peace and contentment

Springtime, 1968.
America.

-- March 31, President Lyndon Johnson announces not seeking reelection

-- April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. killed, Memphis

-- June 4, Robert Kennedy killed, Los Angeles

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That's too much stuff, over a period of 66 days.
That's too much stuff.
That is too much stuff.
Too.  Much.

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I was in third grade, in Ohio; my teacher was Mrs. Rine.
At the time, I didn't put those three events together, in any way.  Knowledge, or news, of them dribbled down over my head like a light rain. 
"Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
My mom, after RFK -- "A man can't even run for president anymore without being killed..."

And our neighbor, the old man out in the garage -- writing about him 9/26 here, remembered more than I'd thought of in a long time -- and my dad's low-key reply, "...Now we say Negro...."

And the thought "hung around" in my head after writing and considering that, the same way the old man "hung around" out in the neighbors' garage...just -- there...That maybe the reason he was out in the garage in the first place was to get away from people in the house bossing him around...(?!) 

(And by bossing him around I don't mean they would have tried to make him do all their work, or something like that, I just mean "bossing-around" the way people do sometimes -- "Grandpa wouldn't you like to go along with us for ice cream?"  "Grandpa don't you want to go with us to the library?"  Or "Grandpa, why don't you..."
blah blah blah, thinking -- or intending -- to try to make his life better, or keep him "entertained" but meanwhile the reality is, they're just bugging him....)

It can be that way, sometimes.
A person needs to be left alone -- they want to "do their thing" or to "just be."  And if people won't leave 'em alone they go out to the garage.
And set up camp in there....

Then -- just when the old guy "thought it was safe" -- there's my dad with a well-meaning mini-lecture about which word "we" use, now -- out in the garage!!

lol -- the old man might have been thinking, "Judas Priest!  I get out of the house and come out here, to be left alone, now I got the neighbor after me for m' inter-racial vocabulary...Where do I have to go next?  Where may I be left alone??!

Do I have to leave the garage and go out to the far lower end of the big yard??!

Must I leave the yard and trudge through the high grass out through the big field, to find some peace?!?!

Am I to be reduced to  standing in thigh-high grass and milkweed, thistle, and Queen Anne's Lace, throwing my head back and bellowing my racial epithets to the billowing cloudies in the leaden-gray sky???!!!  Leammee-alone!!" -- LOL

~~~~~~~~~~ If I had wings and I
could fly,
I know where I would go
But right now I'll just
sit here so contentedly
And watch the river flow
-- Bob Dylan

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