Chapter 29 Version 2
1967
“Do
you want to go to the world’s fair in Montreal tonight?” asked John’s father at
7 o’clock on a warm summer evening. “Arlene is taking a one day trip and you
and a friend could go if you want to. She is leaving at 3:00am. You just need a
birth certificate and some money for admission and food.”
John
asked his best friend Bobby and the two hitched a ride out of the country on
short notice. When Arlene reached the turnpike, she quickly accelerated to
between 85 to 90 miles per hour. She noticed that John was looking at the
speedometer. “The state police cruise at 80 miles per hour so if you go over 80
miles per hour they never catch up to you. The only time I was ever caught
speeding I was going 75 miles per hour” Arlene
explained.
Arlene
was the wife or a widow of an air force pilot. She wasn’t sure which category
she fell into. Her husband Hap had gone on a mission in Korea and never
returned. As MIA, Hap was still alive and so Arlene still received the benefits
of an air force wife and could shop at the Westover AFB PX. John had the Kodak
Instamatic camera Arlene bought for him a the PX for a good price and John
would take a “roll” of film today at Expo ’67. The Instamatic took a film
“cartridge” and John had cracked open quite a few of them to develop black and
white film with the 4H camera club over the past two years. John mowed Arlene’s
lawn for $2.00 (just over minimum wage for an hour’s work) and fed her cats
when she and her two daughters were away.
“I have to go sign some papers so I will drop you off at
Expo ‘67 and we can meet back here at 5 o’clock for the return trip. Is that
OK?” asked Arlene. That was fine with John and Bobby. Arlene had brought up her
girl scout troop and John’s sister Susan had driven the family’s 1963 Buick
Electra with part of the troop in her car. During the trip, Susan was involved
in a multiple car pile up and received damage in the front and the rear. This
necessitated a number of trips by Arlene back to Canada and resulted in two trips
to Expo ‘67 for John.
At Expo ’67 the dominating pavilions were the US and USSR
buildings as this was the height of the cold war. The Russian’s building had a
sweeping roofline on a rectangular footprint while the US pavilion had a number
of pop culture items on display in a large Buckminster Fuller inspired geodesic
golf ball. The roofless structure leaked in many places when a thunderstorm
moved through but it was dazzling in the sunlight. John bought some foreign
stamps from Canada for his collection to go along with some Vatican stamps
purchased at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The Canadian pavilion also had a
nice selection of books by Canadian authors and John bought one as a souvenir
of the trip. “The Real World of Democracy” was written by University of Toronto
professor C. B. Macpherson. In it the author questioned whether rule by the
majority would eventually lead to supression of the minority. Macpherson was
also credited with inventing the concept of “possessive individualism” in which
the individual owned his skills to be sold on the open market and owes nothing
to society at large. He argued against this view as opposed to Ayn Rand who
supported it.
“I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist ‘cause I’m left handed
That’s the hand to use well, never mind”
-Paul Simon’s A Simple
Desultory Philippic (Or How I was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission) - 1965
In the US civil rights and integration were being pursued by
“negroes” who were now looking for a racial group name change to “black”. In
1968 John and a high school classmate Mike headed out to UMass in Amherst one
evening to see civil rights advocate Julian Bond. The venue was an auditorium
that was filled to capacity. Mr. Bond was a Democratic member of the Georgia
House of Representatives. He had declined to cast a vote for Democratic
segregationist Lester Maddox when the general election of governor of Georgia
failed to give a majority to any of the politicians running for governor and
the Georgia House of Representatives was called on to decide the who the next
governor would be. In 1960 Julian Bond co-founded the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee – SNCC and led civil rights demonstrations and voter
registrations in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. He also led student
protests over Jim Crow laws in Georgia in the early 1960’s. Mr. Bond eventually
was a founding member of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Georgia State
Senator for many years. John expected to see an angry black man but found a
well dressed, short haired, soft spoken, articulate and educated person
advocating for equal treatment under the law.
“our liberal-democracy, like any other system, is a system of power….It
is a system by which people can be governed, that is, made to do things they
would not otherwise do, and made to refrain from doing things they otherwise
might do. Democracy as a system of government is, then, a system by which power
is exerted by the state over individuals and groups within it. But more than
that, a democratic government, like any other, exists to uphold and enforce a
certain kind of society, a certain set of relations between individuals, a
certain set of rights and claims that people have on each other both directly,
and indirectly through their rights to property. These relations themselves are
relations of power” - C B Macpherson’s The Real World of Democracy p4
Stanley sat by his pool and recalled his shipmates on the
Rocky Mount. “We had negro members of the crew working in the kitchen. There were guys in the crew who were segregationists.
If they thought they were not getting the proper respect from a negro, they
would gang up on him at night when he was alone and throw him overboard in the
middle of the ocean.” After some time passed and it seemed the story was not
going to continue John asked “So what happened to the white guys that threw the
black guy overboard?”
“Nothing” replied Stanley.
A few days later, Stanley, Joe, John and an employee of Zywar Brothers were having their 10 am coffee
break. The Zywar brothers did general contracting, house building and ran a
retail store for lumber, Dutch Boy paint, and hardware from a store on
Northampton Street. They built custom houses from Longmeadow to Northampton
including Arlene’s house on Sutton Place in Easthampton. Each floor plan was
uniquely designed by Stanley on a large drafting table in the spare bedroom of
his house. Above the drafting table was a stuffed four foot sail fish Stanley
had caught down in Florida – its sail fin proudly displayed. John worked at
Zywar Brothers during the summer and on Friday nights and Saturdays during the
school year. Before going to kindergarten, he thought his name was “John Zywar
Brothers”.
John had his usual, a jelly donut or a Boston cream donut
and a chocolate milk – a repeat of breakfast Joe and John had at the Hampton
Grill on Ferry Street a few hours before. The town and the high school that
John went to had no non-white minorities in it. “I heard a story from the
police last night. A black guy drove into town and went into a restaurant near
Main Street. The police were notified and an officer came and sat down at the
lunch counter next to the black guy who just was served his meal. The officer
told the black guy that if he wanted to leave town with his manhood intact, he
would get up and leave town now. The black guy put down his fork, got up from
the counter, paid for his meal and left town.”
That evening, John finished reading The Real World of Democracy.
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