When I was a young punk, I was a young Turk- I loved the world of politics. If there was a debate going on somewhere , I'd find it and jump right in. I always enjoyed a chance to mix it up, More often than not I would defend my still evolving beliefs, but every once in a while I would just be provocative and let 'er rip. Great fun.
It is amazing when I think about coming to age in the '60's and what the world was like. War, and riots and protests and assassinations and marches in the street. The world seemed to be coming apart at the seams. I can never forget that the daily paper, Newsday, on page two would print a weekly Vietnam "scorecard" how many American casualties and how many enemy casualties. I was always confused, "How can we be losing?, Look at the numbers!" How many Cong could there be?
The war was all around us- in the paper, on TV, boys from the neighborhood were serving overseas. I'll never forget Tommy, from across the street "treating" the street to a helicopter flyover one summer afternoon, about 100 feet above his parents house. Awesome and a bit frightening.
Phillip Malone, from next door, regaling the boys in the neighborhood with a demonstration of how he could torture and maim the enemy with his government issue steel comb.
I was lucky enough to have a sixth grade teacher, Mike O'Connor (who left teaching to move to Vermont and become a carpenter/ Christmas tree farmer) who loved politics and inspired his students to get involved. He was a lefty, but encouraged us to explore what we felt/thought whether he agreed or not. To this end our classroom had posters of Eugene McCarthy, William F. Buckley and Ralph Nader among others.
Our sixth grade class was an "experimental" class 14 kids, 7 boys, 7 girls and we were given lots of educational latitude. We were reading "Silent Spring" and "Unsafe At Any Speed" as well as building picnic tables for the school. We also ran the school dances and put on our own version of the Fillmore West Light Shows. Incredibly inspiring.
Remember The Scholastic Book Club? each month you got the form in class and would pick a few books and order them and then the next month the box would arrive with your books. I loved to open that box and hand out every bodies books. A wide variety, novels (the greatest boys book of all time THE SECRET HIDEOUT- well to me anyway), science experiments, joke books (the legendary Elephant Joke book), posters. One month I ordered a biography of Martin Luther King- it was geared for kids, it was short, but I was mesmerized. I promised myself that I would read it everyday. and for a few weeks I did.
Even as a kid whenever I would see King on TV or hear him on the radio , I knew that this guy was something different .He was truly a force for change, his message , his cadence, his courage, his calm created a challenge to the world , but most directly to the heart of America.
"How Long?"
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