John Wilkes Booth

When Stevie was four and visiting Grandma Sandy and me in Tulsa, my friend

 Donald gave him a dollar after Stevie correctly answered Don’s questions about

 George Washington.  The next year it was five dollars for Abe Lincoln.  The third year,

 I forewarned Donald I was going to prep Stevie on Alexander Hamilton.  I drilled Stevie,

 now six, for two days before we all got together at the Fourth of July picnic, and I

 sensed Stevie was a little apprehensive when Donald joined us at the picnic table.  After

 just the right interval of greetings and  comfortably settling in, Don popped the question,

 and we all laughed as Stevie stole a glance at me before he confidently answered,

 Hamilton was “Treasurer of the Secretary.”  Close enough.  And he added that Hamilton

 was shot by Aaron Burr.  Don generously rewarded Stevie, Ben, and their cousin, our

 third grandson, Noah, each with a ten-spot.  We joked about next year and Andrew

 Jackson!

 While I was prepping Stevie, I told him Hamilton was shot by Burr, and somehow, we

switched to Lincoln being killed by John Wilkes Booth.  Stevie was intensely interested

 in this and asked a lot of questions about Booth:  “Was he always a bad guy?”  “What

 happened to Booth?”   He was absorbed when I showed him photos of Booth in a book,

 The Day Lincoln was Shot.  I thought, what a curious, fertile, growing mind.

 A few months later Bill phoned to report that Dean, Stevie’s friend, had slept over

 Saturday night. The two boys came downstairs after they had been talking in bed; Dean

 was telling Stevie what a bad man Saddam Hussein was, and Stevie was scared, but he

 countered that “John Wilkes Booth was worse,” and that “he assassinated President

 Lincoln.” Bill assured the boys that Saddam was thousands of miles away and would

 have to cross an ocean to get there.

 Another month passed before Bill accompanied Stevie to his friend’s birthday party at

 a farm in the Maryland countryside where the kids went on a hayride.  A man riding

 the tractor  pulling the hay wagon told the kids a story that this farm was a hideout for

 the Surratts,  participants in the Lincoln assassination  conspiracy. The parents were

 looking at one another, “What’s this guy telling these six year olds?”  These kids were

 not even listening; none even knew the word “assassination”--- except Stevie, who was

 attentive and listening.  He certainly knew that word, and  asked, “What about John

 Wilkes Booth?”