Bobby

In 1968 (I was 13 years old), I lived in Wisconsin. My father had gotten a "promotion," and we all packed up and moved up there. We arrived before the furniture, and I remember sleeping on the newly laid carpet in the living room, my little family unit huddled together like refugees. It was not a great time for me. Moving from the suburbs of Chicago, to a little conservative town known for Kleenex was an uprooting of major proportions, and I kind of sank back into my shell of unhappiness even deeper. I took up golf, it was the perfect sport for a lonely kid, with no friends, and no intentions of reaching out to anyone nearby.

I had only one golf club, it was nine iron, and there was a great open field where I spent many hours hitting a golf ball or two. I learned the special golf club grip, I actually had a flip book of Tony Jacklyn who won the British Open or something. I was an avid reader of Sports Illustrated and I was fascinated by some of the figures I discovered in the pages of the magazine: Jean Claude Killy, Muhammad Ali, Carl Yastrzemski. If I happened to whack the ball good, I could spend a lot of time wandering around that big, lumpy field hunting down my golf balls.

Anyway, last night, the Lovely Carla and I went to see "Bobby," a movie focused on one day in 1968, it's a really extraordinary movie, I believe that Emilio Estevez (remember Repo Man?), should be honored for his absolutely superb script and sure-handed direction. I mean, I really, really love this movie, eventhough, ultimately it is absolutely heart-wrenching.

So, I'm remembering Bobby Kennedy, I remember we went to bed before Kennedy was announced the winner of the California Primary, I remember things were looking good, my whole family was excited at the prospect of young Bobby winning. The next morning, my mom is driving me to school, (a big lonely monolith, I was the "gangster" from Chicago, I clearly did not fit in), and the news came over on the car radio that Bobby had been shot and killed. I remember my mother screamed out in pain, like she too had been shot. I was stunned. It did not seem real. It couldn't be real. I cried too.

I think I sunk even deeper into that protective shell. When some of the kids in school made fun of the tragedy, I knew that I was not like them, or at least, I didn't want to be anything like them. The year got even weirder later that summer at the Chicago Convention. Things did not go well - cops beating up long-hairs. Everything seemed to be spinning out of control. I bought my first album, the Beatles White Album. There were strange new sounds in the air. The world seemed like a big, crazy, hard place and at the same time there were hippies and flowers and love, and a counter-culture and I started to let my hair grow long, (I didn't cut it for a many, many years)...and things got weirder and weirder...and weirder...

Nixon Won...etc.