The Assemblagist

Part Two of a Series

I started this tale a few days ago and inter­rup­tions keep pil­ing up on top of each other like bad news on elec­tion day — affect­ing my abil­ity to get on with the story.

Fish­ing for Nixon by Valerie MacEwan

The Saga con­tin­ues as I enter the Junior High School Age. Winthrop Rock­e­feller wres­tled con­trol of the Arkansas leg­isla­tive process from Orval Faubus and put a stop to gam­bling in Hot Springs (Casi­nos and slot machines not horse rac­ing, Oak­lawn Thor­ough­bred Park is Arkansas Leg­end and will never die.). With Rock­e­feller as gov­er­nor, other Top Name Repub­li­cans began to fil­ter into Arkansas. Thus began My Polit­i­cal Jour­ney. An expe­ri­en­tial and philo­soph­i­cal high­way with lit­tle knowl­edge and even less savvy — some­how I ended up serv­ing din­ner to Spiro Agnew and meet­ing Richard Nixon.

A quick aside: I didn’t know any­thing about deseg­re­ga­tion. By the time the I knew what Jim Crow meant, it no longer applied as law. My par­ents didn’t talk about racial issues, they were from Cincin­nati, remem­ber? Not South­ern. It was a non-​issue to them. Come to think of it, Fort Smith may have been dif­fer­ent. I didn’t see a “Col­ored Entrance” sign until I went to Fordyce, Arkansas in 1975, long after Lyn­don John­son and The Great Soci­ety.

Now there’s another story, hid­den some­where within this one. Deseg­re­ga­tion. Going to have to think hard on that. When we moved to the South, my sis­ter was a senior in high school. What a shitty year to trans­fer. And think, she went from Chicago sub­urb high school to seg­re­gated south­ern one. Man oh man. No won­der she was a TriDelt at the the U of Arkansas. And I don’t recall one sin­gle con­ver­sa­tion about race. Then again, I was seven. As dumb about the world around me as any lit­tle kid could pos­si­bly be. Boo Radley and Scout would have been sophis­ti­cated and worldly com­pared to me. There was such hooplah at Cen­tral High School in Lit­tle Rock… was this why Winthrop Rock­e­feller won? This polit­i­cal tale comes from my mem­ory, not from a course of study or his­tor­i­cal book. Maybe I’d best be read­ing a bit more on Win­rock and his farms.

Arkansas in the 1960s. A strange and won­der­ful land.

My par­ents were close friends with George Nowotny, one of the State legislature’s two Repub­li­can congressmen.

Mom would drive my brother John and I down to Lit­tle Rock when­ever the leg­is­la­ture was in ses­sion, and we’d get to stay in a hotel near the capi­tol and serve as pages for a week. John liked get­ting out of school, I liked the polit­i­cal process and feel­ing impor­tant. Here’s a non-​political mem­ory: One of my chief duties as a page was to get pop­si­cles for George’s fel­low leg­is­la­tors. As I recall, this task required leav­ing the House floor and trav­el­ing down the huge, wide mar­ble stair­case to the rotunda on the first floor, then walk­ing down a series of hall­ways to a cof­fee shop. This mem­ory remains solid because, being the lit­tle fool that I was, I ran down the steps, tripped around half-​way and slid on my ass down the rest of the way. I twisted my ankle but wouldn’t admit it because I didn’t want to go home. These were the days of pleated plaid wool skirts, V-​neck sweaters, and button-​down col­lar Oxford cloth shirts. My slide down the stairs cer­tainly dis­played my lesser side, and scuffed up my new navy blue with a lib­erty head dime in the front Bass Weejuns.

My Mom picked us up at the end of the day and sur­veyed my swollen ankle. “Why am I not sur­prised?” she asked John who snorted in return.

Mom in 1968

“Do I have to go back there with HER tomor­row? Can’t you make her stay with you?” he asked, “She’ll do some­thing stu­pid tomor­row too.”

“No. Valerie, behave your­self, slow down and for heaven’s sake, don’t get hurt.” This was pretty much my Mom’s mantra, a daily chant mut­tered under her breath as she sur­veyed what­ever dam­age I’d done to myself in her absence. Oh God, now there’s the sto­ry­line for another set of tales, my child­hood injuries. ANYWAY, back to the story.

Mom went to a drug­store and bought Absor­bine Junior. I know… who buys Absor­bine Junior for a sprained ankle? Do they still make that stuff?

I still have the news­pa­per clip­ping — it’s around here some­where — of my brother and me stand­ing with Nowotny. One photo for each year I served as a page. In high school, the trip was sans Mom as my friend Kay Kutait and I went down ALONE and stayed at her uncle’s house for a week while pag­ing. This tale requires more space and telling, so I’ll save it for later… until I scan the photo of me and Kay with Nowotny.

This post is an off the top of my head bit, I promise to do bet­ter next time. The grand­sons are upstairs with Rob, watch­ing Dirty Jobs and it’s time to get them to bed.

*NOTE: Google Ads keep pop­ping in here with a “Sarah in 2012?” vile adver­tise­ment. Click it, make me some money. Go ahead. I can’t seem to get the damn adver­tise­ment fil­tered off my account so if it’s pro-​palin please know I think she is full of crap, an oppor­tunist, a media whore who sells out her own chil­dren even the devel­op­men­tally dis­abled baby for a buck, she is a loath­some plague upon the earth, a boil on the ass of com­mon sense, a ridicu­lous money-​grabbing back-​stabbing illit­er­ate freak who talks out of both sides of her mouth and her words are pure garbage. I, quite lit­er­ally, hope she eats shit and dies.

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