Game Days
Although it’s wearisome hearing that “Ronald Reagan would spin in his grave seeing the modern Republican Party” and “JFK would be a moderate Republican in 2024,” that sort of fantasy political sloganeering will soon give way to Good King Wenceslaus and untangling the strings of Christmas lights from last year. (We gave up on that 10 years ago; when the tree’s discarded, so are the lights, replaced by a new bunch from Walmart.)
And I’ll admit to whittling away a half hour or so during a presidential election, maybe once a month, wondering how the deceased members of my immediate family would’ve voted tomorrow. It’s The Brain Game, Shirley Shirley bo-ber-ley Bo-na-na Fo-fer-ley, Fee-fi-mo-mer-ley Shirley!, and I play. My dad, first eligible to vote in 1940, never chose a Democrat in his life, and my guess is he’d tick for Trump. Mom’s a different story: she also cast her first vote in 1940 for Wendell Wilkie, but in 1948, anticipating a Thomas Dewey win, went for Norman Thomas, and then returned to the GOP fold. Until 1972, that is, when, recently widowed, cast her lot with George McGovern, fed up with the Vietnam War. (In 1968 she reviled LBJ and HHH, and bought, like so many, Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the war.) Her last vote was for Reagan in 1980, but had she lived longer, and read about Trump’s early and creepy behavior (louche is too generous a word), I’m positive she’d have picked a third-party candidate rather than vote for Hillary, Biden, Harris or Trump.
One of the last conversations I had with my brother Doug, who died in 1999, just weeks after a family vacation on Necker Island, was heated—more on his part; he was sick and I’d no appetite for our usual heated political exchanges—all about the 2000 election. He said, “Pal, you have to use New York Press as an anti-Bush forum, that’s how dangerous he is. A monster.” I didn’t. Doug was by far the most liberal—progressive, really—of our clan, and didn’t do himself any favors with our parents as a 13-year-old in 1960, with his volunteer work for JFK in our home town. My imagination is, immodestly, active and far-ranging, but I’d have consult a Tibetan monk to conjure up the rancid, but articulate, tirades he’d spill about Trump today.
My late brother Jeff is the most curious example. He wasn’t 21 (the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971) in 1964, but was a staunch Goldwater proponent and a war hawk, which I could never figure out since he was of draft age. He voted for the GOP ticket until 1992, when, pissed off about G.H.W. Bush’s “no new taxes” fib, went for Bill Clinton. My wife and I, granted passes for the ’92 Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden, a snooze, did have dinner with Jeff and the wonderfully acerbic Texas Gov. Ann Richards at a nearby restaurant. He backed Bob Dole in ’96, even though it was a lost cause, and then, in 2008, with the economic crash in full-tilt-non-boogie, voted for Barack Obama. In 2011, even while ill, he loved to talk politics (and baseball) with me and was bullish on Mitt Romney. On occasion, after reading an outrageous “news” article, I still absent-mindedly think I better get Jeff on the horn.
The accompany picture is of my dad, 54, in a familiar pose in our Huntington, New York living room. He’s home from work, fiddling around with a pocket calculator, probably mulling monthly receipts from his car wash, with a cup of coffee on the side. (A warm-up for his nightly cocktail hour with my mom.) My brother Doug’s painting is in the background, as well as a now-“vintage” lamp, one I always thought really ugly, and one of Mom’s knock-off white bags that she either got on discount or at a rummage sale. A standard mid-century suburban image.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Sparky Lyle becomes the first A.L. pitcher to rack up 100 career saves; the Washington Senators become the Texas Rangers; Gary Player wins the PGA Championship; George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle and John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus are published; Heinrich Boll wins Literature Nobel Prize; members of the Black Liberation Army murders two New York City cops; Fritz the Cat is released, along with the second Planet of the Apes movie is released; Wikipedia not yet invented; Dane Cook is born and Walter Winchell dies; George Carlin is arrested for “obscenity”; and Last of the Red Hot Burritos is released.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023