There was a rumor running rapid across the playground back in 1964...

[WCGreen]

We were all convinced, on inside information provided by Sticky Tom whose dad was a muckity muck downtown, that if Goldwater was to win, he would make us all go to school on SATURDAYS!!!!

Now this was on the asphalt jungle at the corner of Madison Ave. and Marlow Ave. back of St. Clemens Church and school.

Now it was only a few months away from the awful Assignation of our president, President Kennedy and since our president, President Kennedy picked LBJ as his running mate, we mae him sort of a shirt tail Catholic.

We were so upset that going into the election, all of us were taking communion and during that special time when Jesus was dissolving on our mouths, we prayed for LBJ.

Now we were certain the JFK was in Heaven, probably right there with God and Jesus and the Dove, never quite understood how the dove tied into all of this, but Kennedy, he was out mouthpiece in Heaven, no doubt because we were all a little bit Irish in that neck of the woods.

So I ask you, what was going on around your playgrounds when it came to elections.

I remember this like it was yesterday. I even ran into Sticky Tom at a AA meeting some decades later.

[jberryhill]

1. My fourth grade teacher told us...

...that if George McGovern were elected, then we'd have to go to school with poor black kids.

This was, I guess, supposed to be scary, but I remember thinking, "WTF is wrong with this guy?"

[Laura PourMeADrink]

9. hey jb...where was that?

[jberryhill]

11. Delaware

Heritage Elementary School - Mr. Shaffer.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

12. wow...that surprises me - being Deleware. Grew up in CT and never ever, throughout all my

childhood and teens heard a single negative word about any other group of people except the "gypsies".

[jberryhill]

14. We sent Joe Biden to the Senate that year.

[RagAss]

2. I don't remember elections....

But I do remember our 4th grade teacher taking us out for recess and listening to a transistor radio for the condition of Bobby Kennedy as he lay dying from the shooting the night before. She was crying and sitting alone on a swing watching us sleepwalk through a game of kickball.

Some things you never forget. This is a brutal fucking country.

[HubertHeaver]

3. Goldwater in '64;

Hot water in '65;
Bread and water in "66.

[dflprincess]

7. "In your guts you know he's nuts." n/t

[ArnoldLayne]

4. Seriously in 1964 I was 8 years old and I was

spreading a similar rumor on the playground in Ohio. I was telling the kids if Barry Goldwater becomes President we will have to go to school all year round. I can't believe this I don't know if I heard it from my Mother or Father..no lie.. Simply Amazing!!

[JohnnyLib2]

5. High school CIVICS teacher, 1957 or 1958

"A Catholic can never be elected president."

I can still remember watching kids writing that down as a fact.

[LeftishBrit]

18. In 1972, the Tory Minister of Education said that there would not be a woman prime minister...

'in my lifetime'.

The Minister who said this was Margaret Thatcher.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. School was out when Federal elections came around

where I grew... so no rumors... (Mexico)

[Laura PourMeADrink]

8. wish I had a political memory like yours. All mine is from Catholic school....and the priest

telling us not to french kiss

[CaliforniaPeggy]

10. Thanks for this great story, Chris...

I was very apolitical until I got to college. JFK's assassination brought me up to speed, though...

[oswaldactedalone]

13. What I remember from the '64 election:

"We've got hot water, we've got cold water, we don't need Goldwater!"

[pinboy3niner]

15. I remember JFK's faith being an issue

But after his election, not so much. And after the assassination, the entire country mourned.

I heard the news in school, where they played a news feed on the PA and moved TVs into some of the classrooms.

In my Irish Roman Catholic family, we were devastated. Visiting JFK's grave at Arlington many years later was profoundly moving...

I have a friend now who was given his Green Beret personally by JFK. My friend later left his beret at the Wall. At his brother's panel.

R.I.P.

[Horse with no Name]

16. In 1974 in 6th grade...

we were being taught songs like This Land is Your Land, If I had a Hammer, One Tin Soldier, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Where have all the Flowers Gone...etc.

Looking back as an adult, our teacher REALLY rocked!

[Samantha]

17. Two things I heard in elementary school (not quite about Presidential races but still interesting)

Wall Street was trying hard to get its hands on the Social Security funds, always trying to figure out how to get all the money automatically collected by the government each pay day

and

There were many, many foreigners living in the United States, patiently waiting for the signal for the attack. They lived in neighborhoods blending in so they would not be discovered as our enemy.

Sam

[LeftishBrit]

19. I met an American who had heard exactly the same rumour, but it was in 1968 about Hubert Humphrey

[LeftishBrit]

20. The only childhood election-related memory that I have from primary school...

is that the day after Heath and the Tories won the 1970 election, we were being a bit noisy for unrelated reasons, and one of the kids called out, 'Silence in the court, the monkey wants to talk. The next one to talk doesn't like Conservatives!' A few of us from Labour-voting families called out 'I don't like Conservatives!' (The usual silence-call, on which this was based, was 'Silence in the court, the monkey wants to talk. The next one to talk is a red-bottomed baboon!')

I may have already told the story of how in 2004, my friend's son, then 7 years old, told her that he and his friends had been talking at school about who they wanted to win the American presidential election - which was very prominent on British TV. She asked him whom he wanted to win. 'Bush.' This startled her, being very much at variance with her own political views, and she asked him why. 'Because I think Bush looks better and Kerry looks a bit stupid.' 'But you can't just vote on how people look; you have to find out what they want to do, and think about it.' He looked shocked: 'You mean you have to THINK?' Sadly too many adult voters go just by looks and don't believe that you have to THINK!