I learned in church, in 1960, that if Kennedy got elected President, Pope John would tell him how to run America and that Kennedy would obey because he believed the pope was infallible. I also learned the pope was Catholic and that Catholics believed in drinking beer and doing the Shimmy-She-Wobble with other men’s wives; they drank real wine in their communions and paid a fee to get their sins absolved, (which seemed far-fetched but, hey, wine makes people do funny things.) Their priests preached in another language, Latin, which if it was a sin, probably meant I was sinning, too, for singing What A Friend We Have In Jesus in Cherokee (which I learned from my second grade teacher Miss Robinson in Cooper Heights, Georgia.)
I also discovered, from listening to older boys who talked about forbidden things while smoking in the bamboo patch behind the church, that Catholics had big families because they didn’t believe in contraception, whatever that was. If not believing in that big word caused big families, then my parents didn’t believe in it, either, because we had the biggest family in our church. I was humiliated, in those days, to be one of six children because I thought that meant that my mother and daddy had “done it” six times. SIX TIMES! As if they couldn’t control themselves. I prayed for God to save them from each other and my prayers were answered, because after baby number six (Renee) Mother never got pregnant again.
But back to Kennedy. When he gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, our embarrassingly large family (by now relocated to Covington, Louisiana,) huddled around the TV in my sister Ronda’s bedroom, a narrow little add-on room at the very back of the house where we kept the television out of sight of church members, some of whom did not believe the preacher should have a TV.
This secluded TV room would be the first part of the house destroyed in a midnight fire about a month later; Daddy would snatch Ronda from her little bed just before the walls caved in.
Kennedy and that fire were how the 60’s started for us, but I don’t think the two things were related unless the fire was God’s punishment for how I felt about Kennedy. For it was in that soon-to-burn bedroom, watching the flickering image of the young senator on a black-and-white TV with a coat-hanger for rabbit ears, that I betrayed my faith and started hoping he would win.
....... ..............
He was young and handsome; there was passion in his voice; and his eloquence inspired me beyond anything I had ever experienced in my eleven years. I didn’t say anything aloud about liking Kennedy and I didn’t have a vote, of course, but I prayed for God to help him win. And that prayer, like the one that my parents stop “doing it,” was answered. (Prayers really seemed to work back then.)
Kennedy inspired people to serve their country, inspired us to go to the moon, inspired ambitious boys Bill Clinton's age (and mine) to want to be president some day; inspired us beyond all rhyme or reason.
Well, not beyond all "rhyme." Here's a verse from a poem I wrote in the days when I daydreamed about being the next John F. Kennedy:
I want world acclaim at thirty,
The White House five years later.
I’ll be the world’s greatest man
Or maybe even greater!
Laughable? Sure; but it's evidence that I wasn't afraid to dream big... for a while... until I realized that the world was about to end.
