Velociworld

NOSTALGIA 24

It's a politics/race night. I'm in a burned out mood anyway, going back to my first post of the day.

Election 1964! Second grade. My parents put a Goldwater button on me and sent me to school (AuH2O!). I was the only Republican kid in a sea of LBJ styrofoam boaters, buttons, and bumper stickers. Hell, I was the only Republican in the State of Georgia. My father was a Goldwater fan, but he had spent the last seven years in The Georgia General Assembly as a Democratic and Independent Senator and Representative. I truly learned what a minority was that week at Heard Elementary. I was one. We lost that election, as I recall.

I also remember the prior November, when we got out early because the President's brains had been blown out. I got on my bicycle alongside my best buddy David Mallory, and said "I don't know why the teachers are crying and everybody's so upset. My Dad said Kennedy was a son of a bitch." First grade. Ah, youth. My Dad was a Teacher. In the school of Hard Knocks and Object Lessons. And a damned good one.

In the sixties blacks would play juju on my dad in courtroom trials. Put salt in his pockets and sacrifice chickens and shit so he'd lose a case against their relatives. My father, a Skeptic from the Old School, swore that shit worked.

Why else would he lose a case?