Old? You Want Old?

My English school teacher daughter Dana asked me the other day what it was like to grow up back in the '50's and '60's and 70's.  Like I would ask a paleontologist what it was like back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  

She asked me that as she'd given her class a project around the subject, and since I'm "old," (she didn't say that), I'd know.  She and I are going to do a Zoom call in the near future so I can video it for her class.  But in the meantime, since it's on my mind, I thought I'd jot down a couple of my more indelible remembrances...

     ---  I recall vividly the day then-President Harry S. Truman visited Springfield, MO.  It was 1948 and he was running for re-election to POTUS.  My folks owned a motel on Glenstone Boulevard there.  That's the main drag, doncha' know, and the parade was to come by our "Show-Me Tourist Court."  

I was five, and dad took me by the hand and got us a good spot in which to view the passing parade as Harry drove by.  I know dad wasn't a Democrat, and I doubt anyone around those parts was at the time, either.  But I'm pretty sure that being one or the other didn't mean the same thing as it does today, what with the War having just ended and us having just nuked the Japanese.  I think Dad was just bored and curious.  So as Harry passed, standing and waving from the back of a bright green Chrysler Town and Country convertible, top down, dad lifted me high and said, "Give 'em Hell, Harry!"  That was Harry's famous tag line.

Harry ordered his driver to stop and waved my dad to bring me closer.  Harry leaned down and dad lifted me high.  Truman placed me in the back seat, right next to him, and ordered the parade to continue.  Imagine:  The parade creeping along, Harry waving, me waving, and dad running along beside the car trying to get his kid back.

Indelible memory?  You betcha...'

     ---  And old?  You want old?  I happened to be near a cornfield just outside of my home town of Chillicothe, Missouri, one sunny summer day back in 1962.  Actually, it wasn't a "happening."  I had heard that Lyndon Baines Johnson was running for re-election, and that he was making a campaign stop.  In that cornfield.  Just outside of my hometown...

So, my interest in politics just gaining a foothold, I got there early.  So did about a hundred of my fellow Missourians.  Most of them were journalists and Secret Service agents and politicians from Jefferson City, our Capitol.  Very few were farmers and citizens from Chillicothe and environs, as we were (and still are, I believe) pretty conservative, and this bozo was Democrat Number One.  And he was yuuuuge!  This guy was about 6' 5" and 275, if he weighed an ounce.  Let's put it this way: he blotted out the sun. 

His ten gallon hat would have measured at least 12  gallons.  

His suit fit like he didn't like to wear it, and it didn't like to be worn.  

He had a gigantic spot of mustard on his dark blue tie, and I couldn't stop staring at it.  No one else could either.

LBJ gruffed (spoke) in a language approximating English for about an hour, mostly about his vaunted "Great Society Program," that he and his wife Lady Bird were foisting upon America.  And that in retrospect, I might mention, has failed so miserably to solve our racial problem here in America, and at the cost of only about $8 Trillion Dollars.  So far. 

You'll note how Democrats keep on making the same mistakes over and over and over again, while guaranteeing us voters all a different result.  That is, BTW, the very definition of insanity.

I guffaw heartily in response.

Shall you guffaw with me?