FreeWrights Peer Review™

I did not try to speak before three. Parents took me to a child psychologist around age four. One of my first memories: he was not a child. Years later my mother, always supportive, "We worried that you were retarded." By six there was no silence in me. By fourteen I was molded a Boy Scout. Jack Phieffer and twelve others who outranked me all went to the Convention at Miami Beach. This was 1968 when Nixon was up for election. Troop Seven provided the color guard for one evening's opening ceremonies. I was number fourteen, a standby, left at home to watch the proceedings on black and white, set very low.

The phone rang. Scoutmaster Phillips, whose boy was number one. "Welch, Phieffer sat on wet paint. Get your can over here, now." How fast I uniformed as my folks fired the car. Over the McArthur Causeway we sped. It was six thirty and the opening was seven. Backstage where the props and gear, and where all personnel entered, there was a bench of the kind that you'd normally see in a park. I was in khaki. The bench with nearby sign "Wet Paint" was in white. Jack Phieffer resembled nothing so much as a striped ass weasel. "Welchie. So you made it. You're no Mr. America but you'll have to do."

I held a standard that night, was on-screen for four seconds and saw at close range Sander Vanocur, telejournalist with a remote microphone backpack. His load looked like twenty pounds of bricked knapsack: Sander, enunciating into his hand held phone receiver while looking away out and up at the camera hundreds of feet distant. After our bit was done we were free to mix with the conventioneers, razzles, balloons, favors.

"Here, Scout, take this!" said some man as he thrust a large and long rectangle of pasteboard in my hands. "Take this and march up and down the aisle, all the way to the stage, then all the way back to the rear. Hold the sign over your head and look enthusiastic until your arms fall off." The same man recruited some of my buddies for the same duty. Chris Ruppenthal was foisted with a similar placard. His read AGNEW. Chris marched one aisle while I marched an adjacent, each of us yelling across the din, having a very good time.

"HEY RUPE! What the hell is an A G N E W ?" "Beats me!" We stomped and we laughed. My sign read in boldest white over blood, N I X O N. Here is where and when my manhood gelled, fourteen years old. I flipped that sign then end for end and proceeded from there to this present day.




N O X I N

very endearing. A companion photo would be a hoot. Even a -circa type thing.
I really enjoyed reading this, Reid. Many of us still haven't figured out what an "agnew" is.

bF

I hope it comes across as 'endearing' to others.
I don't have a period photo. I do still have the placard.
When I find it some day I'll put it up here.

There's even a box with some very un-endearing memoribilia of the convention,
including a tabloid-style newspaper hand-out,
The Nixon Elector (I have not seen my copy for years so this is from memory)
The face page bears a photo of a woman-pollster sitting at a card table set up at some public place.
Jane Public is standing, speaking into a microphone. A cassette tape recorder rests on the table.
(They're taking YOUR questions and inputs to give to the Party.)
The caption? "Better politics through electronics"
(a harbinger of Watergate years-yet to come).

The night we did our drill with the Colonial flags was the night Nixon announced the selection of his running mate.
So, yeah, I got to see them both, live and impersonal, smiling broadly. Great things would soon happen.
Great in the sense of historical goals going wrong. Oh, at least the Supreme Court, running on leftover liberal steam,
legalized porn the next year or so.

Rah rah, thank you bF. You're my favorite winner.

The first title for this three day old essay was "memoir of a nobody".
I'm alright with that too. I feel like a somebody if I make just one smile.

Reid

A goodly tale Reid. I find it strange that your manhood was ungelled until that night.