Grugger’s Way

My First Time to Vote for President was 1968.

I was in the Navy and my ship, the USS FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, an aircraft carrier, had recently returned from a nine-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea.  I was 21, and I remember that I voted with an absentee ballot from Montana.

I recall that during the ship’s deployment, a Navy teletype message came across from the President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, in which he announced that he would not seek, nor accept, his party’s nomination for a second term.  I saved that piece of yellow teletype paper, and still have it in an old footlocker in the basement of my house.

The election year of 1968 was violent:  the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in January, the assassinations of Martin Luther King in April and Bobby Kennedy in June, and the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer.  The details of these events we witnessed on television, which was quite a remarkable medium at that time.  Even we sailors on liberty were pelted with tomatoes by local residents overseas who protested the U.S. presence in Vietnam.

The Presidential candidates were Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace, at that time, Governor of Alabama.

I didn’t know shinola about politics or political parties.  Like so many other youngsters voting in their first elections back in those days, at least the young sailors that I knew, we just assumed that we “were whatever our parents were.”  So the Democratic candidate received my vote.  I do have to admit to not liking the other candidates very much.  Hubert Humphrey was known as “The Happy Warrior.”  I liked that.

That’s my First Vote story.

And…this ends my series of “My First Time:” posts.  I have “worked” this theme for a total of 29 Posts!  I thought I could get 30, but the well has run dry.

Tomorrow I begin a new theme: “Why Didn’t I?”  I hope readers will be able to identify with the questions I pose for myself, including “Why Didn’t I Marry My First Love?,” “Why Didn’t I Become an Astronaut?,” “Why Didn’t I Ever Get a Tattoo?,” and “Why Didn’t I ever Skydive?”

I’ll have the answers, beginning tomorrow,  Thanks for Reading!

My First Time To Dodge Bullets Zinging Overhead sounds pretty darn scary, I’ll admit. And by golly, it was!

Now, unless you happen to be Angelina Jolie or Keanu Reeves, you can’t really “dodge” bullets, but it does have a nice ring to it.

I was ten years old, in 1957, and visiting my North Dakota Cousins, who I never used to admit to having, since they damn near shot me!

We were wandering around out in the pasture and “boonies” and, like many farms in prairie country, the “cousins” had a big dam that held water for the livestock.  This pond also attracted wildlife, including ducks.

“Ducks” is an OPERATIVE word here, since I suddenly heard bullets zinging overhead before I actually heard any shots being fired, and I DUCKED as fast as you can imagine a scared kid could duck.  With my face planted in the dirt behind a small hill,  I (and the one cousin who was with me), started yelling like crazy at the cousins on the other side of the pond who were shooting at ducks on the water.

When a .22 caliber bullet strikes water it ricochets off in a totally random direction.  I didn’t want to be in any of the random directions.

Eventually the “shooting cousins” heard us (between shots) and when they yelled back at us, we “jumped” up and waved and yelled some more!  The “shooting cousins” started laughing, and that really made me mad.

I was almost mad enough to “tell” on them, but their size and threats convinced me to keep my mouth shut. To this day.

My First Time to be Spanked, that I can remember, was a spanking administered by my Father when I was ten.

I wonder how many boys remember the first time they were spanked? Perhaps we just remember a particularly vicious whipping and so we think that was the first time.

My first memory of a spanking was pretty well-deserved. I had come home late; by late, I mean it was dark outside, so who knows what time it was…depends on the season. At any rate, when I came into the house, I knew I was in for it. Staying out after dark was a definite violation of Rules.

Dad just told me to “go to the shed.” I went and waited. The waiting was agony, you know? When he came outside, he was carrying his belt. It was one of those wide belts, perhaps two inches wide, worn by working men, and it was black. He had a way of folding it over in half, then holding one end in each hand, he would bring the two ends together in such a way that the belt would spread apart, and then……SNAP! as he pulled quickly in opposite directions. That SNAP just struck fear into my heart whenever he did it. It was an implied threat of real pain. In the shed, he didn’t even bother to SNAP the belt, he just lit into me, on my ass, all the while telling me that what I did wrong was causing my Mother to worry about me and where I was, etc.

The beating didn’t last long…he really didn’t have the heart for it. He had been beaten as a child and always said he didn’t want that for his son. This was an exception, evidently.

I don’t remember being beat like that ever again.

My First Time to Run Away From Home lasted all of two hours and (perhaps) ten blocks.

My friend Joe, who was a 7th grader, instigated this great adventure. He was ALWAYS talking about running away from home. I really had no concept of this, but I was only a 4th grader, so Joe was a really much older guy that I looked up to.
His main complaint was that his parents kept him working in the yard all day, every day, during the summer vacation.

So…one day when he was in trouble for not working, he came over and wanted me to go with him. Okay, sure! We rode our bikes about six blocks away and then started up “Altamont Hill” which is located in Spokane, Washington. Altamont was a really steep street and we maybe made it half a block before we had to get off our bikes and walk. (There were no “gears” on boys’ bike back in those days, (1956), and we were pretty exhausted by the time we had climbed another couple of blocks up the hill.

We had no plans, no food, no water, no blankets,…well, I decided I had enough of this and told him we needed to quit for today and make better plans next time.

Turns out there was no “next time.” At supper that night, my sister mentions to our parents that Joe and I were running away from home. My Dad casually reached over and “removed” the hamburger and mustard sandwich that I was eating, and put it down on his plate. I cried out, of course, and he informed me that there would be no food for me if I was leaving; and that I could figure out how to feed myself. That did it. I was a hungry, growing boy. and never again “ran away.”

Next day I told Joe that he would be on his own. I don’d recall that he ever did get around to running away. For a seventh grader, he turned out to be a big chicken.