!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
“I don’t know if this is the car I’d want to be seen in, Mike.” Driving west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Mike had the pale green Dodge Coronet working hard up the Appalachian hills. His beloved red Lancer was back in Cincinnati for the winter, replaced by this blocky, stodgy “old man’s car” as he put it.
“This is the one my father got. He gave my mother a choice – the racy red one, or this. I’m hoping she’ll change her mind after a winter sliding around in that little thing.” Six hours into our trip home on the last Friday in March, after skirting New York City and cutting across the top of New Jersey, we left the gentle Amish farmlands behind. Now aiming into the setting sun, the old Dodge labored up out of one of those hollows which define the landscape between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. “Why? What kind of a car would you like?”
“I don’t think I’ll need one for a while, not in Boston. The T is so good there, I can get anywhere.” Struggling to come up with an answer, I thought of riding along the dunes at the Vineyard a few years ago with Eddie, George and Linda in a beach buggy Eddie had borrowed from a friend. Holding onto the roll bar above the rear seat, the top and sides fully open to the air, my hair streamed behind me and above me, wild and free. The wind blew specks of sand against my face, like tiny darts of ice just after a winter blizzard. We had nowhere to go, an endless afternoon in the filtered island sun, ocean breaking on our right, not another car in sight. I must have been fourteen then, the first time I felt like I was part of my older siblings’ group. They were all driving now, free to flee our parents’ eyes any time they liked. They talked about grown-up things, Eddie’s upcoming wedding, George’s classes at Princeton, even Linda now going on dates and applying for college. I wanted to be older, I wanted to have fun, and for the first time, I was doing both I felt.
“A Jeep. I think I’d like a Jeep. One of those with the windshield you can out down in front, that can go anywhere, along the sand, the beach, up into the woods, away from the city.”
Mike nodded. “A Jeep. OK.” Waiting a moment, then deciding, he looked over at me, “I’ll buy you one, I promise. For a graduation present. Maybe not from college, but if you get a doctorate, for sure.”
“Are you serious?” I laughed.
“I mean it. I promise. What color do you want?”
“Red. No, wait, yellow.”
“Yellow? Red? I think they only come in that Army green color, right?”
“Doesn’t matter. You get me a Jeep, I don’t know…”
A grinding crunch filtered back to us from the front. Worse than a knock, it came with a shudder, and loss of power. As the car sped back up, I asked, “What was that?”
“Dunno. Did we hit something?”
Nearing the top of the hill, the sounds from under the hood grew worse. Just before the summit, the engine shuddered with a ‘clunkety-clunk’ and we rolled to a stop.
“Now what?” I worried. “Will it start?”
Mike tried the key several times. “Nothing. Dead” he moaned. “Maybe I should have paid attention when that oil pressure light started flashing last week.”
Within five minutes, a Pennsylvania State Trooper pulled up behind us, lights flashing. Mike got out, they conversed a bit, and he came back to say, “He’s calling a tow truck, take us into town, to the Dodge dealer there.”
We ended up in Shippensburg – pronounced, we learned, like “chip, not ship” – where the top coated dealer sat on a couch, ticking off a list of options with a customer buying a new Plymouth. He arranged for the mechanic to check our car, and came back with the bad news: a blown rod, or piston, or something like that, would take a week to fix, and even at that, the parts would have to come from Hagerstown. Mike had called his dad, who spoke with the dealer. We overheard him say, “It weren’t the boy’s fault, Mr. Harrison, these mountains are tough.” The conclusion was, we’d spend the night in town, at the only motel, and his father would drive the Buick over on Saturday, with a towing attachment to haul us and the car back to Cincinnati.
I’d like to say we enjoyed our stay in south central Pennsylvania, waiting for his dad, but it rained all day, and we stayed inside, catching up on reading, and trying out the creaky motel bed. After dinner, I turned on the TV, and was surprised to see the President about to deliver a formal address, on the progress of the war. I ground my teeth, uttered a guttural “Grrr”, and said, “I guess we want to watch this, right?” It was not like we had any choice. All three channels had interrupted their Saturday night programming to carry the speech.
I watched that man, whom so many people in Cambridge hated like a devil, as he tried to speak smoothly and rationally about the Tet offensive, the burden it had placed on the “noble” people of South Vietnam and its “allies”, by which I presumed he meant us. All about the on-going loss of life, for which he cried crocodile tears. Clenching my teeth, I looked over at Mike, who was almost smiling. “What do you think?” I asked.
“Every time I see him talk, I think about this guy, from Houston, who tells a little story about his cousin in Dallas. After Johnson became President, he said, ‘Finally, someone in the White House without an accent!’ I don’t know, how can he go from doing all the civil rights stuff, and Medicare, to this?”
“Well, why don’t you come with me, this summer, to the SDS convention in Chicago? Instead of just complaining, do something!”
“I…uh…I’ve got this job, at a swim club. Being a lifeguard, remember? I don’t know if I can get off.” He looked down from the black-and-white blurry screen, pursed his lips, furrowed his brow. Then glancing up at me, he went on, “Don’t you think it might be dangerous? Those people are starting to talk about things like blowing up recruiting offices, fighting back. You could get hurt.”
Before I could answer, there was a knock on the door. Mike’s father Jack had arrived. “Oh good,” he said, “you’ve already got it on.”
I looked around the room, which only had a double bed. How was this going to work? He saw my darting eyes. “It’s OK, I got another room.” Mike and I sat on the bed while J pulled out the desk chair. “I sure hope he tells us he’s going to start withdrawing troops. That’s the only way we’ll keep Nixon from winning.”
We kept watching in silence for another half hour while Johnson droned on about “fake solutions”, and a “wider peace”.
When Johnson said, “One day, my friends, peace will come in Southeast Asia,” Jack muttered, “Peace in our time. We’ve heard that before, haven’t we?” Johnson started quoting Kennedy’s “Bear any burden” bit from the inaugural address. As he started getting philosophical about his commitment to peace and the American people, I couldn’t take any more, I got up to turn off the set. Mike, said, “Wait! I think’s he’s saying he’s gonna quit!” Johnson was now quoting Lincoln, preaching the gospel of a united America, that a ‘House divided against itself cannot stand.”
“Seems like he’s just pulling on our heartstrings” I countered.
“No, look!”
Johnson wiped his temple as the heat from the TV lights, and the pressure of the moment overpowered his Texas cool. He announced, “Accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
We all sat there, stunned. I was the first to speak, “Looks like getting clean for Eugene worked.”
Jack glanced over at me. “Jane, I think he’s more afraid of Robert Kennedy.”
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