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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What are your earliest political memories?
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comet
Snowball in Hell
# 10353
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Posted
I remember riding along in the car as my mom was listening to the radio and she completely lost her shit yelling at it and bashing on the dash board. She then went on to tell me how she was sorry, but that idiot made her so angry and the country was going to fall to pieces if he was elected president, and how she'd happily vote for a canned beet before voting for him.
His name was Reagan.
[ 11. June 2013, 05:08: Message edited by: comet ]
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Evil Dragon Lady, Breaker of Men's Constitutions
"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.” -Calvin
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comet
Snowball in Hell
# 10353
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
I also recall their approval of Richard Nixon, and feeling he's been treated very unfairly when he resigned.
Nixon resigned not long after I was born. in the family lore, my arrival terrified him into resigning. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Evil Dragon Lady, Breaker of Men's Constitutions
"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.” -Calvin
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chive
Ship's nude
# 208
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Posted
My first political memory is the Brighton bombing and the picture of Norman Tebbit being carried out in his pyjamas.
I also vividly remember the miner's strike but I think that was because my uncle was very involved. In fact when Thatcher died, his partner was one of the people interviewed on the news as coming from the position of striking miners.
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'Edward was the kind of man who thought there was no such thing as a lesbian, just a woman who hadn't done one-to-one Bible study with him.' Catherine Fox, Love to the Lost
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... I recall my parents fulminating over a local official who got elected while serving time in jail. ...
That's some achievement. How did he (I assume he) manage that? And what was he in for - corruption? You don't even have a vote here if you're in jail. It's an issue at the moment.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
I was born in 1967 and I think the first truly political event I remember was being taken on a May day Trades Union march by my father and uncle when I was three or four.
But in terms of national politics, I can remember the power cuts of the early 1970's and Ford losing the US General Election to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
But I suppose my earliest detailed memories of politics and politicians, when I was able to understand what was going on, would be the day Mrs Thatcher won her first General Election in 1979.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
I can remember when I was primary school age my grandmother telling me about my great great great grandfather who was George Loveless, the leader of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, - small group of farm workers who were deported to Australia in 1834 for forming a trade union (not actually illegal at the time, they were charged with swearing an oath other than to the King). They were later pardoned and returned after a public campaign. That's when I first became aware of protest movements and political campaigning, at the time one of my brothers was a shop steward and I became one later when I was a nurse.
I remember some of the protest songs of my early teens, by UB40 and Elvis Costello among others, and then the inevitable Spitting Image. I was always a fan of political satire, I used to read Punch in the public library every week, and I still read Private Eye now and listen to radio 4 political satire.
The Cold War was also in the background, I lay awake at night scared that nuclear war would break out and I even wrote an essay in my English o'level exam themed around nuclear war.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
@ Comet:
Ah, this thread is sharpening up my memory.
How appropriate that your mother would have voted for a canned beet rather than Reagan. Reagan was the president who, in downfunding school lunches (along with pretty much everything else) opined that ketchup was a vegetable.
I tell you, what Nixon failed to dismantle, Reagan managed to shred.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... I recall my parents fulminating over a local official who got elected while serving time in jail. ...
That's some achievement. How did he (I assume he) manage that? And what was he in for - corruption? You don't even have a vote here if you're in jail. It's an issue at the moment.
I was too little to take in details like names, dates, and serial numbers. First, though, this probably happened before I was born (my parents held long political grudges).
Second, it had something to do with Boston politics at a time when some sort of (according to my very conservative parents) corrupt Democratic political mob basically "ran" both city and state (Massachusetts) government.
Third, it's entirely possible that what happened is something like this: the candidate might have been arrested for some crime, put in jail to await trial when it was too late to take him off the ballot, and managed to win the election.
I hasten to emphasize I don't know that's what happened; but I do know that's a possible explanation.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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GordonThePenguin
Shipmate
# 2106
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Posted
Public sector strikes in the UK in the late 1970s and Margaret Thatcher being elected.
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Ferdzy
Shipmate
# 8702
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
My aunt and uncle were visiting us in small-town Ontario during the 1953 Canadian federal election and they packed us (Mother, Dad, 3 kids and Granny as well as their daughter) in the car (pre-seatbelts and pre- everything else) and drove to the local train station where a campaign train was making a whistle-stop.
I remember being very impressed and asked my Dad Is it Bob Hope, daddy? Mr Saint-Laurent, the Prime Minister, heard me and paused in his speech to smile at me. My Uncle, a civil servant in Ottawa, laughed all the way home. Another notch in Pete's additions to family lore. I was nearly 5. And I do remember that time. I loved trains which is the only reason I agreed to go.
I also remember the election of 1957 when the government was defeated in what was called the Pipeline election. (My parents were ecstatic and my Granny was sure the country was going to hell in a hand basket).
Fast forward to 1960/61 and I recall the formation of the New Democratic Party. I was off to a lifetime of political junkie-ism.
My earliest memory must be from 1967 or 1968, when I would have been 6 or 7. My parents, both artists, volunteered in the local NDP campaign, and designed the lawn signs - bright orange. I remember that they were so visible and liked, that the NDP then adopted orange as its official colour.
My memory is quite clear about that, and yet it sounds so improbable! Pete, do you have any memory of when orange showed up as the colour for the NDP?
Posts: 252 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Oct 2004
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
About that time Ferdzy, I think the first signs were a rather dull green and brown. I could be mistaken though. Given how small the Dippers were in those days, I think your memory might be quite correct. I certainly planted a few orange signs in London North in the 1971 provincial.
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Even more so than I was before
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
Born in 1949. Earliest memories: the coronation of the Queen; Eisenhower was president; the burial of the Korean War Unknown Soldier.
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Off Centre View
Shipmate
# 4254
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Posted
As a British child of the 80s, my earliest vivid political memories were of the end of the Cold War.
I remember something happening to Gorbachev (arrested or kept under house arrest or something?) because my parents talked about it when we were on holiday. I also remember seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall on TV; I didn't understand it fully at the time, but I knew that the world was never going to be quite the same again.
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Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
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Posted
Back in the early 1980s, Bobby Sands was elected as an MP, even though he was in jail, and he later died on hunger strike, I think, so it is possible in the UK to be in jail and be elected.
That's not my first political memory, though. That would be a very grainy, black and white memory of Churchill's funeral. I had very little idea of what was going on, except that this had been a very important person.
When I got to junior school (ages 7 - 11), morning school assembly often included a little play. We would march into the hall to a classical music recording of the week, sing a hymn and have a prayer, and be given something to think about as well. On one occasion the little play was of US soldiers killing the inhabitants of a Vietnamese village. I think it was probably supposed to be the My Lai massacre. Pretty strong stuff for an ordinary English junior school.
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Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
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Ferdzy
Shipmate
# 8702
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
About that time Ferdzy, I think the first signs were a rather dull green and brown. I could be mistaken though. Given how small the Dippers were in those days, I think your memory might be quite correct. I certainly planted a few orange signs in London North in the 1971 provincial.
I ask my parents about this, and I get a vague, "Oh, maybe." I guess it was a decision made in consultation with other people, so they don't see it as "we invented NDP orange". As a little kid though, I was impressed that they made orange signs, and lo! Orange signs henceforth.
Posts: 252 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Oct 2004
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Keren-Happuch
Ship's Eyeshadow
# 9818
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Posted
I was born in the late 70s and remember that "the war" (ie the Falklands) always seemed to be on the TV news to the extent that I thought it was a permanent state of affairs.
It must have been the 1987 election where one of our teachers asked all our class who we'd vote for with the only piece of information to go on being that the Tories were pro nuclear weapons while Labour were against them. I remember being sure that it must be a lot more complicated than that.
I always knew that there was an East and West Germany, but it wasn't until Honecker's resignation just before the Wall came down that I realised that the East one was Communist.
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Travesty, treachery, betrayal!
EXCESS - The Art of Treason
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Posts: 2407 | From: A Fine City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Dogwalker
Shipmate
# 14135
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Posted
Porridge,
I suspect your parents were on about James Michael Curley, Governor of Massachusetts, Mayor of Boston and Congressman, and three-time felon, according to the linked Wikipedia article.
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If God had meant for us to fly, he wouldn't have given us the railways. - Unknown
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
I remember the miners' work to rule and the three-day week in 1973-4. I remember NOT BEING ALLOWED TO READ WHEN THE POWER WAS OFF - because my mother thought it would hurt my eyes. I had a grudge against the NUM for years as a result. I think that's my earliest political memory, though I also remember going to the polling booth with my mother (in the days when children got a day off school if their school was used as a polling station) so perhaps it's just the earliest dateable memory.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
The rule here (and I think in the UK) was that a person convicted of felony could not stand or vote for Parliament. I have a recollection that that has changed here recently under some human rights legislation.
My earliest political memory is of soldiers going off to Korea, then of George VI dying. There are vague memories of the Labour Party loss in the Federal election at about the same time. The memory I have is the pleasure a great-uncle had in the victory, as he had some role in the state organisation of the Liberal Party. I also have a very strong memory of the shelling of the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and the fears of the consequences. An earlier version of the 1962 Cuban crisis.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Off Centre View:
I remember something happening to Gorbachev (arrested or kept under house arrest or something?) because my parents talked about it when we were on holiday.
I was at my first week long sleep away church camp when that went down. We were only 45 minutes from my parents house, but my mother still wrote to me every day, and I still have the letters detailing the world's confusion over what was going to happen.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dogwalker:
Porridge,
I suspect your parents were on about James Michael Curley, Governor of Massachusetts, Mayor of Boston and Congressman, and three-time felon, according to the linked Wikipedia article.
Aha! That's the guy. And from the dates in the article, it appears the political grudges must have begun early, or been inherited from my grandparents.
(Though I suspect my maternal grandmother was an FDR Democrat. She had a cat named Eleanor Roosevelt.)
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
The presidential election of 1960. Kennedy and Nixon both made whistle-stops in Ann Arbor, and we were excused from school to see them. I went to both, though I don't remember (and surely wouldn't have understood) anything they said (I was 6 going on 7). Most of the people I knew were for Kennedy, though my father was a Republican (he got over it). He now says that when he got into the voting booth, he started to push the lever for Nixon, and found he just couldn't do it.
I had a friend a year or so younger who made "Nixon for President" signs just because his family were all for Kennedy, and generally made a pest of himself about it.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
quote:
Originally posted by Dogwalker:
Porridge,
I suspect your parents were on about James Michael Curley, Governor of Massachusetts, Mayor of Boston and Congressman, and three-time felon, according to the linked Wikipedia article.
Aha! That's the guy. And from the dates in the article, it appears the political grudges must have begun early, or been inherited from my grandparents.
(Though I suspect my maternal grandmother was an FDR Democrat. She had a cat named Eleanor Roosevelt.)
Thanks for the link. What a truly dreadful example. Would make a great film, but horrible in life.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Off Centre View
Shipmate
# 4254
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
quote:
Originally posted by Off Centre View:
I remember something happening to Gorbachev (arrested or kept under house arrest or something?) because my parents talked about it when we were on holiday.
I was at my first week long sleep away church camp when that went down. We were only 45 minutes from my parents house, but my mother still wrote to me every day, and I still have the letters detailing the world's confusion over what was going to happen.
Thanks Og; it was a really confusing time - I don't think even the CIA predicted the old Soviet Union would fall!
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Good Lord! The Ship is full of children! - was my first thought on reading this. Then I started counting and I realised that this all happened 22 years ago.
Me (born 1967): the power cuts of the Three-Day week period (we had a gas cooker and were better off than our neighbours who had electric ones, and for that reason for years I thought a gas cooker was a wiser choice), cartoons by I think Gibberd in the Guardian of Edward Heath and the TUC (always symbolised by a bloke in a donkey jacket with TUC across the shoulders), and for some reason the first politician, other than Heath, I remember is Alec Douglas-Hume, who was Foreign Secretary. I've no idea why, except perhaps that he looked a bit different from all the others.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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The Rogue
Shipmate
# 2275
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Posted
I was born about a month before JFK was killed so I don't remember that. My earliest political memories are of Mike Yarwood (British impressionist) doing Ted Heath and Harold Wilson. Also, I remember the power cuts of the 70s. My Mum and Dad made it fun and exciting and we gathered in one room and played word games by candlelight. In other words (although I didn't think of it like this at the time) when someone decided to make a political point by stuffing up everybody else we just got on with it.
I still prefer gas and I suspect that's why.
[ 12. June 2013, 09:19: Message edited by: The Rogue ]
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If everyone starts thinking outside the box does outside the box come back inside?
Posts: 2507 | From: Toton | Registered: Feb 2002
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
I can just remember Watergate, certainly remember the powercuts and the battle between Wilson and Heath. Actually as a teenager was taken to hear Heath at a political meeting, but that was in the 1980s. My Dad referred to him as the sort of old fashioned Tory you could respect. Actually I suspect my first memory is attending a political march. It was a Trades Unions and their banners were out and each group was marching behind the appropriate one maybe even a few brass bands. I do not think they were protesting at anything, rather it was a sort of solidarity parade, it had a bit of the feel of a Lord Mayor's procession. Certainly it was the sort of things that the crowds stood along the route to cheer the marchers on.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Albertus: quote:
...we had a gas cooker and were better off than our neighbours who had electric ones, and for that reason for years I thought a gas cooker was a wiser choice...
We thought so too. We had an electric cooker and were reduced to cooking over our open fire. My mother's favourite saucepan was never the same again. After that experience we always had gas cookers, which involved knocking a hole in the outside wall and having Calor gas cylinders in the garden because our village didn't have mains gas.
[ 12. June 2013, 12:29: Message edited by: Jane R ]
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Kyzyl
Ship's dog
# 374
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Posted
Being sent home early from kindergarten and finding my mom and a few other moms gathered in our house around our color tv - President Kennedy had been killed. My next full political memory also included an assassinated Kennedy. I came down early one morning and found my father and sister sadly conversing. My sister was going to be voting in her presidential election and was an RFK backer. She and Dad had stayed up to watch the primary returns from California. Saw it all happen live. I also spent a very hot Houston summer gladly watching the Watergate hearings in the AC.
Posts: 668 | From: Wapasha's Prairie | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
My first political memory was the Kitchen debates/discussions with Nikita Kruschev.
My most vivid memory was being in my fourth grade classroom when the principal burst in and she was crying. It was 22 November 1963...
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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georgiaboy
Shipmate
# 11294
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Posted
Like Kyzyl above, I too watched the Watergate hearings -- I remember Barbara Jordan particularly. (But I was working nights and dragged the TV out by the pool!)
My earliest political memories are (very vaguely) the radio broadcast of FDR's funeral procession, and being asked to a neighbor's house to watch the Coronation of E2 on their brand-new TV (we didn't yet have one) -- I guess that counts a political?
My first presidential vote was for John Kennedy.
(All of which, I guess, puts me in the geezer class.)
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You can't retire from a calling.
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
I was born in early 60s and often used to be sat in front of a TV at 6 O'Clock with 2 of my brothers while our parents were out working their farm.
I recall the news read by grey-haired robert dougal with it's grey goo of the Vietnam war/Soviet threat , problems in Northern Ireland, Harold Wilson etc.
My first real awareness of what politics actually meant was when Ted Heath got the boot after the power-cuts and 3-day week in 73-4 .
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
One of the earliest memories I have (aged about 4) was shopping for some pineapple with my mother who refused to buy anything South African. She only changer her buying habits when Nelson Mandela came to power)
Then, in 1959 the "No Maoris, no Tour" movement to stop a planned rugby tour of SA by The All Blacks because the South African Government was refusing to allow Maori players to enter the country.
Huia
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... I recall my parents fulminating over a local official who got elected while serving time in jail. ...
That's some achievement. How did he (I assume he) manage that? And what was he in for - corruption? You don't even have a vote here if you're in jail. It's an issue at the moment.
It was probably James Michael Curley Mayor of Boston and Governor of Massachusetts in the days when the Irish Machine ran politics.
His first of two convictions was for taking the civil service exam for postman for a constituent.
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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The Phantom Flan Flinger
Shipmate
# 8891
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Posted
My earliest memory is Margaret Thatcher coming to power in 1979 - I remember it being a big deal that the PM was a woman for the first time. Being 4 years old at the time, I didn't realise that it was a distinct possibility, I thought it had taken everybody by surprise.
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Posts: 1020 | From: Leicester, England | Registered: Dec 2004
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
I recall the news....Harold Wilson etc.
I was in London when he became Prime Minister and Barber was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a young adult, I bought his book,
The Governance of Britain.
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If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Writing is currently my hobby, not yet my profession.
Posts: 30517 | From: White Hart Lane | Registered: Oct 2002
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vw man
Shipmate
# 13951
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Posted
The time J F K was shot.
It was the night my parents went out for yhe night and left my sister who is a few years older than me our own ,the tv programs for the night stoped to have non stop news coverage ,I did not fully understand but I knew it was serious
Posts: 115 | From: Derbyshire | Registered: Jul 2008
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ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
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Posted
I've been racking my brains for a particular first memory, but can't come up with one. It seems more like a gradual progression. A drip feed of mentions of the IRA on news bulletins, Spitting Image, things said by adults around me (grandmother really not a fan of Thatcher) and charity singles (Band Aid etc). The individual things didn't necessary link up till much later though.
Weirdly, I don't remember much about the miner's strike. I was very young, but living in the heart of mining country with a close relative working as a pit electrician, you'd have thought it would have been memorable.
It's amazing how much you pick up when you're young. It makes me wonder what children now pick up and where from.
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'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka
Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
I was born in 1967 and remained clueless about any political stuff until Jimmy Carter, mostly. I do remember some of the neighborhood boys were off, fighting in Vietnam. I guess I lived a rather oblivious life or I just wasn't interested. I wasn't even all that aware of the Carter administration except some of the kids I hung out with taught me a (stupid) song that we all thought was clever and hilarious. It was sung to the Oscar Mayer hot dog t.v. theme. I do remember my mother crying as she watched some political funeral broadcast on t.v. Hoover, somebody, because when she told me, I looked at our Hoover vacuum cleaner and said, "He made our vacuum cleaner?" and she told me to be quiet, she wanted to watch the funeral. I was all of four years old, I think.
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
Posts: 3451 | From: Tacoma, WA USA | Registered: Aug 2007
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
I do remember my mother crying as she watched some political funeral broadcast on t.v. Hoover, somebody, because when she told me, I looked at our Hoover vacuum cleaner and said, "He made our vacuum cleaner?" and she told me to be quiet, she wanted to watch the funeral. I was all of four years old, I think.
Possibly J. Edgar, because he died in 1972.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
quote:
posted by Sir Kevin
I was in London when he became Prime Minister and Barber was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a young adult, I bought his book, The Governance of Britain.
Think you're getting a bit confused Sir K:
Harold Wilson's Chancellor after the 1964 election was James Callaghan, and it was Denis Healey in 1974.
Anthony Barber was Chancellor for Ted Heath.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Deputy Verger
Shipmate
# 15876
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Posted
22nd November 1963. No debate, that's my first political memory – and evidently I'm not alone. It was also the first time I remember seeing grown-ups cry.
It was only recently I realised that nearly five years passed between the funerals of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. In my childish memory they seemed very close together – but they were definitely my first funeral “experiences” - both on the same small black-and-white television. So my sense of politics had a lot to do with assassination.
Later, I was in England and I have very clear memories of the three-day week, working by gaslight (on a manual typewriter) and shopping by candlelight in Spar – the so-called “supermarket”.
In the Thatcher/Reagan years, when the Nuclear Clock, or whatever they call it, was almost at midnight, I was also scared of nuclear annihilation. I thought the “leaders of the free world” were both pretty evil warmongers.
(Who knew I was so close in age to Ken and Sir Kevin? This has been a very revealing thread in terms of the ages of our Shipmates!)
Posts: 475 | From: London | Registered: Sep 2010
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
I know I am dating myself here, but I remember the break-up of the Soviet Union. I would have been between 6 and 8. I remember my mother getting a National Geographic about it and saying maybe it would really happen. It was definitely still up in the air then, so I'm guessing this was well before it was all final in late '91. Her excitement that the Cold War was finally ending, maybe, was contagious and I remember a deep sense of awe. I looked at the colors on the map in the Nat Geo, and saw the gigantic'normous country that was maybe going to become so many countries. She mentioned something about the Iron Curtain coming down and I confused it with a literal curtain--I think I was picturing the Berlin Wall*, basically. I remember being fascinated by the August coup too and was seriously disappointed when Gorbachev turned out not to be a simple hero. I loved the drama of his escape from danger in the coup--at least the way I understood the coup at the time--and wanted him to be a simple white knight.
*Actually, I remember the Berlin Wall coming down too, which was probably before my USSR-related memories, but I didn't really understand the implications. I mean I was glad people could go see their family now, but it wasn't real.
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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Zappa
Ship's Wake
# 8433
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Posted
My parents being apoplectic because some dude called Harold Wilson had become Something Important™. I was a child living in Ghana at the time. It was soon followed by unrelated riots when some dude called Kwame Nkrumah was couped d'etated (or whatever the verb might be).
By the time I became interested in politics I was living on small and shaky islands far, far away, and the Prime Minister, a man named Norman Kirk, suddenly died ![[Tear]](graemlins/tear.gif) . I still thought Labour (later I would move countries again and it would become Labor) were The Enemies of Common Sense and Decency (he was a Labour PM). Now I know that phrase refers to all politicians.
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shameless self promotion - because I think it's worth it
and mayhap this too: http://broken-moments.blogspot.co.nz/
Posts: 18917 | From: "Central" is all they call it | Registered: Sep 2004
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Oscar P.
Shipmate
# 10412
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Posted
Like several who have posted, my earliest memory is of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. I was in first grade and remember my teachers being upset and telling us to sit quietly in our seats because something bad had happened. A few days later I remember being irritated with my parents because my sisters and I were made to sit and watch the funeral on TV when we wanted to go play.
Posts: 93 | From: Gateway to the West | Registered: Sep 2005
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:
I do remember my mother crying as she watched some political funeral broadcast on t.v. Hoover, somebody, because when she told me, I looked at our Hoover vacuum cleaner and said, "He made our vacuum cleaner?" and she told me to be quiet, she wanted to watch the funeral. I was all of four years old, I think.
Possibly J. Edgar, because he died in 1972.
I think you may be right and that scares me. Crying about J. Edgar Hoover?! Holy shit, I hope my mother wasn't that right wing! She voted for Jimmy Carter, though... maybe she was just having a bad day or something. Couldn't get to the liquor store or ran out of cigarettes... God, the thought of her crying FOR that vile man... ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
Posts: 3451 | From: Tacoma, WA USA | Registered: Aug 2007
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
I think you may be right and that scares me. Crying about J. Edgar Hoover?! Holy shit, I hope my mother wasn't that right wing! She voted for Jimmy Carter, though... maybe she was just having a bad day or something. Couldn't get to the liquor store or ran out of cigarettes... God, the thought of her crying FOR that vile man...
Well, obviously, I didn't know your mother, but I'd imagine that a lot of people who mourned Hoover wouldn't have known much about his vile practices, and were merely remembering him by his image of Mr. Competent Law Enforcement.
I know my mother cried for Kennedy, and would still cry for him today. But I don't consider him much better than Hoover, quite frankly. No offense to any Camelot swooners here, but even LBJ referred to Kennedy's meddlings in Latin America as "a goddam Murder Inc.", and felt himself obligated to rein it in.
And I'd be wiliing to bet that Kennedy farmed out at least some of his domestic dirty-work to J. Edgar Hoover.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
More likely Herbert Hoover, who died in 1964. I doubt J. Edgar's funeral was televised, but an ex-president's would have been.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
More likely Herbert Hoover, who died in 1964. I doubt J. Edgar's funeral was televised, but an ex-president's would have been.
Yeah, but Mary says she was born in 1967. And according to this, J. Edgar Hoover's funeral was carried live by the networks. That's mentioned in the 13th paragraph.
[ 21. June 2013, 19:36: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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