~ AU H2O, New York, Phoenix, and Quito all over again.

1964 was a big year in America, Nevada, and the world. And in my life too. It was the last year of silver currency, the year of the Nevada Bicentennial celebration, the first year of the New York World’s Fair. I rest my case. It was also an election year; Johnson versus Goldwater or Goldwater versus Johnson, Barry versus Lyndon, gold versus the Texas sun (or ’son’ I guess).

I was political then, way back then in my first life, in my political life when I was ‘political’; before I was struck by lightening and came to my senses (what does it take Mr. Clayton, before you see the light, to make you come to your senses?). It didn’t really take lightening (a literal and real bolt from the blue) to make me give up on politics and the notion of political answers, political solutions. By the mid-nineties it was gone, mostly gone. I actually ‘deregistered’ to vote, “Take my name off the list, send me nothing, expunge my name, it’s my right in a free country.” The clerk agreed, and did; but this was a decade or so ago. I don’t know about now, maybe it’s too late, “Hitler” needs you and your vote to create the illusion of legitimacy. It can happen here.

I liked Barry, he was Jewish and my best friend, David Kladney, was Jewish (although David didn’t like Goldwater, being a good democrat and all). But more important than David and religion was the family tie. My grandmother taught Master Barry Goldwater in school once, admittedly she was the substitute that day, that day in Phoenix, Arizona at Phoenix High School where Barry was freshman class president or something grand.

Hemme was a school teacher (licensed and credentialed and all, not like in Texas usually) in Arizona and in Phoenix where she lived, with her husband and with my mother. I still have the yearbook from that year, Barry’s portrait and all, with the big and imposing ad for Goldwater’s Department Store; the place where Barry’s Dad worked and which he owned. The place where Hemme window shopped and my mother wished to shop, but couldn’t for the prices.

Despite all this the Goldwater’s were a good and respected family; in Phoenix, in those days. Barry had some sort of falling out with Phoenix High, or his father perhaps; ended up at a military school ‘back east’ somewhere (it’s in his autobiography, the school’s name that is, not the fallout or the falling out). This led to more military, air force and all; everything LBJ didn’t have and lacked, having virtually no ‘military’ experience. He (LBJ) would make up for that void in Vietnam of course.

It’s probably a bad idea to vote for or support someone because they’re ‘family friends’, or you might have met them, shaken their hands, said hello one day, attended the same school. But people do this, it’s politics, it’s why politicians shake hands and say hello and try to meet people by the thousands, even tens of thousands. It doesn’t win elections necessarily, but it helps.

The early days of the campaign, New Hampshire days and snowy New England nights, were spent by Barry campaigning against the Republican frontrunner Nelson Rockefeller. Nelson was rich like Johnson, even richer. It was about ‘big oil’ bucks, and Rockettes (if not Rockets), and about the center of all New York, Rockefeller Center. Nelson didn’t mind about Barry, he knew all New Yorkers were New Yorkers first and Jewish second; New York being the center of the world, the only place that counts, or should be counted.

Barry was from the West, the western states from where there had never been a president; where New Yorkers and big city capitalists were held in suspicion if not contempt. It started with the railroads perhaps, Union Pacific and mergers and stock trades and interference in mines and with mining. Land grabs, stock grabs, water wars, swindles, Tea Pot Dome scandals; every hard knock of life in the West (to knowing westerners) could be properly laid upon the doorstep of some New Yorker, or some New York Corporation; or some New York cabal, conspiracy, or New York Syndicate.

Occasionally the west fought back, sending a native or borrowed son ‘back east’ to back a worthy enterprise or cause. Astor was one, building a good hotel and all, even a better barrio along the river; though few of Spanish surname lived there at the time. Mackay was another, ‘kicking the butt’ of Gould for awhile in championing the trans-Atlantic cable service and moving on to Mackay Radio® which revolutionized ‘wireless’ wires around the world. Mackay was a miner, a Nevada miner in the early days, he kept his money in the State mostly, not buying and building San Francisco like other “Nevadans” did, in their rush to become ‘Californiaized’.

Barry’s first slogan was, “A Choice Not an Echo”. He saw the Rockefeller - Johnson race as a “tweedle dum, tweedle dee” contest. Same old, same old. Old power, old practices, old people, old generations acting ‘oldly’; as in old ways of thinking, if they thought at all. Who wants a new ‘Rockefeller Center’ in Washington, when there’s already an old one in New York? In Barry’s mind the issue was ‘Choice’, Goldwater was the pro-choice candidate of the Republican Party.

I went to Ecuador that summer, while waiting to get my driver license. It seemed the thing to do, being neighborly, as an older neighbor by the name of Hardesty had suggested the trip. I paid all my own way from newspaper money (from my newspaper ‘route’, some route indeed). Hardesty had other things on his mind besides Inca gold and high thoughts inspired by the high Andes. The trip was cut short and soon I was back in Miami (Miami Beach in Florida) after a long flight over Cuba, alone, waiting for a bus back home or somewhere. I decided to ’see the fair’ on my way back. It involved a detour of sorts, a ‘triangle fare’ as the airlines later called it. The bus companies just called it ‘tickets’ (or ‘tickets to ride’).

So I bussed up toward New York to see Flushing Meadows and the New York World’s Fair, and to ride a subway or two. On my stop in Washington I watched the convention on TV, Goldwater and the west winning, New York on the ropes, Rockefeller down for the count it seemed. I rode into the ‘big apple’ like a proud westerner, free at last and vindicated; gold had won, even if it wasn’t upearthed from Incan graves in the Andes.

The story of the fair and the trip home must wait for another day, but I did return home just in time to see Barry (Goldwater) speak from the steps of the old brick Municipal Auditorium in Reno. I was close, but I did not shake his hand, too young to vote as I was. However, I was not too young to campaign and to campaign with zeal and with vigor. I passed out campaign material in poor black neighborhoods (called Negro Neighborhoods then), talked to folk, shook their hands. I implanted signs along the highways. I plastered my (new to me) 1952 MG TD with bumper stickers; “AU H2O in ‘64″ and “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right” type slogans in two hundred point something type.

I finagled a rare copy of the 45RPM “Go With Goldwater” song and played it on my record player. Peter, Paul, and Mary songs were better, but they all seemed to favor the simple truth and honesty of the Goldwater campaign and of Barry Goldwater himself, son of a Phoenix merchant, done good.

As the fall came, the commercial came. It was a TV commercial, it only played once. It showed a girl in a field of flowers picking daisies. There was no sound. Then there was a terrifying flash in the background, and a mushroom cloud, then something about vote for LBJ. In a flash it was over, shock and awe campaign tactics, Johnson played the fear card and Johnson won.

There is much that can be said, much that can be read, much that can be written to explain and to revisit the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. Those whom he most deplored have since claimed him as their own. And he was changed, forever changed by the day of the cloud (on his name) and the commercial cloud and the resulting loss. He wrote stupid things later in life, even behaved stupidly, he had lost himself it seems, or had at least lost the vision that toppled New York and gave America a choice about going into Vietnam, with a leader who didn’t know crap about war, wars, or military campaigns.

So Johnson brought drugs to America, brought poverty, brought addiction. He championed Civil Rights on paper, but took it away out the back door in caskets. He divided America’s families right down the middle, and waged war on the middle class. He insured a Nixon victory by his pomposity, incompetence, and his greed. He was cruel to animals (the ever frequent doggie ear lift thing, to “hear them yelp”).

When (or if) you see the ‘flash’ and the mushroom cloud, remember Barry. Remember that there is a choice and that fear is not the answer. Remember the alternatives from Texas or New York and count the bodies in your mind (and name them, or give them names), someone will, and if you don’t someone else will for you. Go With Goldwater? Think about it next time, he or she might be a political long shot, but it’s probably the only ‘shot’ you’ll ever get.

[2007.11.29 / Thursday - Go With Goldwater]