http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7012055Oh my.
The primitives once again giving vital clues as to their real ages.
Kaleva (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:17 PM
Original message
What is your earliest political memory?
Mine was the funeral of JFK. I was watching it on tv in the living room while playing with some toys as my mom ironed clothes and watched too.
It's a big bonfire, so I brought over only the memories of the PoP.
The cyanide primitive:
cynatnite (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:20 PM
Response to Original message
3. My grandpa yelling at everyone to shutup so he could watch the Watergate hearings.
The racist babbling sister primitive:
babylonsister (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:21 PM
Response to Original message
5. Mine was JFK, too. On the bus ride home, we found out he had been killed. I was about 7 years old. My home was funereal for the following week. Black and white TV, 3 channels, all somber.
Those were the days.
The primitive once known as the "MookieWilson" primitive, who might, or might not, be a dyke:
Captain Hilts (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:22 PM
Response to Original message
6. The very day he was shot. I was 4 years old and spending the day on my dad's submarine.
Mom had to go to an event that didn't need a 4 year old running around.
I remember the sailors talking about it. "He's going to be okay." "No, he isn't." And so forth.
I remember the day very well as it was already an unusual day since I spent it on the boat.
The sparkling husband primitive:
Stinky The Clown (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:32 PM
Response to Original message
21. Maybe not my earliest, but I recall an Eisenhower campaign slogan on a billboard.....
.... '56. The year to fix.
To this day, I don't know what they were proposing to fix.
That was when the sparkling husband primitive was about 9, 10, years old.
Apparently not an impressionable child as an infant and toddler.
The Allentown dude primitive:
AllentownJake (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:33 PM
Response to Original message
23. Reagan's win in 1984
My dad loved that man and my mom was working nights at the Hospital. We pulled out the sofa bed in the living room and watched the returns. I believe I was 5.
The other is watching my grandfather in the convertible in the annual parade where he was mayor. About the same time.
Aha.
And here, folks, is an example of how the primitives betray by their own mouths their real-life identities.
Damn, my fellow alum Skins has got to train the primitives in internet security.
The primitive who's pretty old:
Cleita (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:35 PM
Response to Original message
29. Way before your memory, I listened to FDR's Fireside Chats on the radio with my grandmother, who was babysitting me, and while WWII raged on. Yes, I am that old although the talk really made no sense to me then. The war did because that's all the adults talked about. However, then country was so united, and that wasn't hard for a four year old to understand. Being Republican or Democrat was only a friendly disagreement. It's really hard to think about how different things became to where we are today. It's like night and day.
The blue primitive:
bluestateguy (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:47 PM
Response to Original message
45. The Democrat Party primaries of 1984 and I call them the Democrat Party because the party was so pathetic in '84 as to not be worthy of proper appellation. Hart, Mondale and Jackson? Puleeze.
And yet the general election was a big blur to me. I hardly remember it at all. Maybe because I was paying more attention to the LA Olympics, and maybe because everyone knew Reagan had it in the bag.
A few months later I asked my father why so many people voted for Reagan. He growled, "because they're STUPID!"
Doug's stupid ex-wife:
EFerrari (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 10:54 PM
Response to Original message
49. My mom let me jump on our turquoise sectional couch just that once and throw leftover JFK literature all over the living room. I was almost four.
That's pretty much been my strategy ever since.
That would've been 1958, 1959.
franksolich is still checking into the possibility that Doug's stupid ex-wife had connections with Charles Manson, by the way; one of his "girls," or something.
The unfrocked warped primitive:
Warpy (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 11:19 PM
Response to Original message
68. My mother watching the HUAC hearings white knuckled all the time, wondering if somebody would remember her brief flirtation with the party in the 30s when they were the only ones standing against Hitler.
She needn't have worried, nobody cared unless the target had a job somebody else wanted or a neighbor had a grudge. However, the fear about the latter was pervasive. Nobody who didn't live through it can possibly know how bad it was. May McCarthy and all his recent right wing apologists rot in hell.
To this day, I have trouble signing my name to any petitions.
Yeah, yeah, it was real bad. We know. Ho-hum.
Lydia Leftcoast (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-13-09 11:23 PM
Response to Original message
73. The radio is on
There is a news bulletin. My mother gasps and runs to the phone. She calls up my grandparents and says, "Stalin died."
I was not quite three years old. I had no idea who Stalin was, of course, but in retrospect, this would have been huge news for my Latvian grandfather. The emotion of the moment must have made a deep impression on me.
Another memory of that year is going to my great-uncle's house to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on TV. It was the first time I saw television, which we didn't get for more than a year at our house.
Another political memory, possibly from the same year or a little bit later, is sitting on my mother's lap as she pages through a Life magazine. I point to the picture of an angry-looking man. "Who's that?" I ask. "That's Senator McCarthy," she replies.
The banal anal primitive:
annabanana (1000+ posts) Sat Nov-14-09 07:13 AM
Response to Original message
148. Army-McCarthy hearings on TV
I was, what? . .about 3 years old.
Daddy was teaching at a "commie infested eastern liberal university" at the time. He had some of his colleagues over, they were watching TV. I knew it was serious ("Shh-h-h-h), and I remember seeing/hearing people yelling on TV.
Of course I didn't know for years what it was that had caused the concern in the household.
The PoP must not be representive of the general population on Skins's island. Most of the PoP appear to be circa 50-55 years old, but among the obscure primitives, the
unterprimitiven, not quoted here, there seems an inordinate number who remember Roosevelt and Truman.
