Ronald Reagan was elected when I was five years old. He was president until I was thirteen - my entire elementary and middle-school career. Almost my entire childhood.
My father was a union activist and dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, with a stockpile of election signs and a maniacal hatred of trickle-down economics. Our car bumpers, tee shirts, garage walls, and front yard were all fair game for political slogans. The Course is a Curse - Vote Democrat. Mondale-Ferraro. Apple for Congress. Weekends: Brought to You by Organized Labor. Eat Your Import. I.B.E.W. Local 405.
In my household, politics were personal. Every dinner for eight years, my father ranted and raged about Reaganomics. Union busting. Iran-Contra. Star Wars.
Maybe because of this, I associate Ronald Reagan with childhood. When I heard news of his death, my eyes immediately welled up. Not because he was gone, but because an entire era was suddenly - unexpectedly - resurrected. The Challenger explosion. Union pickets. Riding my bicycle up and down the street, popping wheelies on potholes. Walter Mondale campaign rallies. My favorite terrycloth roller-skate shirt. The Evil Empire. Nightmares about mushroom clouds. My father laid off again and again. A dead body on the street in front of our house. AIDS. The Cold War. My sister dancing to Madonna 45s on our blacktop driveway. Apartheid. Iran-Contra. Just Say No.
I share Reagan's birthday (February 6th) and his provenance (the midwest). We both had alcoholic fathers. We both fled west. The similarities end there. Politically, I am more left than even my father. More left than the Democrats (not difficult).
This morning, I woke with a strange sense of sadness - a sense that history had finally caught up to the present, its mouth open wide, ready as Saturn to devour its own children.
Comments (10)
I appreciate this post very much because I have already grown bored of the leftists around me rejoicing in morbid ways over this event as well as the ongoing coverages on news channels about it--they're both not surprising. Your reflections on this feel much deeper and more interesting to me than all that...thank you (and wow, Saturn devouring its own children is intense...)
Posted by Wendy | June 7, 2004 12:16 PM
Posted on June 7, 2004 12:16
I concur with Wendy. Thoughtful and vivid. Thanks for providing a much needed breath in my finals week.
Posted by kel | June 7, 2004 7:41 PM
Posted on June 7, 2004 19:41
(Just visiting from Michael J Totten);
very intense/ real memories.
Can I ask if you feel that Reagan-haters were intellectually inferior to Reagan? That is to say, Reagan's ideas were more right than those who hated him, and his ideas?
Richard Perle writes about the 1986 Iceland summit:
http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.20653/news_detail.asp
Thanks for sharing your memories.
Posted by Tom Grey | June 8, 2004 12:41 AM
Posted on June 8, 2004 00:41
Kerrie, beautiful post. I don't share your pessimism about the future, but I do understand your feeling of past and present being fused in the moment of Reagan's death. It's one of those things that remind me that I'm living in history.
Posted by Mark Poling | June 8, 2004 7:30 AM
Posted on June 8, 2004 07:30
Always sad and a little frightening to have these reminders that the passage of time for us is accelerating. I was thinking about my high school sweetheart and our date at the senior prom...believe it or not Jerry Lee Lewis performed for us that night. Now her children are twice as old as we were then...
Posted by Denny | June 8, 2004 8:12 AM
Posted on June 8, 2004 08:12
Kerry, thanks for sharing. It brings to mind a rather funny episode when Reagan was elected. I'm a counselor and was director of an inpatient program in Texas. Just prior to the election, we had two patients both claiming to be Jimmy Carter. The arguments between the two were sad, but funny at the same time. After Reagan was pronounced the winner, about a week or so later, one of the patients decided that he was Ronald Reagan. The other patient said "See, I told you he was an imposter."
I hadn't remembered that until you noted some of your recollections. Thanks again for sharing.
Posted by GMRoper | June 8, 2004 8:41 AM
Posted on June 8, 2004 08:41
What Wendy said!
Posted by dale | June 8, 2004 2:14 PM
Posted on June 8, 2004 14:14
(aside)
Kind of entertaining to see how the associative force of presidential politics transformed your name first to Kerrie, and then to Kerry!
Posted by dale | June 9, 2004 12:39 PM
Posted on June 9, 2004 12:39
(re: dale's aside)
Har har!
Posted by W | June 9, 2004 12:50 PM
Posted on June 9, 2004 12:50
Your reaction to the death of Ronald Reagan was similar to mine; it signaled, once and for all, the end of an era:
http://www.readjdm.com/columns/2004/060804.shtml
Posted by JDM | June 9, 2004 6:55 PM
Posted on June 9, 2004 18:55