By KAREN PARKER
County Line Publisher Emeritus
When I tuned in the news today, the announcer reminded me that 58 years ago Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Now there was the defining moment for my generation. Our parents recall where they were when they heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor; for my generation, it was the assassination of JFK. I was in the high school cafeteria, staring at the 10,000th plate of boiled corn, mashed potatoes and overcooked chicken that I had suffered through my entire school career.
I recall racing home after school to turn on the only channel we got, a fuzzy channel 13 from Rockford, Ill. Usually at that time of day, “American Bandstand” was on, but regular programming was interrupted, and instead we were spellbound, watching Walter Cronkite document the events of the day.
The nation was rattled, and so was I. Just three years earlier, my hometown of Monroe, Wis., was a stop on his campaign trail, and I was determined to see this handsome young candidate for president. Luckily for me, he was speaking at Turner Hall, right across the street from the junior high. Not so luckily, he was very late, it was November, and darkness was closing in. I knew there would be a price to pay if I didn’t get home before dark, and home was a far piece down the road. Furthermore, my Republican-voting folks were not overly thrilled with my plans to begin with. In my earliest memory, they had voted for Eisenhower. Who doesn’t love a conquering general?
Then came my moment of reflected glory, when in a panic to beat the departing crowd, I scrambled over the folding chairs, tripped, fell forward and was righted back on my feet by Mr. Kennedy. My daughters will happily clock me with a rolled-up newspaper if I tell that story one more time. It’s not just family mythology, I tell them. It really did happen.
But that was then, and this is now. I doubt anyone except the Secret Service could get that close to a presidential candidate today. And they don’t ride in open convertibles anymore either. It’s amazing that they still walk down Pennsylvania Avenue at the inauguration, but I am guessing it drives those responsible for their security insane.
It used to drive me nuts when my folks would reminisce about the “good old days,” but now I find myself doing the same thing, even though I know those good old days were not very great for Black people or Native Americans or anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to be born a white man.
But at that age, from my sheltered home in Swiss-consin, I only knew what was in front of me. And that was this: Even in this hotbed of Republicanism, a candidate of the opposite party could come to town and be greeted politely. A political rally was a safe place for young kids. There were no protesters knocking each other over the head and certainly no political candidates urging violence against members of the media or protesters.
My guess is those who did not agree with the candidate’s philosophy went downstairs to the Rathskellar and sorted it out over a few beers.
News reports about Kyle Rittenhouse place him at a Trump rally in 2020. There has been so much misinformation about this kid, it’s hard to know what to believe. But because he posted video to TikTok of himself in the front row, it is evidently true.
I was thinking of all the things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and one of them is not being a juror at Rittenhouse’s trial. As a parent, I would be wondering why his parents weren’t on trial?
He was underage, just a few years out of middle school, when he went to the Trump rally. Why would any parent permit a kid that age to go into a situation that at times had been a scene of violence? Not only that, but the pandemic was roaring away, and vaccines were not yet generally available.
We had guns at my house, but they were down in the basement, hanging high up on a hook, and it was understood they were not for kids. Did anyone even have a high-powered rifle back then? That was what soldiers used in World War II, and some of them never wanted to see a gun like that again, or at least didn’t want to see their teenage kid armed with one.
But maybe that generation of parents was just a bunch of dopes. Just think of all the crazy things they did.
When we were little, they dragged us off to the clinic and allowed us to be permanently scarred by a smallpox vaccination. And then in grade school, we went home and told them they had lined us up and stabbed us with the polio vaccine, and all they said was, “Good, maybe we’ll allow you to go to the pool again.”
They didn’t even defend us girls when we were forced to wear dresses to school, even in freezing weather. Although they did help us circumvent the rule by finding us pants to wear under our dresses on the walk to school.
The only time I ever heard of parents interfering in school was on the issue of integration and busing. They certainly did not control curriculum. They figured that was what they were paying teachers for, except, of course, the parents who wanted prayers in school. That was a small minority; most were just praying their kid would get through school and go to college or get a decent job.
It’s kind of interesting that the things that have riled up parents over the years, such as evolution, sex education, integration, and prayer in school, have for the most part been issues that have lost at the local and at the national levels.
This is one thing I learned today about the Kennedy assassination: His plan was to go to Fort Worth, where he was to receive an honorary doctoral degree from Texas Christian University. But at the last minute, the board of regents decided against it because he was Catholic. So he went to Dallas, where one man with a gun changed the course of our country. And had he more competent parents, Kyle Rittenhouse might never have taken his assault rifle to a protest rally in Kenosha. “He says he would not do it again,” says his attorney.
Isn’t it amazing how one man with a gun can change so many lives, including his own?