1968--Becoming politicized

"LBJ quit!!"
He stands on the riser, 
begging.

Like old Viking lords, 
their faces shining with sweat,
the dancers thrust up their Millers
in ecstatic defiance.

Others, huddled together,
like clusters of mushrooms,
slowly unfold,
tightened fists raised as they stand,
ritual smoke rising gently above them.

The beach sings with the cheer

and the band plays
"In-a-gadda-da-vida."

We are politicized.

Great poetry, it's not.

I'm more than a little embarrassed to drop it in here. Someone announced the news-- that I remember. We were on a beach at Daytona with a ton of college kids gone south for spring break, and someone attuned to national politics, stopped the music and announced what had just happened--"LBJ quit."

March 25, 1968, is a half-century ago. I was twenty years old when this guy, a kid himself, begged for our attention. "LBJ quit!" he yelled. More than once. Yelled it until it became a chant.

The next stanza's simile doesn't work--there were no "old Viking lords" on that beach. We were all terrifyingly young, and we knew very well that being there was a blessing because on the other side of the world guys we knew were dying by the dozens in Vietnam rice paddies. There's some derision in that stanza of this old poem. I don't know exactly what to feel.

Those mushroom cloisters--another weak simile--are kids smoking weed. Marijuana was the drug of choice for 20-year-olds, but dope was something none of us Dordt students really understood. Seeing all those other kids passing joints was startling, but then much was startling to a kid whose spent most all of his life in a sturdy Dutch Reformed pew.

The begging worked--that I remember. "The beach sings with the cheer."

None of us heard LBJ's speech, but we all heard the guy begging up front. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a tall, tough guy from Texas, told the world that night, a Sunday night, that he was ordering the cessation of bombing in some parts of Southeast Asia to attempt to start peace talks.

And then the bombshell. "With our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office, the presidency of your country." Elsewhere across the nation, people looked up, startled, wondering what he meant to say. At Daytona that night, we were dancing. 

And then he said it: "Accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

"LBJ QUIT!" Some guy yelled, begging our attention. More than once.

and the band plays
"In-a-gadda-da-vida."

You have to be old to recognize that title, to bring back the blasting reckless rhythms. I don't know whether the band that night actually played that or something else, maybe something from the Doors; but I dropped that rock tune into my memory of that night because the hard-driving beat of "In-a-gadda-da-vida" suggested the kind of paganism I couldn't help feeling right then, right there.

I knew Eugene McCarthy, a scant-known senator from Minnesota, had made life miserable for LBJ with a message that was anti-war. I knew President Johnson's approval ratings fell into the thirties, his handling of the war even lower. I knew Senator Eugene McCarthy, the poet and liberal, almost beat him in the New Hampshire primary, when hundreds of college kids hit the street to campaign for him. I knew Robert Kennedy saw the blood in the water and threw himself into the race too.

I didn't know Johnson wasn't in good health, hadn't been for a long time. Very few knew what he was going to say that night, few of his cabinet members, a couple members of his family. The next day, his approval ratings went from 57 percent disapproval to 57 percent approval. He made millions happy when he bowed out.

"We are politicized."

I wrote that poem on the other side of forty years ago, but I know very well what I meant that last sentence to suggest. It's derisive. A couple hundred kids thrusting their Millers or passing the joints--we're politicized? 

I wasn't sure of who I was just then, a Dutch Calvinist kid from a Dutch Calvinist college at a Sunday night dance on a Florida beach with hundreds of kids drinking and smoking up and celebrating the demise of President, while guys I knew were fighting Viet Cong terror.

I can't speak for anyone else around me the night LBJ quit, and I won't try. And even though that last line is meant derisively, critically, I know it's not totally untrue. 

By 1968, I'd become more than a little iffy about Southeast Asia. Even though I meant that last line to be derisive, a half-century later, it was also something of a confession because without a doubt I was, at that moment, becoming greatly more politicized.