The presidential election of 1952 was my first introduction
to politics. Republicans Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon ran against
Democrats Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver. Ike was a popular Four-Star
General, while the balding Stevenson was aloof, an intellectual, and an egghead.
Ike won.
Most kids at school were oblivious to the campaigning,
but another boy and I took the opportunity to wear the colors and voice the
slogans of the candidate our fathers backed. We wore our campaign buttons
every day to school. Mine read, “I like Ike.” Johnny’s read simply,
“Stevenson.” This was second grade.
Johnny and I frequently locked horns over which candidate
was better. It was good-natured bantering, predictably short on substance,
such as, “My dad says this,” countered by “Yeah, well, my dad said that.”
All the while our campaign buttons were prominently displayed, squared off
against each other just like the candidates.
One day in late October, after the last class of the day,
Johnny and I argued so long about the election that I missed the bus.
I had to walk home. Well, I didn’t have to walk all the way, because
my oldest sister, Kay, lived nearby. She had recently married Duane,
and they lived in a duplex on Jefferson Street, near Bolsa Avenue.
It was five or six blocks from school, about halfway home, so I started out.
Directly across the street, south of Midway City School,
lay an open, untended field overgrown with grasses, bushes and an occasional
nicotine tree. It stretched a quarter mile (four blocks) to Bolsa Avenue,
a major two-lane road. Beyond Bolsa there was nothing but the bare
dirt of empty bean fields and strawberry fields, criss-crossed by little
used two-lane roads and dotted with isolated farmhouses. A few dusty,
dying towns huddled at minor crossroads.
To the right of the field Newland Street ran down to intersect
Bolsa, its far side lined with homes and a sidewalk. The left a ramshackle
fence of weathered, irregular wood posts holding a few strands of rusty barbed
wire demarcated several large pastures, fenced off my landlords for a few
horses and dairy cows. Beyond the pastures, eucalyptus trees rose along
Cannery Street and sheltered the landlords’ farm-style homes.
I could have walked down the sidewalk on Newland Street,
but not far into the field I saw some of my friends who lived nearby- Jimmy,
Bobby, David and Dennis- playing in a “fort” we often made. It was
just a few mounds of dirt among the vegetation, cleared by our playing, but
imagination supplied the rest. I joined them for a while at bombarding
each other with “grenades,” a handful of grass or weeds yanked out of the
ground with a ball of dirt around the roots. They flew pretty well
and were easy to aim.
But I had to get home, so before long I dusted myself
off and headed down a narrow path worn through the field, down toward Bolsa
Avenue. As I left the “fort,” behind the field became an irregular
expanse of grasses and plants rising to my waist. It was thick, lush
and undisturbed. I brushed, bending, green foxtails lightly with my
fingertips as I walked. I plucked one, stripped the stem away, and
tossed it through the air. A dusty-green nicotine tree, newly grown,
spread its sparse branches holding tubular yellow blossoms. Wild mustard
clumped here and there offering more bright yellow flowers, and I stopped
for a moment to watch a bee about its work. It was an “H” bee, the
marking across its back forming a sideways letter “H,” and that meant it
would not sting. So I caught it carefully in my hands. It buzzed
angrily as I held my hand to my ear. Its escape efforts tickled my
palms, and I let it go.
About halfway to Bolsa I stopped at a sea of flowing green
foxtails. Looking back I could not see my friends at the fort.
Maybe they had gone home. I waded into the foxtails, got down and rolled
an open space to lay in, a private nest of green just for me, and when I
looked up, all I could see were foxtails bending under their own weight on
sturdy stems and the wide, blue sky.
A wall of green surrounded me, cooling the heat of late
afternoon, and the trampled foxtails of which I lay exuded a heady and pungent,
green scent. No breeze stirred, and it was quiet. Then, the perfect
stillness was pierced by a high-pitched tone; quickly followed by a still
higher tone and then a descending throaty yodel. A meadowlark was nearby.
I picked a stalk, stripped the closely held leaves, plucked the slinky foxtail,
which was the size of a large caterpillar and set it jetting off to the outside
world. Then I chewed the stem as I lay there. It was tart, puckering
my jaws, and I liked that.
I fiddled with the “I like Ike,” button on my shirt, unpinned
it and examined it more closely, removed the circular metal pin and snapped
it back into place. “Could Johnny be right?” I asked myself inwardly.
“Could dad be wrong?” I thought about that for a while as I chewed
the stem, then concluded there was no way dad was wrong. Johnny’s dad
must be wrong. Who knew? Our teacher, Mrs. Gill, would not say.
Politics was not like math, reading or spelling. Was there a right
answer? Hmmm. Still, Ike was better than Stevenson. Had
to be. I pinned the button back on my shirt.
Before long the stem was chewed down, and I got up knowing
I still had to get home. Leaving my nest of tall grass I angled over
to Newland Street and then on to Kay’s house.
Yes, Ike won the election. And the tall grass?
A few years later the field was plowed under and covered by housing tracts;
all of it. One day I rode in the school bus, returning home from the
Sixth grade at a different school, and I looked long at the new houses and
streets as the bus progressed down Newland Street. I thought back to
the day I lay out there, in the same space, but in my private green nest
and serenaded by a meadowlark. I understood that progress required
things to change, but I felt in my heart that something special was lost.