Two tracks emerge. On July 1, 1963, the American Zip Code is born. On the 2nd, Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves each throw 16 innings of shutout ball in the longest pitchers' duel in baseball history. Lee Harvey Oswald is fired from his job as a coffee greaser on 7/19. John F. Kennedy goes on television July 25th announcing "a shaft of light has cut into the darkness": the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. A compound near Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana is raided by local and federal agents who seize thousands of arms and ammunition on August 2nd. The arrested compound members are immediately released and will hover close to all things Dealey Plaza during the next several months. Phil Graham, owner and powerful publisher of the Washington Post and front man for the early-60s War Party, commits suicide on the 3rd. Patrick Bouvier Kennedy is born prematurely on August 7th. The Kennedys' baby dies two days later. Also on the 9th, Lee Oswald is arrested for passing out "Fair Play for Cuba" flyers before Clay Shaw's New Orleans International Trade Mart. Strangely, this absolutely insignificant arrest is given local television news coverage. The Great Train Robbery of '63 occurs at a bridge in Buckinghamshire, England, with the thieves carrying away the current equivalent of over $55,000,000. August 14th, Lee Oswald is arrested again, for fighting with New Orleans anti-Castro Cubans. Oswald's one phone call is to the local FBI office. James Meredith becomes the first person-of-color to graduate the University of Mississippi on August 18th. Incredibly, "itinerant loner" Oswald appears on radio and TV the night of the 21st, debating others on the heroism of Fidel Castro. In late-August, JFK is deceived by plotters within his own government: a series of Saigon cables wildly distort South Vietnam reality in a conspiracy to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem's government. The summer ends with the dreamlike March on Washington. . .
