Where I Was

Yesterday I watched two documentaries, both about former presidents. The first was the episode in the CNN series The Sixties about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Even though it's well worn territory, I managed to learn a few things that I didn't know about the aftermath and investigation. Inevitably, whenever Kennedy's assassination is discussed, there's a moment when viewers are asked to reflect on where they were when they heard that the president had been shot. I was just four months old then, so I cannot recall exactly, but I'd imagine I was in a crib at the time.

The other documentary was about President Nixon's resignation in 1974. It was a PBS special about The Dick Cavett Show's connection to the Watergate investigation; I never knew Cavett was one of the few television people to keep the focus on the work being done by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Cavett even had some of the more famous people associated with the scandal on his show, such as G. Gordon Liddy. I can't imagine a talk show host having that kind of access today. Cavett even did a special program from the Senate room where the Watergate hearings were conducted and interviewed Howard Baker and three other senators who were on the investigating committee. It was pretty riveting stuff for someone like me who's intrigued by both politics and history.

Hardly anyone ever asks, though, where you were when you first heard that Nixon resigned as president. I do, however, recall quite vividly where I was on that day.

My grandmother and I had been in her garden that afternoon. Being late August, we were harvesting rather than weeding. I seem to recall that we had picked a lot of peas that day, buckets full of them, but it could have just as easily been corn or beans or any other vegetable that she grew every summer. We also had some help from my aunt and cousins who lived next door to us. The garden area was shared between us.

It being August in Mississippi, someone needed to turn on the air conditioning in the house in order to get it ready for us to return. Nothing makes you suffer quite as much as a stuffy house on a humid Southern day. At just 11 years of age, having had my birthday a little more than a week earlier, I was probably not the greatest help in the garden anyway, so I was given the task of going up to the house and turning on the air conditioner to get the living room cooler.

Naturally, given that I was a child who had grown up with television, I also switched on our set. It was a Zenith, of course, and was located right next to the window with the air conditioner. Oddly enough, Nixon had just started his short resignation speech. I knew that the hearings had been going on because we watched the NBC Nightly News without fail in my home. And the previous summer had been an endless parade of witnesses and long hours of testimony which my grandmother and aunt kept telling us would be important some day. However, my cousins and our neighbors and I were far more interested in playing outside than watching stuffy political theater. However, even I stopped long enough to watch Nixon's speech that evening. I had never seen a president resign his office, and I realized that this would be a significant event.



About 10-15 minutes later, the rest of the family made it to the house and saw that I had the television on. In those days, we could only get two channels very clearly, the NBC and CBS affiliates. ABC and PBS depended upon the weather for the clarity of their signals, and usually the weather was not on their side. So, yes, we only had four channels, and only two of them were typically good enough to watch. This was all B.C. (Before Cable), of course, so an (outside) antenna had to suffice. Having so few options meant that if the president addressed the nation, that's all that would be on the television, every channel.

By the time everyone else got inside, though, Nixon had already resigned and the pundits were discussing the historical significance of his actions. I was asked what was happening, and I responded simply, "The president resigned." No one had expected that and they didn't initially believe me, so they all took a couple of minutes to confirm my assertion by watching the repeated airings of the tape and listening to the newscasters explaining the next steps in our nation's transition of power.

I wish I could say that we stopped and had a wide-ranging political discussion about the abuses of power and the need for trust in our government officials. Sadly, though, we just ate our dinner and then spent the rest of the evening shelling peas so that they could be canned the next day. We weren't the kind of family that had discussions of current events at the dinner table. We would just eat as quickly as possible and then get on with the work of the day. Even the resignation of the most powerful person in the United States and, arguably, the world wouldn't and couldn't interfere with that.