Bobby

Robert Kennedy's assassination happened on the day of my sixth grade graduation in 1968. I had a new navy-and-white-striped mini-dress to wear for the ceremony. It was the beginning of summer, and I felt fresh and pretty and happy. The phone rang and my mother answered it. She put her hand over her mouth, then turned on the television. "Bobby Kennedy's been shot," she said.

The Knotts Berry Farm vision of America that had always perched in my head took flight right then, forever.
I sobbed, "What's wrong with this country?,” slamming out the door. I faintly heard my mother's puzzled, "Well, Tracy!" as I ran down the sidewalk to school.

The farewell-to-grade-school we'd looked forward to turned into a quiet non-celebration. Sixth-graders trudged across the stage to polite clapping from distracted parents watching from tinny folding chairs.

But at the program's finale, the principal stepped up to the microphone. Brimming with excessive cheer, she said, "I want to tell all you children so you'll stop worrying -- the radio has announced that Bobby Kennedy really wasn't hurt very badly, and he's going to be just fine."

We all cheered! Families hugged. Teachers dabbed happily under the corners of their cat-eye glasses. The last day of school/first day of summer  was redeemed, because Bobby was. We were going to walk out of that crappy gymnasium with its fire-retardant drapes with smiles on our faces, because Bobby Kennedy wasn't going to die! We were going to have a happy ending after all, and he was going to be our new President Kennedy!

I felt the petticoats under my short dress crackle and shift. Euphoric, I ran into the schoolyard . There is nothing more empowering for a girl than the Tilt-a-Whirl of mad twirling, and the skirt of my navy-and-white-striped dress swirled high around my hips, as the whole of summer arched and stretched its bones before me. 

The Kennedys and I - 1 of 4

Growing up inside a Kennedy shrine never seemed odd to me.
During the early 60s, the Kennedy family was so omnipresent in my life that I actually thought they were sort of distant cousins we just didn't see very often. We had framed pictures of them on our walls. We doted over them on TV, in the papers and in LIFE and LOOK magazines. Our moms dished about Jackie's breathy voice and goldfish eyes, and cooed over John-John’s little British knickers. I had a girl-crush on Caroline, who not only had a pony but appeared to wear many, many crisp petticoats under her skirts, which I coveted for their twirling possibilities.

When Jack Kennedy came to Chicago on my fourth birthday, I actually believed my mother when she said he had come just for me. She lifted me in her arms so I could wave as his parade car slid past. I remember the impossibly square grin and the glint of copper hair in October sun. I yelled down at her amid the roaring crowd, "I never knew President Kennedy was a red-headed!" When he left town suddenly, I was hurt. Much later, I learned the Bay of Pigs fiasco had also shared my birthday that year.

In 1962 we moved back to Ohio, but the Kennedys followed us. The pictures went up on new walls, which the furniture was arranged around.

Everyone in central Ohio loved them, even the Republicans, which was just about everybody. During a rare visit to Columbus, Jack Kennedy laughingly told the crowd, "I never get a warmer welcome and fewer votes than in Columbus, Ohio."

The day he died, our school sent kids home early. I remember scuffing home through November leaves with the first real fear of my life spooling in my stomach. I watched his black-and-white funeral, nursing a big, milky bowl of Crispy Critters in my lap while the grown-ups wept.

My mother hung a new picture on the wall. It was a watercolor sketch of JFK in a suit, walking on the beach with seagulls flying around his head. I guess he was supposed to be in Cape Cod. It seemed a strangely formal ensemble for beach-walking, but, well, he was the president.

That picture hangs on my mother's wall to this day. The quote at the bottom of the sketch reads, "We all felt we knew him."

We did.

Die, "Amazing," Die!

Different decades have different words and catch-phrases -- points of cultural reference that get used and then exploited to the point of parody. "Keen." "Nifty. " "23 Skiddoo."

Then there's my old favorite: “Groovy.” I use it all the time. I use it ironically, hearkening back to the 1960s, when I actually wouldn’t have been caught dead saying it. "Neat” had more currency in my circle. “Groovy” was for hippie teenagers I was too young and scared to be.

While I was attending Will C. Wood Junior High, however, I did have a black-light poster in my room of Snoopy – Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy – doing his “happy dance,” with his head flung back in rapture, love beads swingin' around his neck. He was making a peace sign with one paw, which had somehow sprouted little stunted fingers, and flinging daisies with the other. At the top of the print, “FEELIN’ GROOVY” was emblazoned in a fat, squiggly font that makes me think of Goldie Hawn dancing around in a bikini. It was pretty neat, but when you turned the lights off, man, it rocked.

But I digress
Okay, here’s the thing. Most trendy descriptors come and GO, unless they’re classics like “cool,” which somehow transcends generations because it just IS so freakin’ cool. But there’s one word that is oh-so-ripe-for discarding RIGHT THIS MINUTE. “Amazing.”

Think about it. This is the laziest placeholder in the English vernacular, meant to make you feel wowed about something you didn’t experience, but without really telling you jack about it. We’re just too busy to paint the colors for each other anymore, I guess.

It was an AMAZING concert. He’s an AMAZING guy. Our contractor was AMAZING. This bottled water is AMAZING. (For proper emphasis, during the middle syllable, one must press one’s lips together and draw it out – “a-MAYYYYYYY-zing.”)

Really, people? You’re amazed by these things? You are struck with wonder at these everyday items and occurences? Huh. Amazement seems to be happening all around me, all the time. It’s like a line from someecards.com that reads, “I have my suspicions that you may not be laughing out loud as often as you claim.”

Now, I think that's amazingly witty, don't you? LOL.

Sibilance, sibilance...

Hello, my chickens!

Welcome to edition one, version one, take one of my new blog, "Sheer Claptrap." Inspired by Julie Powell's recent waltz through "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," I too have a blog challenge. I plan to explore and consider the entire collection of "The Federalist Papers," one by one, seeing if they really still have meaning for today's American citizen.

I'm especially looking forward to Federalist Paper XXI: "Other Defects of the Present Confederation." Seeing as how our present confederation has beaucoup de defects, that section should prove to be as juicy as, oh - I don't know...Julia Child's Beouf Bourguignon?

Okay, I'm kidding. Sheer Claptrap will have pretty much NO politics in it, because I, um, have about an 11-minute attention span for them. I'll be writing about far more important issues of the day, like "Why Do Men Spit?," "God, I Miss the 70s," and "I Hate People and Here's Why."

Please subscribe, please read, and please, please....send me your OWN claptrap!

-- Tracybelle