When Eisenhower Steps Down

Heading out for a Sunday afternoon drive is one family tradition that I carried over to my own family from my childhood days growing up in Everett. I laugh to myself now thinking about how whenever we drove past the Woodlawn Cemetery I’d yell out, “Hey Dad, look at all the pity holes!” God only knows where I got that from. It became the conventional family “expression” for years.

Kids come out with the darnedest things sometimes. Like when Carol was a little girl she thought everyone was buying “Walter Wall” carpeting for their living rooms. And when our own daughter was little she thought we drove over the “Mister Griver Bridge” on our way into Boston.

And then there was that time when Jack Chase on the morning news talked about the guerrilla warfare going on in Cuba. All I could think of was that if having to fight the nazis wasn’t bad enough, now we’ve got to take up arms against the lower primates. When does it all end? That’s what I’d like to know.

I felt compelled to write a letter to President Eisenhower about my master plan to end this nonsensical war in no time flat. All we gotta do is throw bananas all over the ground and wait for the guerrillas to come down out of the trees to pig out. Then we’ll open fire and blast them all to kingdom come. Funny how nobody else figured that out yet. Sometimes the grownups get so caught up in particulars that they fail to see the forest for the trees.

Speaking of trees, and speaking of going for a Sunday drive, there was this one incident I shall never forget for as long as I live. It happened when I was about seven years old. We were driving along a country road in Sandown, New Hampshire, when all of a sudden I saw this sign nailed to a tree that said, “Beware of the Ku Klux Klan.”

So naturally I asked, “What in the heck is the Ku Klux Klan?” You would not believe what my mother told me. I sure got an earful that day, believe you me. I never once thought that right here in these United States of America, in the land of the free, and the home of the brave, that there were people out there who hated other Americans because of the color of their skin.

That was a rude awakening for me. Up until then the difference in color between my skin, and the color of my best friend’s skin who lived next store had never occurred to me. I must have noticed it, but it somehow just didn’t register, I guess.

So I suppose the real reason as to why I was so taken aback about what my mother told me was because those people hated my best friend without even taking the time to get to know him first. What’s even worse is that they’ve never even seen him. How do you justify hating somebody you don’t know or have never seen?

I was soon to discover there was all kinds of hate going on in the world around me. Up until now, I was completely oblivious to all of that. Later that night I was sitting up on the top bunk watching my big brother, Billy, tune an old “F-hole” acoustic guitar that he never did learn how to play. So I asked him if he ever heard of the “Ku Klux Klan.”

We got into this long conversation about people who spend their entire lives hating other people. That’s when he told me that they came up with a dirty name for just about every kind of person that walked the planet. They had a dirty name for people with different colored skin, and Jewish people, and Irish people, and Italian people, and German people, and people from Puerto Rico, and Chinese people, and Mexican people, just to name a few.

Now that I think of it, he didn’t leave anybody out. Everybody had a dirty name. What it boiled down to is that if you live and breathe, they’ve got a dirty name for ya. This is another one of those “nobody gets left behind” deals.

“Just make sure you never use that kind of language outside, okay?” He warned. “You could really hurt somebody’s feelings, and if they get mad enough they may just break your face over something like that.”

So now I’ve got all these new words stuck in my head that I can never use. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is to a little kid? I felt like running down into the cellar with a towel wrapped around my face so I could scream those words a few times just to get them back out of my system.

Needless to say, I felt compelled to pass all of this newfound knowledge along to my best friend who lived next door. He’s a year younger than I am so I was certain this was going to be just as much of a rude awakening for him as it was for me. And because his skin color is different from mine I thought he’d find it interesting to hear what kind of dirty word somebody dreamed up for people who look like him.

Believe it or not, he already knew all that. This kid was only six years old and he already knew all of the derogatory terms associated with every kind of person. He even knew a couple that my big brother never mentioned. And I’ll be honest with ya. I was a little ticked off that he had never shared any of that with me before.

At the supper table that I night I couldn’t wait to enlighten my family to the fact that I had come of age within the realm of slanderous remarks. So I turned to my big brother and asked, “Do you know what you are?”

“No, what?” He asked innocently enough while digging into the mashed potatoes.

“You’re white trash.”

My father looked at me like I had two heads. My mother’s jaw dropped. Carl doubled over in laughter so hard that no sound was coming out. Then I turned to my sister and asked, “What are you looking at, honkey?”

“Where in the world did you hear that kind of language?” My mother demanded to know.

“Billy and Stanley taught it to me. Want to hear what else I know?”

My mother took one stern look at Billy. He immediately raised his hands and said, “Now wait a minute. Don’t take things out of context. He was asking me about the Ku Klux Klan so I was just explaining about all the hate words people use to hurt each other’s feelings. I even told him never to use those words.”

“And I didn’t either,” I explained. “Those are the words Stanley taught me. He never said not to use them so I did.”

We had a long family discussion at the supper table that night, let me tell ya.

All of this seemed to unfold just before the first presidential election that I was ever aware of in my life. I was born about four weeks after President Eisenhower was sworn into office. I was smack dab in the middle of getting potty trained when he ran for his second term.

I remember how we raised our glass of milk in tribute to President Eisenhower during the “Pledge of Allegiance” on the Big Brother, Bob Emery, TV show, but I do not remember Eisenhower’s election. My potty training I do remember. What I remember is leaning over the hopper with my pants down around my ankles shouting, “Somebody wipe my bum!”

I’m far less codependent than that now. Just in case you’re wondering. Other than that, It was the Presidential election of 1960 that left such an indelible footprint on my impressionable young mind that it shaped both my political and social outlook on life for the remainder of my journey here on planet Earth.

For you see, growing up on Arlington Street had exposed me to just about every different kind of person imaginable. We had people with different colored skin. We had people who spoke other languages. And we had people who practiced other religions.

Those were the only differences amongst us. As people in general, we said and did all of the same things. Everybody played "hide-and-go-seek,” “stick ball,” and “one foot off the mud guard” just like everybody else. And everybody else put their pants on one leg at a time just like me so I couldn’t see what the big deal was over those other minor differences.

So anyway, the talk around town back in 1960 was all about this new presidential election they had going on. I didn’t want to sound stupid or anything, but I was a little nervous about this upcoming election.

Eisenhower had been our president since the day I was born. My dad told me that before becoming president, Eisenhower was the five-star general who led our country to victory over the nazis. I had a Jewish friend who had told me some gawd awful things about what the nazis had done to his grandparents.

Knowing that Eisenhower had led our armed forces to victory against such an evil foe gave me a sense of comfort and security. With Eisenhower at the helm, my country was in good hands. I do realize that I was very young and a bit naïve, but that commercial they showed on TV that said “You can rest easy tonight because your National Guard is awake” made me feel safe.

Besides, along with all of the other Everett kids, I used to follow behind the Yankee Division of the National Guard during the Memorial Day parade all the way down to the Glenwood Cemetery. I’d jump out of my skin when they fired off that twenty-one gun salute. After which we all scurried around to collect the spent shells.

At the end of the Memorial Day ceremonies, we followed the National Guard all the way back to the Armory on Chelsea Street. When we got there they had enough sandwiches, cup cakes, potato salad, and Coca-Cola to go around. Those guys were really good to us kids.

The Yankee Division of the National Guard looked some sharp whenever they came marching down Broadway. They never once ceased to impress me. They came from every race, every religion, and from every nationality imaginable, but that didn’t seem to cause any division amongst them. They stood together as one ready to face whatever horror fate threw at them to defend the principles upon which my country stood.

When you add all that up, I was a bit nervous about taking on a new President. Like it or not, it was going to happen anyway without any regards to my sentiments. And as somebody somewhere once said, “The best way to cope with inevitable change was to help bring it about” so I was determined to get enthusiastic about taking on a new President, whether I really wanted one or not.

There were a lot of peculiar similarities going on politically back then. For one thing, we had a governor named, “Endicott Peabody.” Whenever we went for one of our traditional family Sunday drives along Route 128 I’d see a sign for Peabody. Right after that was a sign for Endicott College.

On our way back home those signs spelled out our governor’s name in the right order. I often wondered if somebody didn’t purposely plan it like that. I often recalled that thought several decades later as I passed those signs again on my way up Route 128 to attend classes at Endicott College.

Another peculiarity was that each of the competing campaigns in the upcoming presidential election had a delegate from Massachusetts. On the Republican ticket was Henry Cabot Lodge. He was a former U.S. Senator and the current Untied Nations ambassador. Richard Nixon chose Henry Cabot Lodge as his Vice Presidential running mate for two good reasons.

Henry Cabot Lodge had a long history of foreign relation’s experience. Nixon was hoping that would offset his opponents many years on the senate foreign relations committee. Another reason he chose Lodge was to pull the “favorite son” advantage in Massachusetts out from under the Democratic Presidential candidate. It was a shrewd political move that entailed many a strong implication.

Henry Cabot Lodge came from a long line of well-established Protestant Boston Brahman families. Such a distinction carries little influence today, but back then it meant everything. Those roots would cause a serious tremulous effect on the Democratic Party’s strong Massachusetts political base.

The Democratic Party’s presidential candidate was the young Senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy. He chose an older well established southern gentleman named, Lyndon Johnson, as his running mate. Lyndon Johnson was the Senate Majority Leader from Texas, and he carried enough political clout to hopefully swing the otherwise strong southern Republican states away from Nixon.

Now I know that sounds like a lot of inside political rhetoric for a seven-year-old kid to spew out, but I had an edge over most of the other kids my age. That advantage was solely based on the fact that my mother and my father stood on the extreme opposite ends of the political spectrum over this election, and I was forever getting caught in the crossfire of their verbal political rants.

My father was convinced that if elected, the Vatican would dangle John Kennedy’s political views like a puppet on a string. He felt that a Kennedy administration threatened the separation of church and state as outlined by our forefathers in the “Declaration of Independence.”

He justified his fears on the fact that the Catholic religion does not view the Holy Bible as the definitive authority on theological thought. In the Catholic religion, the Pope defines authoritative theological thought and the Catechism exists to educate the laity to those principles. My father never knew any of that before this presidential election, but the Republicans wasted no time in using this known fact as a scare tactic to dissuade a predominately Protestant population from ever voting for a Roman Catholic President.

That angered my mother to no end. She viewed that as a slanderous political attempt to distort the facts before an uneducated voting public. “This nation was founded on the principle that every one has the right to observe their own beliefs without religious persecution,” she cried. “And besides, John Kennedy is a decorated World War Two Veteran. If he’s good enough to fight for this country than he’s good enough to share in all of the rights and privileges inherent in its Constitution.”

Okay, so maybe I was only seven years old, but so far my mother’s line of reasoning made a heck of lot more sense than anything my father had to say. I say that because amongst my Catholic friends I saw a new sense of pride and patriotism emerge because of Senator Kennedy’s candidacy.

They now felt as though they were just as much a part of the American political process as anyone else. Senator Kennedy’s nomination brought millions of alienated Americans into the fold. And even though I wasn’t Catholic, just by seeing that spirit of hope in my Catholic friends made the whole world seem like a better place. I was beginning to like this spirit of change already.

The other thing my father focused on was that John Kennedy was a new comer to the political arena who had relatively no experience in the affairs of state as a prerequisite to holding the nation’s highest office. My mother had another good come back for that one, too. In her opinion, there’s nothing worse than to keep voting incumbents into office.

“Nothing ever changes when you do that,” she said. “Once they learn all the loop holes and how to hide all that money they pocket on the side, their constituents take a back seat to their own hidden agendas.” Here it is 48 years later and you still can’t discredit that theory.

Another significant event unfolded during that presidential campaign that really threw a lot of public support behind the Democrats. The Reverend, Martin Luther King was unjustly imprisoned for participating in a peaceful civil rights march in Georgia. Richard Nixon refused to get involved in the incident. Senator Kennedy, however, took the time out from his campaign to get Dr. Martin Luther King out of jail.

Shortly thereafter, Martin Luther King’s father came out publicly to endorse Senator Kennedy’s candidacy. That meant the world to my mother, and she didn’t waste any time in unloading both barrels at my dad over that one.

“If Nixon cared anything at all about what this country stands for he would reached out to somebody who was exercising his constitutional right to peacefully demonstrate against the unlawful bigotry going on in this country,” she said. My father stood speechless over that one. He knew she was right. You could see it written all over his face.

In so many ways, the 1960 presidential election was a milestone in the historic timeline of our nation. It was the first time that the newly admitted 49th and 50th states participated in the national election. It was also the first time that an orthodox Roman Catholic successfully won the nomination of his party to seek our nation’s highest office.

Al Smith was actually the first orthodox Roman Catholic to seek his party’s nomination back in 1928, but did not succeed. Like Kennedy, Al Smith championed the cause of racial equality in America, a concept that was virtually unthinkable in his time.

There was yet another significant milestone to the 1960 presidential election. It was the very first time in the history of mass communications technology that over 65 million viewers coast to coast watched a live television broadcast of a debate between the two presidential candidates.

And even though I was only seven years old at the time, it was that televised debate that shaped my political viewpoint for years to come. Let me tell you about that night. I still remember it as if it happened only yesterday.

It happened on a Sunday night. My mother let me stay up way past my usual bedtime on a school night because this was such an historic moment for all of the above reasons. My dad wasn’t too keen on the idea as I remember, but since my mother was so militant about it he didn’t dare challenge her on this one. And I had to agree with my dad that we’ve never seen my mother get so riled about anything as she did this election.

She had been talking about this upcoming debate all week. Come hell or high water, she was hell bent on making my dad come face to face with the issues, and the candidates. “If you can convince me that Nixon isn’t a back stabbing, two faced liar, then I’ll vote for him, too,” she assured him.

As if you couldn’t tell by that let alone, my mother never trusted the Republican Party. On the other hand, you might think for all intent and purposes that my dad was a staunch conservative. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My dad was one of the most open minded, easy-going people you’d ever meet. That’s why my mother couldn’t understand as to why he commonly voted Republican. And she was determined to break him of that existential character flaw as she saw it.

On the night of the first Nixon-Kennedy televised debate, my dad leaned back on the couch and threw his feet up on the coffee table. That’s just his laid back persona coming back at ya. This guy never got riled up about anything. He was willing to sit through this debate, but only because my mother was making him do it. If given the choice he’d just as soon turn off the TV, snap on the radio, and listen to sports talk on WMEX instead.

His commitment to vote Republican in this election had nothing at all to do with the issues or the candidates. He only voted Republican because Eisenhower was a Republican and he worshipped the ground that Eisenhower walked on. The only reason he was voting for Nixon was because he was Eisenhower’s vice president. That’s all there was to it. And that is exactly what ticked my mother off.

My mother hated Nixon with a passion. When he didn’t lift a finger to help the Reverend Martin Luther King it fueled her passion even more so. And the fact that Senator Kennedy did, meant everything to her. If John Kennedy didn’t win this election she was going to pack her bags and go back to Newfoundland. That’s exactly what she said.

Having grown up on the sidewalks of Arlington Street, I’ve learned when to keep my big trap shut. Those who don’t, often wind up with a fat lip and a black eye. My best chances to make it through this night without getting caught in the inevitable crossfire was to kneel down at the coffee table with my sketch pad and to keep my opinions to myself. Tensions were running high and one false move could land me in bed for the night.

You could tell by the way my mother sat all tensed up in that over-stuffed comfy chair that she was poised for battle. That chair was so comfortable to lean back on that it was hard not to fall asleep, especially when listening to Marlin Perkin’s monotone dialogue on “Wild Kingdom” or three and half minutes of “Meet the Press.”

Needless to say, all through each of the candidate’s opening monologues my mother kept pointing at the television and shouting, “See, what did I tell ya?” from across the room. I had no idea what she was talking about, and obviously, neither did my dad. His only rebuttal was, “Will you please keep quiet long enough so I can hear what they’re saying, for God’s sakes?”

When she finally did settle down so we could hear what was going on, this is how it all came across to me. Kennedy expressed a deep love for our country and all of the principles for which she stood. He was disappointed that the current administration failed to enact and enforce civil rights laws to ensure that “ALL” Americans could enjoy the basic rights and privileges as granted in the United States Constitution. He promised to change all that.

Kennedy also blamed the current administration for the deteriorating condition of our inner city slums, and for its lackadaisical support for our public education system, which was falling way behind most other countries. Then he criticizing the current administration for not enthusiastically supporting a more aggressive space program since ours was leaps and bounds behind the Soviet Union.

Nixon said that Kennedy was way off base on his civil rights issues because our constitution guarantees every citizen equal opportunities already. Now I’m thinking that might not hold so true up in Sandown, New Hampshire.

Nixon said that Kennedy’s passion to revitalize our inner city slums sounded good on the surface, but it’s a costly proposal that will raise taxes and cause an unnecessary economic burden on the voting taxpayer.

When Kennedy suggested a tax structure that would tilt the scale to tax the rich and powerful to help boost the lower and working class, Nixon implied that Kennedy’s proposal was socialistic in nature. And then Nixon tried to convince everybody that our space program was every bit as aggressive as that of the Soviet Union’s even if they had already fired rockets off into space that safely landed back down onto earth. That was something we hadn’t done yet. He wasn’t very convincing even to a seven year old.

Kennedy reminded Nixon of the famous Kitchen Debate in which the vice-president responded to Nikita Krushcev’s boast that the Soviet Union was ahead in the space race by saying, “Yes, but America is way ahead in color television technology.” Kennedy then asked, “Of what value is color television technology to our children’s future in compared to outer space exploration?”

In the end, Kennedy promised a more stable economy based on a broader trade market. He promised to enact and enforce civil rights laws so that “ALL” Americans could partake in the American Dream. He promised to begin revitalizing our inner city slums so that the lesser privileged of our society might live with dignity. And he reiterated his stand that our public education system must compete with those of other nations.

Kennedy also promised to build and develop a stronger military defense system while reaching out to our allies to help participate in defending the entire free world from the threat of communism. And he promised that under his administration, America would harness the technology to safely land a man on the moon within the next ten years.

To all of that, Nixon responded with a promise to continue on the path of the current administration. In that way, there will be no new social programs to cause an increase in taxes. Maybe it’s me, but Nixon left little to get enthusiastic about in hopes for a brighter future.

Before sending me off to bed that night, my mother explained what a significant historic even it was that I just witnessed. “You just watched a decorated war hero who faced untold horrors to serve his country. He also overcame overwhelming odds because of his diversity to become a candidate for the highest office in our country. And he is committed to the principle that “all men are created equal.” That’s something our founding fathers wrote into the “Declaration of Independence” two hundred years ago. As you may have noticed, the other candidate never even mentions that.”

“If he wins,” she said, “millions of Americans who were once alienated will have reason to believe in all of the principles upon which our forefathers founded this nation. And maybe, just maybe, old wounds will heal, and we will finally learn to live together as one without anybody calling anybody else a dirty name. You do understand how important that is, don’t you?”

Oh boy, did I ever. I lied awake in bed that night listening to my mother and father out in the living room go back and forth over why they were each going to vote for the other candidate. They never did change each other’s mind. If that night changed anybody, it changed me.

Thinking back on all this now makes me realize as to how overwhelming all this was to a seven-year old kid. I just recently found out that there are people out there who hate my best friend because of the color of his skin. If that don’t beat all, I now realize that there are other people who would never vote for some of my other friends because they go to a different church.

This is a bitter pill to swallow. It seems like as every new day passes, somebody new comes up with another reason to hate somebody else. If we keep this up we’ll soon be separating the Tootsie Roll eaters from the Malted Milk Ball enthusiasts. And I’m telling ya right now, I’m joining up with the Malted Milk Ball bunch, and I don’t even care if they’re Democrat or Republican. So there!

The candidate my father was committed to promises that under his administration nothing will ever change. We’ll just keep on doing what we’re doing because it won’t cost anybody anything. At least that’s how it sounded to me.

I never told anybody this before, and the only other person who knows this is now in Heaven. But on that night I buried my head into my pillow and cried my eyes out. I cried because everybody hates each other. Before all of this everybody was getting along just fine, and now we’ve got all these dirty names to call each other. What’s Santa Claus gonna think when he finds out what we’ve been up to?

My heart was broken. I didn’t want everybody to hate each other anymore. I just wanted us all to get back together again to play “hide and go seek” under the streetlights down on Arlington Street.

All of a sudden I felt somebody rubbing the back of my head. When I looked up from my pillow through teary eyes I saw my big brother, Billy, standing over me. “What’s a matter, squirt?” He asked. So I poured my heart out to him.

“Come here, squirt,” he said sitting me up on his knee. “Everybody doesn’t hate each other. I know it seems like that, but never mind what’s going on in the grown up world. That’s always messed up. Just think about the way it is right here in our own neighborhood.”

“When we buck up sides to play stickball do we care what color somebody’s skin is or what church they go to? No, of course not. That never enters into the picture. We pick the fastest runner or the best hitter. And when we run out of good baseball players, we pick you. Other than that, we couldn’t care less if somebody’s got blue skin, or if they worship a Jelly doughnut – right?”

That made me laugh. I knew what he was saying was true. The world outside may be an ugly place, but we’ve got a pretty neat thing going on down here on Arlington Street. I just hope that never ends.

I asked my brother if he thought Senator Kennedy could possibly fix all of the things that were going wrong in this world. He assured me that if Kennedy wins it would certainly be a step in the right direction. “All we gotta do now is keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best,” he said with a reassuring smile. I slept soundly after that.

I never said a word to anybody, but I ended my prayers every night by crossing my fingers up to God in hopes that he would help Kennedy win. I was now prepared for the changing of the guard. If Kennedy wins I’ll be all right when Eisenhower steps down.

That’s the way it was down on Arlington Street some forty-eight years ago. And the rest, as they say, is history. I needn’t tell you who won that election. What I can tell you is the noticeable change that came over some of my friends because of how it all turned out.

Kids who once scoffed at politics in general were now more interested in what was really going on in the world around them. They had a new sense of pride that I’ve never seen in them before. And with all of that behind us now, we could all get back to playing “stickball,” and “tag rush,” and “hide and go seek” in the middle of Arlington Street. That is until somebody yelled, “Car’s coming!”

My politics never changed from the mold that was cast on that night when I was seven years old. If you were to ask me if I am a liberal or a conservative, I honestly wouldn’t know what to say. On some things I’m one way, and then I go completely to the other end of the spectrum on others.

What I do believe is that it is our responsibility to help each other just like President Kennedy said. It doesn’t matter what color we are or what church we go to. Everybody should have the same rights as everybody else. Inclusion makes your family grow larger. Exclusion breaks everybody up into smaller groups. And that is the very intent of those who seek to prosper on the "divide and conquer" principle.

I pray that nobody comes up with any more dirty names for each other. I pray that we care more about each other than we do for green pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them. And should anyone try to break us apart, I pray that we will all stand together as one, roll up our sleeves, ball up our knuckle bones, and take care of our own.

And I pray that we leave behind for our children’s children a world where they can feel safe playing out on the sidewalk just like we did. And that’s as deep as my politics go.

Take a step back and look at my house. Step back even further to see my whole neighborhood. Even further than that and you'll see my hometown. What you’ll see is all kinds of different people joined together by a thread that runs so true through their veins that binds them together for all time.

That’s who we are we. That’s who we’ll always be. That’s what makes us proud. That’s what makes us special. And in case you’re wondering where we all came from --- “We’re from Everett!”