Don’t Need No 1964

I like American Experience on PBS, I don’t watch everything on the series but I watch a lot of it. I like it because I like history, I like people, and I like to think about the flow of culture and ideas and also of the little known and the obscure.

The other day I noticed that American Experience had a presentation titled 1964; I decided to record it. Last night I decided to watch it, I watched the introduction and I turned it off, I told Vickie, “It’s too heavy for tonight, I’ll watch it another time.” The introduction pictured the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963 (setting the stage for 1964), civil unrest, racial conflict, the Beatles, and the Johnson – Goldwater presidential campaign.

This evening I deleted the show from the DVR and thought, “I lived through that and I don’t want to watch it; I don’t need to listen to an analysis of how the country started going to pieces that year; I don’t need no 1964.”

Maybe it’s kind of like watching Saving Private Ryan or reading Flags of Our Fathers; I can never watch the movie again and I can never read the book again (I watched the first minute or two of the movie Flags of Our Fathers and turned it off) – the images and pathos are just too much; I had bad dreams when reading Flags of Our Fathers.

Now it isn’t that I don’t read and watch some things about 1964, or about the 60s and early 70s, but when I do I tend to focus on one of two areas; baseball and civil rights; the former because I love the game, the latter because it challenges me to this day in many ways.

The 1964 St. Louis Cardinals are one of my great all-time teams; they were 11 games behind first place Philadelphia on August 23, and on September 20 were 6.5 games behind the Phillies and tied with the Reds with 12 games to go. The Cards not only won the National League pennant in one of the great come backs in baseball history, they went on the beat the Yankees in the World Series in 7 games. What a series it was, brothers Ken and Clete Boyer playing against each other as third basemen for the Cards and Yanks; Bob Gibson emerging as a Hall of Fame pitcher, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and the rest of the St. Louis team finding ways to beat the dominant Bronx Bombers – who all too often came to D.C. and beat up on my hapless Senators. I loved the persona of that Cardinal team, the drama of the pennant race, and the intensity of the World Series.

I recall the presidential campaign, it was the second presidential race of which I aware as a boy, the first being the Nixon – Kennedy contest of 1960. My Mom took us to hear the Republican candidate for vice-president, William Miller, speak at a shopping mall in Wheaton, MD. It is ironic that Goldwater was portrayed as someone who would involve us in world conflict and that a vote for Johnson was a vote for reasonable military policy – Goldwater was portrayed as a warmonger. Well, probably neither man could have saved us from the slippery slope…I don’t know.

The 1960s into the 70s were fast years for me, too fast and often too thoughtless; I guess they were like that for the country too – fast and thoughtless. They weren’t fast and thoughtless for my friend and neighbor in Rockville, MD. Bobby Mentzer, he was killed in Vietnam (Marines) on April 1, 1968; he was born December 8, 1948 – he didn’t make it to his 20^th birthday; a quick check indicates that 1,014 Marylanders were killed in Vietnam and that of 58,220 Americans killed in the war that 11,465 were under 20 years old – what was that all about?

On April 4 Doctor King was killed and American cities exploded in riots; I was stationed in Germany (Army) at the time and read about it in the papers; it didn’t seem real.

My Mom died in June of 1968, watching her being wheeled from her hospital room (heart disease) to an intensive care unit or operating room (not sure which it was) is an image burned into my mind, it was a flash…then a few hours later she was dead. Lots of unanswered God questions on that one, lots of regrets, lots of things I wished we’d talked about.

The Cards beat the Red Sox in the ’67 Series and lost to the Tigers in the ’68 series; it would be awhile before they were back in the Word Series, but nothing to me equaled the ’64 series – maybe because after ’64 my own life got too fast, too thoughtless, and too crazy.

When I took what is known as AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Fort Dix after Basic Training in 1967, among other things we were trained in riot control. While we were mostly trained in combat for Vietnam (I was stationed in Germany and then in Maryland after Mom died), we were also trained for riots…now ain’t that something?

When I was reassigned to Fort Meade, MD from Germany in June 1968 I was likely going to a unit that was on 24/7 riot alert; knowing that and wanting to be able to go home to Rockville on weekends to see my family I volunteered to be a cook at a large mess hall (the 24/7 unit allowed virtually no passes on weekends). Now I didn’t know much about cooking but I figured I could learn and I guess I did okay because nobody died or got sick as far as I know.

After I’d been working at the mess hall for a while the mess clerk was discharged from the service and they needed someone who could count and type, so because I knew how to use one finger in typing I volunteered and got the job.

There was a lot of turmoil in the land in those days, turmoil I don’t care to relive except to challenge myself at times, and at times to question societal assumptions. I know Doctor King wasn’t perfect but I think he was a great man, a man of great courage. Those Civil Rights workers, Freedom Riders, and those who supported them in nonviolent fashion had amazing courage and conviction…not much of that around today…they were self-sacrificial…not much of that around today either.

Well, I could go on but I need to close…no need to watch 1964, I don’t need no 1964…I’ve had enough.