McGovern - Shriver '72

 
inauguration day, 1953

When I was typing the last post here, I said I agreed with my Aunt Emmy - I agreed that my mother's vote was her own, she didn't have to vote the same as her husband - I did not agree with the part about my dad "brainwashing" my mom.

He was not the type to brainwash anybody.  And I'm sure Aunt Emmy meant that partly in jest.

Aunt Emmy's dismayed surprise that my mom didn't vote for the same candidate that she herself voted for was very similar to my surprise and consternation to hear that another aunt and uncle might be voting for Goldwater in 1964.

Unconsciously, I had an expectation that my nice aunt and uncle would vote the same as my parents.

        Aunt Emmy seemed to have similarly assumed that my parents would vote for the same candidate she was voting for.

        Thinking about this, I realized I'm the same way about music and movies and books:  someone recently mentioned that he grew up listening to the Oak Ridge Boys' music - this made me so happy, for some reason!

        (In the '80s, I played Oak Ridge Boys songs many times on my radio morning show.)

        In a conversation several months ago, I mentioned Fiddler On The Roof and the woman I was talking with said, "Oh yes, I've seen that," and there again, I was very pleased - elated, even! - to hear that she had seen that movie (or maybe she saw it performed as a play...).

I guess maybe it's a natural part of life and our relationships with other people, that we are happy to have an experience in common. - We have seen the same movie, we have listened to the same music, we have voted for the same candidate... I remember being very pleased and happy that my best friend Robin Coffey's parents were voting for McGovern in 1972, because my parents were voting for him, too.

        (Mr. Coffey worked at Chrysler, and their union was backing McGovern.

        My dad was a minister, so he didn't have a union.)

Robin and I did volunteer work for the campaign at the McGovern headquarters in Kent, Ohio.  We sat at a long table with other people and put campaign literature in envelopes and sealed them using a little bottle of water with a sponge at the top (so you didn't have to lick all of those envelopes)....

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