One of my earliest childhood school yard memories was walking arm with my friends in the school yard, chanting political slogans. As much as a I pride myself on having a tape recorder like memory, I am not sure if I have this quote verbatim, so I will paraphrase:

Wallace is a crumb, Humphrey is a bum, Nixon is the one!

Indeed we being the enlightened 6 or 7 year olds that we were, certainly we must have it right, right? Nixon is the one?

Now fast forward to a blip in time when one summer my brother and I spent a summer with my father in California in what is known as the San Fernando Valley, specifically it was either Reseda or Van Nuys, but I do not believe that it was Sherman Oaks. The time was 1974, and for some strange reason it turned out that my brother and I had plenty time to lounge around the apartment that did have a swimming pool and of course air conditioning.

It turns out that both my brother and I had precious little adult supervision and I remember watching history unfold in front of my eyes brought to us courtesy of our good friend the television set. The first thing on the news that day was that the air quality, was unacceptable. Wait a second, did the guy on TV just say that the air quality was unacceptable? What would he have us do, I wondered to myself, hold our breath until we turn blue? Yet the real news story in 1974 was the Nixon Watergate Scandal. I really was not sophisticated enough to really understand the significance of the entire thing.

Also please understand that this was before cable TV had existed, and I do not even think that VCR’s (thats video taped movies) were prevalent back then. Of course I tried to change the channel, but to no avail, this news broadcast was on every network. It would have been preferable to go outside, maybe go visit the local aquarium shop and look at the cichlids (intelligent fish that exhibit aggressive behavior and defend their young) as I was fond of doing back then, but the air quality was unacceptable! In fact the guy on TV was telling us the best course of action was to sit back, close your windows, and not go outside, which left us with watching this incredibly boring news cast about the Watergate Break In!

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