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Politics and Memories
When I was a little kid, my family spent the summer on an endlessly vast farm in Vermont. I have tons of little-kid memories from that summer — the enormous beds, running across a lawn that seemed to go on forever, being stung by a bee, my grandmother trying to comfort me, my mother picking tomatoes in a big, floppy hat, my father explaining why moths were attracted to the light.
I hadn’t been allowed to watch grown-up television until then. Like all kids, I was more attracted to the television than a moth to the light. But I was only allowed to watch shows like Sesame Street, and grudgingly, if I wheedled and whined, Mr. Rogers — although my father made it clear that he loathed Mr. Rogers. (In retrospect, I reckon he suspected Mr. Rogers was a left-wing pederast.) Once in a while, when my parents were exhausted and their guard was down, I’d get to watch the Electric Company. They told me more television would “rot my brain,” and I suppose they were probably right. But this of course only made me more desperately curious about it.
So something was unusual that summer when my family insisted we stay inside every evening to watch television. We had to get back for it, even if it meant driving right past the ice-cream store. We couldn’t be late for this program called “Watergate.”
I found the show confusing and boring (and I suspect my mom did, too, to be honest). But the other adults were gripped by it. I remember head-smacking, hooting, a sense of incredulity.
It’s hard to tell what’s a real memory and what’s superimposed in retrospect. I think I’d fully understood already that we lived in a democracy, that we had a president and not a king, that the people chose the president by voting, and that this system was fair, just, and the best in the world. I knew the President lived in Washington D.C. I’d been there, because my grandparents lived there, so I could envision that.
When I examine that memory, I’m not sure what to make of it. I know that’s when I learned that it was possible for a president to do something disgraceful. I hadn’t known that before. I know it’s popularly conveyed that way, too — as a loss of postwar innocence.
But was it really a turning-point in American politics, or was it just the first thing I was personally old enough to understand?
How do people slightly older than me, much older than me, remember that summer? What are your first memories of politics? Any thoughts about how those memories compare to what you later learned and understood about the same events? How they shape your attitudes today?
Published in General, Politics
When I was five or six, I wandered into the living room and found the TV on, but no one there (in our house this didn’t happen often). President Eisenhower, then near the end of his second term, was speaking. I thought, “This is an important event. The president is speaking. I need to find my parents and tell them, because they will want to know about this.” So I found my parents and told them, and they said, “That’s nice.” This was my first hint that the president was not second only to God. My parents voted for Ike, but the just weren’t that excited about him.
To me, it’s amazing that this is the event that Claire chose to discuss. We returned from Japan in summer 1974; my Dad had just competed a three year DOD assignment. The second half of the journey was a Cally to Maryland, two week, three thousand miles journey in a beat up white Chrysler (with four kids in the backseat, my Mom & Dad were remarkably patient). We made it back to MD in August. Our home wasn’t ready and we stayed for a couple weeks at the Holiday Inn on Ritchie Hwy. in Glen Burnie, MD. All I remember is the president in front of that blue curtain, talking, my parents quiet, and I knew something big was happening. It was my first political memory. I was eight.
Georgia had some interesting politics and political systems when I was growing up there. Republicans,of course, were just about non-existent there. I already mentioned the three governors controversy, Walter George and Richard Russell owned the Senate seats, but perhaps the most interesting and effective for its purpose was the county unit system used in the Democrat primaries. Georgia has 159 counties, more than any other state, and the county unit system assigned each county to one of three classes, urban, town, and rural. Urban had 6 unit votes, town had 4, and rural had 2. There were only 8 counties classed as urban, Fulton being the most populous. Needless to say, the cities had little influence in the Governor nominee process, which was tantamount to election. This system fell with the one man-one vote Supreme Court ruling in the sixties.
I remember it well and being quite happy. My parents were Democrats–and my dad still is one of the few JFK Democrats left–but scolded me as we listened on the shortwave. Their take was that no matter how much one disliked Nixon, a president’s departure was nothing to be happy about.
My first purely political memories were of the assassinations of MLK and RFK. My first geopolitical memory was of regular drills we held in elementary school on South Post, Yongsan. In the late 1960s, one had a real sense that the Norks could come over the border at any time.
Also many in the media quote out of context – it is hard to find honest and balanced reporting –
In 1951 my father showed me, aged 7, a newspaper photograph of the Labour chancellor of the exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, holding up the Budget Box (tradition) as he left 11 Downing Street for the Commons chamber to present his budget. Gaitskell’s children were at my school. At Oxford, an economics tutor told me that it was the cleverest budget ever. Later that year, there was General Election in which Labour lost power to the Conservatives, who ruled for 13 years. Yet Labour won almost a quarter of a million votes more than the Conservatives, won the most votes that Labour had ever won (and has ever won as of 2015) and won the most votes of any political party in any election in British political history to date. This seemed wrong to me. It took me 50 years to realise that any electoral system will throw up anomalies, but one must accept the outcome (not for us the indignity of arguing over hanging chads and the like). I remain a firm believer in “first past the post”.
This has nothing to do with Watergate, I know. I remember Watergate well. It confirmed my intense dislike of Nixon but seemed to me to have no profound implications. I see no reason to change my mind about that.
Memory is a funny thing. When I first read this article, I thought that the Watergate hearings were when I was in high school. But I looked at the dates and realized that I was in college. However, the first three months of the hearings were in the summer of ’73 and their report was issued in June of ’74, with Nixon’s resignation in August. All time periods when I was home for the summer.
Our family had voted for Nixon, but we were pretty conservative, so we weren’t all that crazy about him. He was just better than the alternative. I don’t remember much angst at our house over the hearings or his resignation. I do remember that my teenage self was not struck with John Dean. He was a little too impressed with himself, a little too smug, a little too preppy, a little too holy martyr-ish.
My first political memory was hearing about Kennedy’s assassination when my mother picked me up from school. I was pretty young and I remember thinking, “Why is she crying? We don’t like Kennedy.”
Now when I think of him, I get tears in my eyes.
I’ve enjoyed reading these reminiscences.
I got upset about Watergate and turned against Nixon shortly after the break-in. It, along with a long-festering dislike of the GOPe, turned me into a McGovernite in 1972. I made sure my students knew about the hearings, and we watched a bit of them in school. I gradually got over the leftism. It took a few years.
I suppose my earliest political memory is Eisenhower’s visit to North Dakota in 1953 to dedicate the Garrison Dam. After the big event we went back home. When we heard a plane we went outside to watch. The little twin-engine plane that took Eisenhower to the big airport at Bismarck took off to the southwest, then turned around just past our house. Mom knew, possibly from the published schedule, that it was the President’s plane. We were waving at it as it flew back over our house. Then Mom said, excitedly, “See! It tipped its wings at us.” It was for us because there probably weren’t any other houses for a mile in any direction.
I was 5 years old then.
Google coordinates: 47.488015, -101.504867
I also have 2nd-hand quasi-political memories from the 1890s. My wife recently found a scrap of paper in one of her cookbooks. She had tried to scribble some of these down when my grandfather was living with us for a few years in the mid 70s. But that’s for another time.
It’s so easy to say, “See! It was one other person’s first memory, too — it was as big a deal as I remember!”
But I think we’re the only ones on this thread who have it as a first memory.
It’s a really funny thing — and especially with things that we don’t just remember personally, but collectively. So much has since been written about Watergate; I’ve seen so much video footage, read so much about it, spoken to so many other Americans about it. That’s why it’s hard for me to figure out what I actually remember and what I’ve superimposed in retrospect.
Even more weirdly, even though it is impossible for me to remember it, because I wasn’t yet born, I’ve heard about, read, and spoken to so many people who remember when JFK was assassinated that reading about it gives me a kick in the gut as if I was remembering it. Front Seat Cat’s description did that to me. And I know I don’t remember it. But it’s still part of I guess what I’d call a cultural memory. It made such an impact on people just a bit older than me that I grew up with that memory all around me, to the point that all that’s missing in my memory of it is any sense of where I was when I heard about it.
I’ve never seen a president, but I did see Charles Degaulle. When my father was stationed in France (he was one of the NATO troops run out when the French left NATO), we lived in a little town near Strasbourg named Saverne. We used to walk down to the center of town to buy baguettes. One day on our walk, there was a huge crowd, and Degaulle giving a speech. I was only 7 or 8, so it didn’t mean much to me.
I have a clear picture in my mind: our little house on the edge of Sioux Falls, on the east wall of the living room, there’s a black and white tv in a warm medium brown housing with rabbit ears sitting on the top. The black and white image is of crowds behind a little boy in short pants with a somber look giving a salute. There is also a casket being pulled by horses. President Kennedy’s funeral was in December 1963 when I would have been 26 months old. I have always wondered whether that is a real memory or a concocted one. If real, then that is my first political memory.
I understand why you’d wonder. It’s entirely possible that it’s real, after all — quite a few adults have memories of things that occurred at 26 months.
I’ve noticed that most peoples’ earliest memory (of any event) is usually of something negative and frightening. I’m not sure whether there’s any research to back up that observation — I’m sure it’s been studied, and that there’s an empirical answer to the question.
Mine was being vaccinated. I remember crying for hours afterward, too, with a feeling of utter betrayal — my mother had reassuringly taken me to a place where they hurt me. I was old enough to walk, so I must have been about 26 months old.
Do you have other memories from that age?
I’m pretty sure I don’t have any memories from quite that young — it would have been the month of my next oldest brother’s birth. There is one that might go back that far, a pleasant but strange memory of what Mom was saying to me, and recently found photos of hers that might go with it. But it’s probably not from26 months.
I have several memories of a trip to California we took in 1951, when I was maybe 32 months old. Those are good memories, but I had strange interpretations of some of the things we were seeing. I also have memories of the house we lived in at the time.
I remember when I was a little over two years old informing my mom that “Mommy” was not her name and I wanted to know what her name really was. Daddy too: let’s not beat around the bush here – who are you people?
I’m pretty sure this is a real memory because Mom doesn’t remember it.
Early memories: the geek perspective
The reason most of don’t have memories before three years of age or so, is because when we recall a memory, we typically do it in story form. We recite a narrative. This is called verbal declarative memory and it usually begins to solidify in kids around age three. Normal developmental variability and verbal skills, in conjunction with some other specific skills (like organizing mental information), are why some people have earlier memories. But the brain piece that is key for this is hippocampal development.
Claire’s point about frightening memories is mediated through another system including the amygdala which deals with functions like strong stressful emotions, aggressiveness and the flight/fight response. It also has a role in consolidating emotions into long-term memory, so that is why sometimes people have memories of the feelings of being scared or fearful, but the story actually comes from their parents.
I suppress most memories of my childhood. Sometimes it is active suppression, sometimes not.
Same with my time at the USAF Academy – I just don’t remember most of it.
Pilot training – I remember most of that.
Mine was of learning, at about age 18 months, that squirrels are much faster than an 18-month-old, and they also can climb trees, so I wasn’t going to catch one.
I don’t remember my first vaccines. Sometime before kindergarten, though, I did put up a fuss about a vaccine shot, and I remember the lecture I got from Mom about how fussing was pointless, and only made things worse for me, and the shot was much better than getting sick. I never fussed about needles after that, not even the huge IV ones.
I do remember other images on that particular television, but I can’t date them that early, maybe Bonanza. The Lesley Ann Warren Cinderella came along when I was 4 and that mesmerized me.
I remember the babysitter telling me I had a new brother when I was 29 months. More vividly, I remember when my mother moved me from the crib to the big bed so he could move from bassinet to crib and implied that it was my idea.
I’m sure my memory of it antedated my ability to understand something like that.
You wouldn’t have memories at 2. However, at 4 you might remember Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965.
One of the early memories I alluded to is mostly an audible memory. My memory of what I might have seen is very vague – almost non-existent. But my Mother’s words and tone of voice are something I remember. Has there been any research on audible vs visible memory in early childhood?
It seems to me that there would occasionally be TV programs that showed film of Kennedy’s funeral. I remember seeing those images, and I am too young to have taken it in when it occurred, and also I can locate the TV to a house that we moved to in 1966.