salt Lake, and he answered, "Oh, that one's easy. Bad decisions."

My next question was just as easy.

"I was sitting on the floor in our house in front of the TV," he said, effortlessly turning his mind's clock back to the day Kennedy was shot, "and I couldn't figure out why they kept playing the same movie over and over again."

They were playing footage of the assassination. Wayne was 4 years old.

"It's one of my first actually solid memories," he said. "I remember watching it over and over and over again. My dad was at work, and I could sense my mom was upset and it was better for me to watch TV than to bug her about something to eat."

I next talked to a pleasant, elegantly dressed woman sitting in Barnes & Noble bookstore.

Selma Wilson was living in Manhattan in the fall of 1963, about to be married. She and her fiance were in the car when the radio interrupted the programming for an important announcement.

"They said the president had been shot," remembered Selma. "We were driving to Brooklyn to a furrier to get my coat for the wedding. Those were the days when you wore fur and nobody gave you dirty looks. I just remember us being so astounded that such a thing could happen in this country. It still astounds me. I guess that goes with freedom."