Chicago 1968: I was there.

Recently I picked up Rick Perlstein's book, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. At the moment, I'm deep into 1968....the race riots that convulsed American cities, the anti-war protests that crippled LBJ, the emergence of Nixon's Silent Majority, endemic racism that pervaded all corners of country, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and the violence that marked the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

IN 40 years, it seems we've turned this era of tumult into a romance story of generational change, peace and love, non-violence, Camelot, Make Love Not War, the Smothers Brothers and the Beatles. Perlstein paints a picture of national turmoil, of astounding distrust between races and ages, of violence and uncertainty. It is a picture less romantic than terrifying.

And in the middle of it all, at the geographical epicenter of this Great American Upheaval was us. My family had moved to Chicago in 1967 when Dad entered the Unitarian seminary at the University of Chicago. Mom stayed home with me and my younger sister and brother, and in fairly short order was pregnant with my youngest brother.

We lived in a 2-bedroom townhouse in the Hyde Park area, a few blocks from the University. Two doors over was my best friend Charles. Down the street was a corner drugstore in a small strip mall where Charles and I bought our precious baseball cards - 10 cents for a 10-card pack . (I still have many of those 1968-1970 cards!) In another small group of townhouses adjacent to the strip mall, lived my lone girl friend, Charlotte. Her complex had a small gated park filled with newly planted trees where Charlotte patiently taught me how to pull apart leaves along the stem without leaving ragged edges.

Heading the other way there was a busy street we weren't allowed to cross alone. (52nd Street) I remember testing my adventurousness and walking up to the stop sign on the corner. The buildings over there had a darker feel, more dangerous somehow. Half a block or so up this street lived another best friend, Tony. Tony's mom, Lula, babysat us kids when my parents went out. I realized that Tony and Lula were black, but I didn't think much of it. We just played baseball and rode bikes and talked about the Cubs together. Such is the glory of liberal parents. I do remember that it was always Tony who came across 52nd Street to play with us. We didn't go over there.

But what of 1968? The memories of a five almost six year old moving from Kindergarten to first grade, can't recall anything about the violence of that summer. I know from history that Chicago erupted after the murder of Dr King. I've read about the mass gatherings of students, Yippies, hippies, and provocateurs during the Democrats August convention. I was there, but as a child should be, oblivious to it all.

My few memories of 1968 (or at least thereabouts) are of learning to ride my bike on the circular paths of nearby Washington Park, of climbing the trees outside Charlotte's house, trading baseball cards with Charles on his front steps, the night my brother was born, ice skating at the bottom of the Corn Cob towers downtown, watching the election results with my Mom on our small black and white TV and sensing the disgust in her voice as she tried to explain to me what a President Richard Nixon meant to us.

I've sent both my parents a letter asking them for their recollections of the summer of '68. What was it like for young parents of four young children amidst this chaos? I've heard my grandmother had gone so far as to purchase tickets for our family to escape the city should the violence overrun our neighborhood? Did my liberal-minded parents participate in any of those protests before coming home to make us dinner and put us to bed? Did they fear for us, for our community, our country? What did they think the future held for their children?

We were there. I was there - just a few blocks from the fault line of a changing America. Yet, I only remember being a kid.

Gettin' that feeling good feeling again.

I'm thinkin' I could get used to all this hope and optimism. Feels good after the last eight years, doesn't it? I couldn't help singin' along with Pete Seeger on this one....



Monday morning postscript: Do kids learn these American standards in school anymore? A while back, When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again (Hurrah! Hurrah!) came up on my Ipod. (Thank you Ken Burns.) My kids, 10 & 15, hadn't ever heard the song before and frantically rolled up the windows while I marched out the tune as we drove past the Arcata Plaza.

Do the public schools still teach the music of our collective heritage? Do kids today open dog-eared music textbooks after morning recess to learn America the Beautiful, God Bless America (favoring Kate Smith's Broad Street Bullies rendition over the Bronx Bomber's 9/11 Irish cop tenor), This Land is Your Land, The Star Spangled Banner, America America ("Oh beautiful for spacious skies"), and We Shall Overcome? Have these standards fallen victim to music program budget cuts and political correctness? Did I just answer my own question?

Sure, some of these songs glorify war, or a particular god, or contain subtle racism in the second or third verses, yet they are essential elements of the American soundtrack, no? And, I believe, there is tremendous value in learning our collective history behind the music, including its sordid or shameful elements.

It's lonely (not to mention hard on the ears) being the only one singing along with our national heritage as we drive along those ribbons of highways. Lord knows I need the accompaniment. Do I sound curmudgeonly enough yet?

Redwood philately

Our backyard redwoods will be featured on the US Post Office's 2009 Priority Mail stamps available in January. (Yellowstone's Old Faithful graces the more expensive 2009 Express Mail stamps.) The illustration shows a pair of Eddie Bauer attired hikers (Does the woman look like Jennifer Aniston to you, too?) beneath the towering redwood canopy. The illustration is the digital creation of an Illinois artist under the direction of a southern California art director. These long-distance artists (no locals were available apparently) capture nicely the multi-layered canopy, fire scars, ferns, even an old dead top tree...all indicative of old growth forests. I'd love to find out which of our forests from Santa Cruz to Humboldt and Del Norte served as the model for the illustration.

Though I'm no where close to being a philatelic historian, the redwoods were last featured by the USPS in the 2006 Wonders of America series of 39-cent first class stamps. The only other redwood-themed stamp I've discovered in 12 minutes of exhaustive googling research is a 1964 issue honoring John Muir with redwoods as the backdrop. Though they could be the giant sequoias with which Muir has more of a stronger association, the shape of the trees and their proximity to one another makes 'em look a whole lot more like our neighborhood coast redwoods.

Here's a link to yesterday's USPS press release on the Redwood stamp including directions on where and where to get 'em when they're available: http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2008/pr08_132.htm

When I Grow Up....

It's taken purt near two score and half a decade, but I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. Nevermind that I already come close to resembling a grown-up: a middling and muddling bureaucrat with 20-plus years of dedicated guv'mint service, a dad with two hungry (and gettin' hungrier) mouths to feed, rapidly graying chest hair and lengthening eyebrows, and the simple fact that I have no skills upon which to survive beyond the ability to yak in a friendly manner about things I know just barely enough about. I finally figgered it out.

I want to be a lighthouse keeper.

A drive up the Oregon Coast late last week confirmed it. I dragged the girls off the 101 wherever I thought I could get away with it and for as long as I thought they wouldn't whine too loudly. First stop was the Cape Blanco light (the upper photo) where I chatted with the elderly whale watching volunteers long enough to spy a couple of spouts a mile offshore in a brisk cold breeze.

A while later, we saved the 36 bucks it would've cost us to elevator down to the World Famous Sea Lion Caves for the more frugal $3 parking fee at the Heceta Head Lighthouse (photo numero dos). From there, I was able to put my limited cetacean knowledge to use with an impromptu whale talk of my own to a couple of Wisconsin tourists who probably wondered why I was excitedly yakkin' at 'em after spying several spouts slipping through the water from this tremendous viewpoint. My girls walked back down the hill without me, impatient to get to the hotel and on to Portland for 8th grade graduation dress shopping, the real purpose of this trip, not the lighthouses and whales that I'd come along for.

(Heceta Head is named, by the by, after Spanish sailor Bruno de Hezeta who piloted the first Spanish ship to dock in Trinidad Bay in the summer of 1775, stepping ashore on 10 June 1775. Hezeta, along with the captain of another small boat, Don Juan Francisco de Bodega y Quadra (of Bodega Bay fame) claimed the Humboldt coast for Spain on June 11th, the Holy Day of the Trinity, thus the name Trinidad.)

OK, I know being a real lighthouse keeper probably demands more work than I care to romanticize. The fog and the wind and the rain probably begin to eat on you after a while. As would the isolation, at least now and then, I suppose.

But I'm willing to give it a go. From the sunny perch of my spacious lighthouse tender's cabin (once I move the quaint and undoubtedly not inexpensive B&B operation off the Heceta Head cliffs), I will write all those great things I've been meaning to write. I will welcome just a few select visitors to the headlands and explore with them the birds and whales and tides and storms and history of the Pacific coast.

Now, if I can just figure out how the vintage bookstore fits into the keeper's house, I'll be ready for my version of adulthood to settle in.

Three Presidents Visit Humboldt County

News of Bill Clinton's visit tomorrow has me wonderin' how often we get visits from this pols of this stature in the hinterlands of northern California. A few quickie Google searches begs the following question: Has it really been 38 years since a US President found his way to Humboldt County?

As near as I can tell, not since August 27, 1969 when President Nixon (before The Fall), former President Johnson (Lyndon, not Andrew), and then-Governator (and future president) Reagan gathered in a 300 acre redwood grove a few miles off the highway in the newly minted Redwood National Park, have we witnessed American royalty this high up the north coast. (And those of you who've been here much longer than me, please, don't hesitate to correct my attempt at county history.)

For 'twas on that cloudless August afternoon that three presidents - past, present and future - deplaned at the Arcata Airport, took the short drive up Highway 101, breezed through the little town of Orick to dedicate the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Lady Bird herself had already visited the area in November of '68 to formally dedicate the National Park. This day's visit named this one grove of ancient redwoods in honor of the former first lady and her "Beautify America" efforts.

August 27th just happened to be LBJ's 61st birthday, and for the occasion the Nixons had flown Lyndon, Lady Bird, and the girls all out to San Clemente for a roast beast feast, a lemon birthday cake decorated with yellow roses and bluebonnets, and a 19"bonsai tree with its requisite "Bonsai for Beginners" handbook. Tossed in were a couple hours of meetings between the two presidents and dastardly notable Nixonites Kissinger, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman.

After lunch, the party retired to Air Force One, trusting the military's finest designated drivers to find their way northward the redwood coast. It was not a direct flight however. The revellers pit-stopped at Orange County's El Toro Marine Corps Air Station to pick up Governor Reagan, the good Reverend Billy Graham and soon-to-be House Majority Leader (D) Hale Boggs , better known today as the father of NPR's Cokie Roberts.

A signing ceremony, a few quick, mostly forgettable remarks (check 'em out here if you like), and some great pictures of three American presidents, side by side, literally, in our neck of the woods. I know we can all go on about the three President's debatable "greatness" as we will about Bill and Hillary when their run is done, but a great day for the county nonetheless (or at least for our local historians and chambers of commerce).

***

For the record, Herbert Hoover visited the county on a few occasions after his presidency ended in '32, including a night camping under the redwoods on Bull Creek as well as occasional fly fishing forays on Redwood Creek and nights at the Orick Inn on his way to his private fishin' cabin on the Klamath.

Were there others?

The Poisonious Seal

This wonderfully, badly written sign was rescued from a retiring employee's office not that long ago, and now decorates my humble workspace. Though the provenance is questionable, the story has it coming from the False Klamath Cove area just off the Redwood Highway in southern Del Norte County.

We're assuming there was just a single seal one should avoid throwing spare change at. And we don't know whether 'twas the seal or the coins that were poisonious.