In the past century, I would say three moments in American history warrant “where were you when it happened” questions and recollections.

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. “A date which will live in infamy.”

The terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

And the third, about one-third of the way between those two, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated — November 22, 1963.

It is hard to imagine, but a look at the calendar reinforces the reality, that it has been 50 years since it happened, and the youngest of those who can recall it are approaching age 60.

The test for these things?

You, in fact, remember where you were. What you were doing. It’s that simple. And I have a fairly clear recollection of the two major events of the real-but-unreal weekend, beginning on a Friday, 50 years back.

We were at lunch at First Lutheran School in Long Beach, California. The school had put up some pine tables, picnic tables, basically (on the new patch of asphalt where the old church had stood), for eating outside, which we did once or twice a week.

I was in fifth grade, and our teacher was Mr. Guise, who I liked quite a bit. It may have been a split class; all of fifth grade and half of fourth, perhaps. Something that would have yielded about 25 kids.

It must have been a bit before noon, working back from when Kennedy’s death was announced by the White House — at 1:33 p.m. in Dallas, and that would have been 11:33 a.m., in California. Schoolkids eat that early, even now.

I remember distinctly who brought the news. A kid in my class, one of the fastest runners in the school (this mattered, in 1963; does it matter in classes today?), and I can remember him coming around the corner (walking not running) and walking up and saying, “Somebody shot the president.”

The kid was a great runner, but maybe not the most dependable source of important information, and Mr Guise got up and walked towards the school office, presumably to verify. I remember that clearly, his going around the corner towards the playground entry to the school building. He was tall and lanky.

He came back a few minutes later, and said the information was correct, and Mr. Guise was not to be doubted. President Kennedy was dead.

Since it had to be close to noon, certainly the information that JFK was dead had spread; people often listened to radios, while at work, in the early 1960s. Especially while on a lunch break.

I remember wondering what it would mean for me, the city, the country going forward. It was a pragmatic line of thinking. (People have told me I was born old.) I was not struck by any emotion. I don’t remember any weeping among my classmates.

It was just a sort of puzzlement, I think. Processing it. Nothing like that had happened, in our memories. (Though another two prominent assassinations — Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. — would occur before the decade was out.)

I worked through it. Lyndon Johnson would be president. The country was not in crisis.

I believe we finished out the school day. Not many of us lived close to school, and buses were involved, and we were less than three hours from the end of the week.

We may have had an announcement from the principal. We may have listened to the radio.

By the end of the day, Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested, and that seemed to be that. “He is the guy” certainly was the prevailing notion, at the time, because the Dallas cops said so. (People were not as skeptical of official information, back then.)

I do remember television running nothing but assassination news; I had never seen anything like it. All day. I would have been interested for a time, but eventually I would have wanted to go outside. Play catch, perhaps. I was 10.

Jump forward to Sunday. Things seemed like they would return to normal. Lyndon Johnson was the new president. They had the guy who did the shooting. A funeral for Kennedy would be held, eventually.

We went to church. After church, as was the family habit, we stopped for breakfast at Park Pantry, in Long Beach. We were at the big table in the corner when the older woman who always waited on us (I want to say her name was Buelah) came over and announced, “Lee Harvey Oswald got shot.”

I remember being more perplexed at that moment than I had been perhaps the whole weekend, because one random act had been followed by another, and that seemed to be a series, not randomness. A sense of “when is this over?”, perhaps.

We finished breakfast, went home, and the TV went back on. It was all Kennedy, and Oswald, who soon died, for days. Right through Kennedy’s funeral.

All these years later, I have tended to believe the Warren Report is more or less correct. Oswald, acting alone. Conspiracies, even small conspiracies, are so difficult to keep secret, and I have never been persuaded by the more ornate of these. (The Mafia, the CIA, Fidel Castro, etc.)

Though I give some thought to the idea, fairly recently put forward, that the shot that killed Kennedy could have been an accidental discharge of the gun a Secret Service agent was carrying, in the car behind Kennedy’s.

(Bill James, of statistical analysis fame, says on this Bill Simmons podcast that he figures the “friendly fire” scenario is “about 55 percent” likely to be correct; giving the other 45 percent, if I recall correctly to the “Oswald acted alone” concept.)

Another interesting bit of media this week came via the New York Times, who spoke with a man who has investigated something like 100 murders, and has spent a lot of time thinking about the JFK assassination. A sort of hobbyist who doesn’t seem particularly nutty.

What he does in this video is talk about just how many images were captured that day in Dealey Plaza. Every American has seen the Zapruder film, but not everyone is aware of other film and still photos shot in the area, nor all the photographic evidence.

While that is interesting, the notion of more sources of info, the investigator comes back to this one notion: If any shots were fired from the “grassy knoll” it is a conspiracy , and even with all the additional images, that cannot be determined beyond a reason of a doubt.

So those of us who lived Day 1 of this “where were you” event … we tend to ponder these sorts of issues anew, every November 22.