Birthdays were good when I was a kid. My mother for years would bake the kind of cake that my sister and I wanted for our birthdays. I usually asked for chocolate cake with lemon frosting although one year I went with lemon meringue pie. I had a slice at a Japanese Starbucks today and sent up a quick prayer for Mom.
We lived (as I can appreciate now) in great places and times. My dad had gotten out of the active duty military in 1962 and we had escaped from California back to Oregon and after an initial year in Burns (now famous for the Malheur confrontation) moved to the small town of Grants Pass in Southwestern Oregon.
Somehow, I don’t remember all that many of the specific presents now (a seniorish problem, perhaps). A chemistry set, a microscope, a single shot 22 rifle and later a ever action 30-30, an English-made three speed bicycle, likely ordered from Sears or Montgomery Ward. Those latter were very much the high end exceptions — by the time I was in junior high school we were middle class, but never by any great margin.
So, I could not tell you with any clarity or confidence what it is that I received for my fifteenth birthday, 48 years ago today. But I have the most vivid and indelible recollection of what I, and we, lost that day.
As a sophomore in high school, I was only beginning to get what the political thing was about, but it was a time of such political and social ferment that even in our relative isolation we were becoming aware that great and dramatic things were going on in the world. And then a bit of that drama came to town.
The ever-escalating Vietnam war, its body counts and protests were, along with campaigns and conflicts over civil rights were daily staples of the nightly TV news and the presidential campaign of 1968 was high drama.
Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy was relatively little-known but had staked out a strong anti-war position. He urged Senator Robert Kennedy to run for the presidency but Kennedy, perhaps mindful of the fate of his older brother declined and McCarthy declared his candidacy.
Lyndon Johnson, the incumbent, was assumed to have a lock on the Democratic nomination but when polling indicated that he was going to suffer a humiliating defeat to McCarthy in Wisconsin went on national television to announce he would not be a candidate.
This was a major surprise and shock to just about everyone. Johnson’s VP, Hubert Humphrey declared as the replacement establishment candidate and Robert Kennedy then jumped in as well — to the irritation of McCarthy.
None of the Kennedy’s had ever lost an election up to that point, but Kennedy realized he had problems in Oregon which then as now comes not long before California in the primary schedule — in 1968 they were only a week apart Oregon’s May 28, California’s on June 4. California was recognized as crucial for both McCarthy and Kennedy.
So, in an attempt to salvage the Oregon situation, Kennedy campaigned pretty heavily there, mainly in the form of a ‘whistle-stop” tour by train, originating in Portland and traveling south through the Willamette Valley and on into the Umpqua and Rogue Valleys of Southern Oregon making numerous stops and speeches along the route culminating in our town on the eve of the primary.
We were given the option of getting out of school for the afternoon to go see him but not all that many students must have taken the opportunity because the crowd couldn’t have been more than 300 or so altogether, with maybe half of those HS students.
The venue was a supermarket parking lot built on the site of the old railroad depot that had been demolished before we moved there. It fronted on what had been the main street of the town and all the buildings across the street were old western style brick storefronts, including several taverns and a magazine stand which was the only place in town you could buy a Playboy magazine (kept behind the counter, of course).
Kennedy spoke from a makeshift stage for maybe 10-15 minutes and then fielded questions from the audience, some of whom were older students. He was asked about the war and about gun control — highly unpopular there then as now. IIRC his response was that he supported the right to own guns and only wished to keep them out of the hands of maniacs.
He then simply climbed down from the stage and waded out into the crowd, greeting people and shaking hands — which surprised me and most everyone, probably although I found out years later it was his standard practice to do so. (I saw no visible security at any point).
It being a hot afternoon at the end of a grueling couple of days, Kennedy made another surprising, but eminently sensible move and headed across the street for the nearest tavern: an old workingman’s type place — narrow, with a long bar down one side and a row of smallish tables down the other.
My friend and I somehow anticipated the move and occupied a table. RFK landed right across from us, not five feet away, sprawled across a couple of bar stools more or less leaning back against the bar rather than facing it.
He killed about half a glass of the draft beer that had appeared in front of him in one or two gulps and, for those few moments, anyway, looked both utterly alive and at the same time relaxed and content, as if he knew that for the moment he had done everything he could and done it well. Serious charisma I’ve not seen the like of.
But he lost Oregon — the only primary that McCarthy actually won. Undeterred, he went on to campaign intensely in California, wading into crowds even in inner city areas that had been torn by rioting after the assassination of Martin Luther King less than two months before.
He went on to win California and following his victory speech departed from his practice of wading into the crowd on the advice of his security team — who then conducted him, a few minutes into my birthday, — into the sights of yet another lone, wacko, gunman.
He clung, somehow, to life for something like 26 hours and checked out in the early hours of June 6, 1968 — something of America dying along with him.
To those who are too young to remember this, I can only suggest that this is history worth learning. I counsel you to beware of anyone who insists that you accept the official version of events and to look at *everything* critically.
Do that and you may be dismissed (especially around DK) as a conspiracy wacko. But you may well also find that the official/accepted version of some important events are far less plausible than some of the alternatives.
Peace (and Justice and Truth)
LRA
RFK in Oregon:
Hollywood, politics and the Democratic ‘68 race:
www.pophistorydig.com/…
Underworld USA Trilogy — James Ellroy
en.wikipedia.org/…