Knock Knock / Whose There? / A Smiley Face Pen / Go Away! / What?
What do you mean you don’t want a Smiley Face Pen?
It was 1970 and I was eight years old. Our teacher had just presented us with an idea to get involved with a movement. To help with issues surrounding the Vietnam War. Well of course I needed no further prompting. After all I was a Kennedy youth. Brought up in a household whose Mother loved the President and also his brother, Blue Eyed Bobbie. Kids were encouraged to enlist ourselves anyway we could, writing letters of support, which my Mother always made me do with Aunts, Uncles, and our Grandparents anyway. She was a Woman of letters, you could say.
So it was expected, after President Jack Kennedy’s Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You speech, and it made me feel particularly great about doing something for others, after seeing injustices and having to come to terms with a world that had let kids down, as to ideals of world peace and equality especially.
My Mother took me to a Candidates debate in 1968 in our tiny town, and Bobbie Kennedy spoke. Well I signed up right there, a youth pledge. An actual pledge to support his campaign. At 6 years old. We were thrilled to take action. It was our generation after all that went through the Summer Of Love, and a revolution of change in music that spoke for us. Even at six I could see…
