A SLICE OF HIGH SCHOOL AND POLITICS

 

Barry Goldwater

When a high school classmate, Cunningham, tried to pin a "Barry Goldwater for President" campaign button on my shirt, I resisted.

"Don't tell me you're for Johnson!" my classmate responded, as in Lyndon.

I was for neither at that point,  truly apolitical.

The songs on the Beatles' Rubber Soul constantly went through my head and when I heard Dylan's Positively 4th Street played on KJR Seattle, I actually pulled my ''59 VW to the side of the road to listen.

"Who talks like that?" I said to myself, disgusted and amazed at the same time.

"I'd rather see you paralyzed" was the most brutally honest line I'd ever heard.

Secretly, I did admire Goldwater for his forthrightness, while hating his stupid comment referring to "tactical nuclear weapons."

A commercial with a little girl plucking petals from a daisy while the announcer counted down "10/0/8/7/6/5/4 , , ," won the election for Johnson, as it reminded Americans of their biggest single fear--nuclear war.

Just the year before our president had been assassinated on November 22. My religious relatives said it was proof we were living in the "end times."

I mostly drove and listened to the radio, often ending up on Seattle's First Avenue, where as Paul Simon wrote "the ragged people go."

I felt at home walking around drunks and face-painted, middle-aged whores.  No one bothered me.

My afterschool job in a radio station had put me next to a teletype machine and I read condolences as they came in from all over the world with the machine paper folding itself, first this way, then that way and down into a box.

I was surprised one of the messages was from Russian President Nikita Krushchev.

"I thought our countries hated each other," I told myself.

Frequently, I would drive over to my Uncle Joe's place, a haven where I could share my feelings without judgement.

I'd lent Aunt Doris my copy of Rubber Soul and she loved it.  

Uncle Joe, a huge Nat King Cole fan, was unimpressed, but he also barbered on the side and, I suspect was not into the Beatle haircut.